Drinking, Drinking, Drinking...

One thing I really love about being a student at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition is that, so far, most of our homework has to do with taking better care of ourselves! The IIN really emphasizes the importance of self-care and they give us clear, practical steps to achieve this (log in to my website (free) and click on the "Tips-Recipes" section in the menu for access to many of these self-care tips, as well as a quick and fun test that will show you the imbalances in your life).

This week, we are encouraged to change one thing in our life/diet and notice the results. Hum, what could I change in my diet? I just came off the Candida diet (absolutely NO sugar, including most fruits, carbs, grains, legumes). I did that for about 2 weeks and it was HARD! Should I try and stay off dairy for a week? How about coffee? Honestly, after the Candida diet, I'm psychologically exhausted! Sugar and coffee (lattés)...those are my achilles heels! I know I will eventually be weaned off of them (hopefully!), but I believe permanent change requires some time (for habit-changing) and some "crowding out" (add good foods and eventually the bad ones will be gently pushed out), not just willpower. That being said, I will NOT be eliminating dairy or coffee this week (thus I should be able to function normally and keep writing blog posts!;) 

As you have probably guessed, what I WILL be doing is drinking more clean water. Not that I usually drink toilet water, but most of my water is in the form of herbal tea or straight from the tap. The problem with that is the fluoride in the water here (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). I found out recently that boiling water increases its fluoride concentration (makes sense when you think about it). And what is wrong with putting fluoride in our water? Have a look at this article 

So, I pulled out our Brita pitcher from the kitchen archives, put in a new filter and voilà! Well, not so fast. Do Brita filters remove fluoride? Nope! So, how do we remove fluoride from the water? Here is another interesting website. Unfortunately, there are no quick and easy solutions. The options are: distillation, reverse osmosis, alumina and B-C Carbon. Huh, you say? Wouldn't it be easier to just stop fluoridation? That's what the city of Calgary did. Look what happened. Needless to say, water fluoridation is a pretty controversial topic.

Let's move on to my next question: how much water should we drink daily? I found this cool and quick hydration calculator. It asks you a few questions and then tells you how much water you should drink! I should drink 2.4 litres/day, or 81.5 ounces. How about you?

Gotta stop writing and start drinking now...