Drink Healthier: Key Water Facts and Tips
By: Burstout Magazine
Tags: Water, Motherhood, Health, Videos, Environment

Drink Healthier: Key Water Facts and Tips

By ‘Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet’ Author Lilly Cadoch

With August being National Water Quality Month, I wanted to share my busy mom tips about drinking water, which is the most important of all lessons in my book, “Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids”, and a habit to ingrain into our children’s everyday routine.

Did you know that water makes up 60% body weight, more than ½ of our body weight!

Water is so important because it is involved in every cellular activity in our body and when you don’t drink enough, our bodily processes are not as efficient.

Even the mildest dehydration drains your energy, makes you tired, causes overeating, constipation and prevents weight loss.

So in reality, a lot of the weight gain we are seeing in our kids today can be attributed to not drinking enough water. Not liquids as in soda, juice, ice tea, sports drinks and other sugary beverages but WATER!

To that end, I’d like to share two busy mom cheat sheet water tips with you:

Cheat sheet tip #1: Most cravings are due to dehydration so if your child is having a craving, give them a glass of water and see if subsides first before giving into it. I tried this myself when I wanted that 2nd scoop of ice cream.

Cheat sheet tip #2: How much water should you be drinking? Where it used to be 8 glasses water per day one size fits all, it is now more customized to individual needs and activity levels. A handy metric to help you gauge is to drink ½ ounce to 1 ounce per pound of body weight. So if your child weighs 50 pounds, (s)he should be drinking 25–50 ounces of water per day. Did you know that not all water is created equal?

So in addition to making sure that you are drinking enough water, you want be drinking the ‘good’ water and not the ‘not so good’ water. What do I mean by that? We need to consider the pH balance of the water.

pH can either be alkaline or acidic on scale 1–14. Water should be at least 7.4 pH, which is the same pH as our blood for optimal health and hydration. Our bodies work best when alkaline; if too acidic, it can cause inflammation which is a breeding ground for ailments, disease and health issues. For example, imagine a fish tank. When a tank is clean, water is flowing through the filtration system, water is clear and fish swim quickly to-and-fro. As the fish tank gets dirty, the water gets cloudy, algae starts to form on the surface and fish don’t move as quickly since they are not getting enough oxygen in the water in the acidic environment. Eventually, if the tank isn’t cleaned, the fish will ultimately die.

Since this isn’t labelled on water (even though some brands are now starting to do it), how do you know?? Check out the water experiment I did with my son where I tested the pH of many popular water brands as well as my faucet’s filtered tap water. Prepare to be shocked at the results!!

If you want to test your tap water at home or do this water experiment with your kids, this is the pH drops bottle I bought on Amazon.

To figure out the best water filter option for you and your budget, check out the Environmental Working Group (EWG) water filter buying guide. Go to www.ewg.org and search for ‘water filter guide’ and it’s the first search result.

P.S. More tips like these as well as 45 healthy, quick and delicious recipes even the pickiest bellies at home will love can be found in my book, “Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet” available on Amazon today! For a limited time only, give yourself or a loved one the gift of “Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids” for 20% off. Learn the tools to lead and teach your kids to have a healthy happy life. Enter discount code VV4APGS4 at checkout.