Primary Goal: To discover the optimum amount of water that you should drink, adjust as needed, and then maintain that amount throughout each day.
Secondary Goal: To decrease/eliminate consumption of sweetened beverages (regular or diet) and fruit/vegetable juices and replace with plain water.
Time Frame: One week (or as much or as little time as you need).

Learn About The 8 Laws of Health: For additional information, please read the chapter on “Water” in “The 8 Laws of Health.”

Keep using your glucose meter every day and focus on drinking more water. If you are still drinking sodas, regular or diet, or just have to have your morning orange juice (and I don’t care if it’s fresh-squeezed!), this is a good time to stop. Yes, cold turkey. Make sure you have plenty of water on hand! You can drink bottled water, tap water, or filtered water, but not distilled water because you need the minerals.

Drink enough water to rehydrate your body’s cells. Dehydrated cells become more insulin resistant.

Your first instinct when you have a blood sugar spike may be to drink more water. Drink enough to satisfy your thirst, but don’t overdo it, because excess water flushes out the electrolytes your body needs.

How much water should you drink?

If you are still drinking sodas (regular or diet), begin by replacing every 12-ounce can with 12 ounces of plain pure water. If it’s a caffeinated soda (12 ounces), replace it with 18 ounces of plain pure water. If you are drinking fruit drinks or fruit and vegetable juices, replace those with the same amount of plain pure water. And if you are drinking dairy milk, replace it as well with the same amount of plain pure water or unsweetened almond milk, preferably homemade. If you use dairy milk on your cereal, this would be a good time to stop consuming both grain-based cereals and dairy milk. But more on that later.

For one week, record the number of ounces (or milliliters) of plain pure water that you drink each day. (Coffee and other caffeinated drinks don’t count for water. In fact, replace all caffeinated drinks with 1½ times the amount with plain water (e.g., 18 ounces water to replace 12 ounces of a caffeinated drink). Unsweetened, non-caffeinated herbal teas would count for water. At the end of the week, compare your water consumption with your average daily fasting blood glucose to determine if it has had any effect on your fasting blood glucose. Then adjust your permanent daily water intake accordingly. Continue to drink this daily optimum amount of water for the rest of your life (which may be longer because you are drinking more water)!

You may wish to combine this essential habit of drinking sufficient water with the next habit of eliminating all sugar.

Adventist Vegetarian Diabetics™ Recommends:

1. Drink plain water instead of soda (regular or diet), all fruit and vegetable juices, and drinks with sugar.
2. Figure out how much water you’re going to drink and do whatever it takes to meet that goal.