I drink about 2 gallons a day, which is actually less then I used to. Any less and I feel thirsty, like my blood is thick, and get dehydrated pretty fast. I try to drink all spring water but when I cant make it to fill up my containers I will do half well water or Reverse Osmosis, I try to avoid RO water as much as possible as I think it pulls minerals from the body and probably does something weird to the ionization of cells in the body, so highly unnatural but still better then drinking chlorine, fluoride (and aluminum as they put in the city water here) inundated water. Most of the well water here is very high in calcium so I try to avoid that as well.
I am sure I drink this much due to my adrenals and kidneys still somewhat damaged, and the fact that I do 8 hours of ranch work per day at minimum, so a lot of physical labor. I used to live and work in an extremely arid and sometimes very hot environment, now I live in a much more moderate and humid climate and I think that has made a difference, my body has had to learn that sweating does not work the same, if you sweat out here it does not evaporate as well and thus does not have the same cooling properties, so its not that effective. In Colorado or Arizona sweating was a 24 hour a day thing in the summer and I would drink down many gallons of water and eat only juicy foods like melons while I worked in the sun and in the desert soil and never tire of water. That isn't to say I would walk around dripping of sweat, nope, it would evaporate immediately, its dry out thar! Thats just not necessary out here where its not so hot or dry. I think I also used to take a lot of "natural" diuretics and laxatives, in my late teens and twenties and had high anxiety, which toasted my bodies ability to pee an poop like normal, that's all slowly been restored but still probably not perfect.
Welp this is what feels healthy for me at this point in my life and in this climate. I definitely now have times when I am not thirsty, which almost never used to be the case. And its much easier for me to operate when I feel dehydrated, which never used to be the case. I think my resiliency is up
I also never used to be able to drink cold water.........ever. Like even if it was 90 degrees out I would have to drink warm or hot water...this goes back to being like 17 and being 5'5" and weighting like 100 pounds and it was the only thing I could do to keep warm, being underweight to some degree happened for almost 10 years and made me extremely sensitive in so many ways, glad that's over.
if you are thirsty in the morning but it hurts to drink, try drinking almost hot water and then immediately laying on your right side, it should help the water flush through your stomach instead of sitting in it. You can also try adding a pinch of salt, or a little bit of seaweed to help the rough feeling of water. Another thing is to just take a little in your mouth and to keep it there until it feels warm and you naturally sip it down. I swear I have hiked miles with just a little water in my mouth, lol, until I felt like drinkin it.
