Water aversion

I still hate plain water, iced or not. Through the colder months, I've been substituting decaf teas, but now as it warms up here in N. Cal I am having to do no cal flavored drinks.. has water become palatable for others who didn't like it? Ideas or tips to share? It would be so nice to be able to drink it again instead of having to prep something.

Me too!  I try to drink 32 oz. of plain water and I use MIO liquid for the rest of the water I drink during the day.  For a 24 oz. bottle of water I just use one squirt of the MIO and it for me just freshens the water up with just a hint of a different flavor. I also use the True Lime and True Lemon packs for just a hint of flavor also.

I also buy different flavored extracts on the spice isle.  I love banana and almond!

Hope this helps!

Blessings,

Pattie

I never liked water even before surgery, but since surgery, I absolutely hate it.  As you know, I have been drinking tea all day long in the cold days of winter.  I too am finding that I need to change my beverage of choice for the summer.  I now make home made ice tea and drink this without the ice.  I can't seem to enjoy really cold drinks any more.  I also buy the light cranberry juice, from Ocean Spray, it is 40 cals. per glass and I mix that glass with a lot of water.  I mean 1/3 juice and the rest is water.  So the 40 calories stretches into at least three glasses.  The taste is refreshing and doesn't seem to be artificial in flavor.  I also find that I like just plain lemon juice squeezed right into a glass of water, I don't seem to need any sweetener to go with it.  I prefer the tart taste. 

I really missed plain water and got so sick of all the artificial stuff. But I found that mos****ers hurt my stomach so I was really frustrated. I kept trying differen****ers and found that a few with minerals in them didn't hurt so much.

However I recently found that the Safeway brand bottled water which has Sodium Bicarbonate added to it (baking soda) doesn't hurt my tummy! Sodium Bicarb is alkaline so that might have something to do with it.

Most of the drinks I had been drinking were more acidic as they had citric acid in them (crystal lite, lemon juice, MIO) and seemed to make my reflux worse, plus I got so sick of the taste.

I'm going to experiment with adding a tiny pinch of baking soda to my water to make it more alkaline and see if that helps. I had always worried that I would get in an emergency situation and be stuck having to drink plain water to survive and hurt my tummy.

So if the answer is as simple as baking soda, it would be really easy for me to keep a kit around and a small amount with me at all times so I could just add a little to my water. I'll let you know how my experiment goes.

this whole thread is very interesting. I haven't liked water since surgery - although it doesn't hurt or feel like a brick, it's just doesn't appeal like it used to - and I have blamed it on all the sugar free drinks I had in my first year. (as a pre-op I never drank sweetened stuff like pop or crystal light)

but I have read about how the acid or alkaline affect food has on us and I know that for non ops, at least, having acid like lemon in their water or eating tomotoes has a net affect of making our body less acid which is good, since the Standard American Diet (animal protein, sugar, coffee) makes us more acidic.

this is the first I've heard about our post-op stomachs being different in this way.

I need to know more!

For me, the only water I can tolerate is Smar****er. It's annoying and expensive, but it helps me get 3-4L of water in a day. I assume that the added electrolytes are helping with taste/stomach issues. If I try to drink tap or filtered Brita, my stomach clenches in anger. It's REALLY frustrating. I'm hoping that as I get closer to maintenance, it will go away.

I may need to try Sublimate's baking soda trick though...I'm intrigued.

It's just a theory at this point, but I notice that the ingredients in smar****er are almost identical to the Safeway brand drinking water:

Safeway: Calcium Chloride, Sodium Bicarbonate
Smar****er: Calcium chloride, magnesium chloride and potassium bicarbonite

All of those ingredients would be alkaline ingredients or neutral, so I'm thinking to try a pinch of baking soda in my regular bottled water. You'd only want to use the tiniest amount though.. it's very salty stuff.

Thanks for the tip. I'll have to pick up some water at Safeway tonight. I also haven't been able to tolerate much plain water since surgery. I'm getting tired of all the sweet flavorings, that are just full of chemicals anyway.

I was wondering that when I looked at the label on my smar****er. I don't have a Safeway here, but I wonder if another brand might be the same. or just trying baking soda with regular bottled water. The scientist in me is curious. Or I could just borrow some CaCl2, MgCl2 and KHCO3 from the lab and make my own. :)

 Good observing, sublimate. I will follow this line of logic and see what comes of it with my own experiments. 

P.S. - So glad I'm back in the OH fold.