Healthy Fruit Tea Blend – Your Non-Water Treat

One of the top things that I get asked is, “What else can I have other than water?”

In all honesty – you really should be focusing on plain water all the time. If you choose a diuretic type of beverage like coffee, wine, beer, black tea, etc you will need to increase your water intake. Every 8 ounce beverage like that needs an ADDITIONAL 12 ounces of water. See how this can become a pit??

However, some fruit and herbal teas are NOT diuretic in nature and have some actual helpful qualities to them when used in moderation. We are a tea house. Although we like our one cup of coffee in the morning, we are plain water, with herbal and fruit tea later in the day for variety.

How do you know if you have had enough plain water?

Hydration is important for every single body system and balance in the body. It helps you create stomach acid, hydrate the bowels to keep things moving, it helps with cellular balance, blood balance and so much more!

Everyone needs at least half of their body weight in ounces of water daily. This is a baseline and more people need MORE than that. Most people consume coffee, or an alcoholic beverage at some point during the week. If you drink black tea, or green tea – those both have caffeine and need additional water. If you exercise and sweat – more water needed. It’s hot out – more water needed.

Nothing counts toward a water total except plain water.

What are some big contributors of preventing water consumption?

People often will say – it is HARD to get in all my water. Why does it seem like such a struggle?

Drinking other beverages keeps us from getting all our water in. Knowing this we need to consider a few things:

• Milk consumption – there is no need to consume milk from a glass daily. It’s not a major nutrient source despite what the industry has said. Read more about some things that can actually go wrong using this as a beverage daily. Even if you are consuming non-dairy milk it is a time of the day that you can get in the plain water you need, versus that milk. The water is MORE BENEFICIAL to your body.
• Soda & Carbonated Beverages – there is still a lot of soda drinking going on in this country. Although many people who come to me have tried cutting this, it is still part of a routine for many people. I have helped many people by starting with just cutting out soda and carbonated beverages. They are loaded with CORN SYRUP (and corn is a dirty dirty GMO laden item in this country), terrible for blood sugar and has caffeine in most cases. Carbonated beverages of any kind alter your gut and biome, and often too have some type of sugar and/or caffeine. By eliminating these you will help your gut, lower you blood sugar and be able to fit your plain water in.
• Coffee & tea – this is probably the number one thing that decreases plain water intake – BUT it’s also the number one thing requiring most people to need MORE water. Give yourself a limit and a timeline for the day on these. Like a cup of coffee in the morning? Great – have one and be done. Love tea – save it for a time of day when you feel bored. Stop using caffeinated teas altogether, and go to herbal and fruit with no caffeine.

Great Herbal Tea/Alternative Beverage for a Day

This post is about a great single alternative for your day. This is my afternoon treat. It’s non-caffeine, doesn’t require MORE water, and is tasty with great digestive qualities. Depending on the herbal and fruit tea you use to create your own alternative you may be providing that water break you want, AND helping your digestion and other body tissues!

We love Good Life Tea. It is loose leaf tea, and it’s local for us. But is available online and shipping is cheap or free! Here is what we love from there:

• Lakeside Calm
• African Autumn
• Belgian Chocolate
• Bourban St. Vanilla
• Chamomile
• Gentle Slumber
• Blue Eyes
• Lemongrass

We have had so many I can’t even list them all – but these are the ones we love.

You do need some equipment for loose leaf tea, and what I am sharing is a cold tea! You can cold brew the loose leaf tea within a few hours (tastes even better if you plan ahead day before). What you need:

• Large pitcher
• Tea baskets that are closed, or a linen re-useable tea bag.
• Water
• Tea of your choice
• Fresh fruit – we love oranges, limes, lemons

What we do is make a pitcher of this, leave it in the fridge, and add our own citrus separately.

How to do this tea

1- Pick your tea blend. We love lakeside calm with african autumn, or lakeside calm with lemongrass, lakeside calm with blue eyes. We do one tea basket with our booster – like african autumn. Then we double up on the lakeside calm. This is a fruit tea and is light, and has a great pink/red color. Fill your baskets, put in your pitcher.

2- Add your water. We do about a half a gallon with this tea combo. You could push this to a gallon as well without losing too much flavor.

Make sure your tea baskets are submerged in the water. Put it in your fridge for at least 2-4 hours.

3- After 4 hours, pour a glass, cut a slice of your citrus and squeeze into the glass. ENJOY! With the combo above orange and lemon are great!

This is something I will have 1-2 glasses a day. I may not make it daily, but it is a nice treat. It’s refreshing and the citrus is great for digestion, detox, and more. Pick out your fruit base teas here. Check out other boosting teas, keeping in mind you want to choose a non-caffeine tea. So no black teas, no green teas, and the great thing about Good Life Tea is they identify if it has caffeine so you will know! All of their tea is delicious hot as well.

Try it – let me know what you like! Remember plain water is still a certain level and necessary daily – but if you can fit in a special treat like this cold tea – DO IT!

---