Hi all,

Is it alright to drink water after eating or b4 since in the 811 book it doesn't really specify and i have been doing it either way.

How much is enough water intake?

i welcome any suggestions.

thanks

Natural Hygienic principles involved with drinking water recommend not drinking water closer to meals than 10 min. before and 2 hours after. Keep in mind that this also allows a large variety of foods consumed, so with 80/10/10 water could be consumed closer to the meals than that due to quicker digestion of the food eaten. That said it'll still vary a bit with 80/10/10 food based on whether you're eating something like bananas or something like oranges. You might want to experiment with it a bit and see the differences.

I seems to me that the more simply you eat, and the closer you get to our ideal diet, the less it becomes an issue, especially if not eating overt fats at that meal. Fruit doesn't need to digest much if any in the stomach, so the water doesn't tend to be as much of an issue if the fruit's eaten alone, especially if it's a juicy fruit already.

Enough water? To be hydrated ju-st right. Hehe. Really. That's a variable thing too, even for the same person as there are many factors that will affect our need to hydrate. I generally use a few different ways to determine this:

• thirst: if I'm thirsty I should drink water, no question
• weight lost from perspiration: I like to weigh myself naked before and after prolonged exercise that I might perspire from (after weight done before peeing, pooping or eating - drinking water is fine though). Then I use the amount of weight lost as the amount of water to consume to rehydrate to where I started from.
• monitoring my urine: I look to see if it's clear or not, if not I consider drinking more water or eating juicier fruits. Also, if I think I might not be urinating as often as usual I'll count it: 10 times (give or take about 2) a day is about right.
• known things to make me thirsty: if I'm in an environmental condition that I know I tend to need more water intake, then I try to adjust it daily.

Hope that helps!

_________________
Aloha!

-Janie

Janie, thanks for all that information and especially the idea to weigh before and after a high activity level. That will really help me in the hot Texas summers, probably once again in the 100s for most of it.

I have found that even days I don't drink water, with all fruits, I still urinate a lots or experience thirst.

Timing of the water intake is also interesting. I have 3 working dogs and I notice that after each and every meal they always drink water. But, of course, they are carnivores and may be drinking water because of their "unnatural food," i.e., canned dog food and dry kibble.

I found that it was hard for me to drink enough water in the summer heat so one day I watched how cows drank with their huge amounts of water that they drank. They drew in a mouthful and then swallowed and so I started to try their method and found it worked well for human hydration as well.

I have found that the advice found somewhere (forget where) that starting your day with drinking water is far better than the dehydrating drinks that most people, myself included, had been in the habit of doing, i.e., coffee or tea! I must confess I still mourn the loss of my PG Tips tea, sweetened with maple syrup, and raw goat's milk. I have been substituting herbal teas with no sweetening as a placebo and hope the desire will lessen because I know that I am so much better off not doing it.

I have been making hot tea as it is still cold in the mornings and found that I really feel "mellow" after drinking freshly harvested mint tea. With warmer temperatures, I am hoping to finally eliminate herbal tea and drink only water and lots of it during the summer. I was listening to the an audiobook of John Robbins and he suggests wearing wet clothes during the summer to help with keeping cool (where possible). Because I live in a low rainfall area, I use water very conservatively to the extent that I only bathe once a week and then retain the bath water to fill buckets to flush the toilet. In summer, I take a garden hose shower outside retaining the water in an empty mineral tub and then pouring that out to water a tree and provide a cool wet place underneath for my dog to lie on. I love having a bath every day! The water comes out of a 100 foot hose and it is scalding hot--a kind of solar water heater so to speak. Before long it is the cool water flowing from the storage tank.

I do the thing where you fill your mouth with water before swallowing too, just 'cause it's a bit more practical in some ways as I don't have to keep the glass up to my face, hehe. I do sort of swish my tongue in the water when I'm swallowing the several swallows it takes. I have big cheeks, hehe. Interesting that cows do that. I didn't know that. I've heard that you get quicker hydration from under your tongue and having the water in your mouth rather than swallowing it directly, so I suppose that's another reason it seems to work better to me. It was just sorta' natural for me.

I know what you mean about hot water out of a long hose. We used to live on some land that we were working on homesteading a long time ago in California in a place that only got 11" of rain a year at best so we did water conservation things and such too. In places like that you can usually heat the water quite well through passive solar methods like that. We used to put the water in 5 gallon glass bottles (used for drinking water dispensers) and put a roll of aluminum flashing partially around it so that it faced the sun. It would heat up the water quite well, especially when capped. We had a cork that fit them well that we put a pipe through that had threading that matched a low-flow showerhead that we put on the top/end of the pipe. It had an on/off switch for the water flow so we could take the whole thing and put it on top of a tower framework we had. It made a terrific shower. We also used to have water in dark 50 gallon barrels that would heat up and we could take bath/saunas in (without soap) and then the grey water could be used to water things too. That was my favorite hot tub bath tub ever. My favorite bath tub ever was an area of a stream that had rocks that were a great tub shape and the water would rush in like a jacuzzi and out again, all naturally. It was not hot though, hehe, but not too cold either 'cause we're in Hawaii...

In hot dry places like that place in California or your place in Texas, wearing wet loose clothing really helps to cool you off, especially if there is any breeze at all. It's the concept that swamp coolers use. We had one of those that used solar power and was gravity fed the water into it. It was like an air conditioner in that climate.

_________________
Aloha!

-Janie