Hey LMC, water is so important hunni for many reasons, the first and foremost reason is it flushes out the toxins in our bodies, mostly through our urine...our body is made up of about 70% ish water (that's not including the fat), water also contains loads of nutrients that our body needs, it keeps our temps steady, keeps our eyes lubricated, keeps us from getting constipated, relieves headaches, tiredness, and lubricates our organs, digestive and mucous tracts, so it's really an important addative to anyone's diet.
As Patsy said it's a well known fact that if you're feeling hungry it could actually turn out that it's not hunger at all but thirst.
If you are exercising water is extremely important, the more you sweat the more you lose of the water in your body, it could be as much as 10 litres a day and to be honest your body is so finely tuned that you'd only have to be a few mls short of what your body needs before you get thirsty and in case you didn't know it, thirst is the first sign of dehydration, the second you feel thirsty you are already becoming dehydrated......on average an adult will lose about 2.5ltrs of water per day and that should be replaced to keep us finely tuned.
I find a great way to drink my water is to always have a glass of water or in my case a pint of water with every meal and snack, that can be 5meals and snacks a day so straight away thats 5 pints, I have at least 1 pint of water with each hour of exercise I do and I take a pint of water to bed with me...on average I would say I drink about 7 or 8 pints of water a day...I have 1 coffee in the morning, I don't drink squash as I don't like it and I rarely drink anything else, I'm not mad about water on it's own but love it with loads of ice and can drink that all day....I hope that helps hun.
Hope you're feeling better now :hug99:
Food looks great as usual xxxxx