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I fill a pitcher with water from my Brita and add sliced lemons and cucumbers for a fresh taste. Not wanting to waste the produce helps motivate me to drink the whole pitcher in a day!

Actually, it's 1ml water for each calorie required. So, if you're on a 2000 calorie diet, you should take in 2000 ml water (2000 ml = 2 liters = 8ish cups). I add Emergen'C to my water (1000 mg Vitamin C, B vitamins) - it's tasty and perks me up.

About the eight cups thing, water you get from food counts toward that total. A 2006 CNN article estimates 20% of your daily liquid intake is from food, and probably more so in the summer with all these juicy fruits & vegetables about.

If your drinking glasses are 12 oz., you would need a little more than 4 glasses of water a day to reach the 64 oz. goal (along with the food total). I drink a 12-oz. glass with breakfast and dinner, so that leaves only two to get somewhere else during my day. Much less intimidating. :-)

I love the idea of squeezing a grapefruit into my water. I'll have to give that a try.

*headdesk* Check Snopes, people. The 8 cups of water thing was pulled out of thin air. Just drink when your thirsty.

add cucumbers...i also sometimes fill an 1/8 of the glass with Pomme juice. Juice on its own is way too sweet for me and just a splash gives plain water a little boost

I add a little bit of Elixr Tonics to my water to help make it more palatable.

Ha! The "8 cups" thing is entirely made up. Check Tiamat's snopes link above. No one knows where it came from, but it's amusing it's so prevalent, still. You also know that aluminum pans *don't* cause Alzheimer's, right?

Drink when you're thirsty.

And if you're thirsty, water tastes refreshing all by itself!

Absolutely zero scientific evidence supporting the claim that any human being needs to drink 8 glasses (or 10, 12, 13) per day to be in good health

the bottled water companies are of course smiling all the way to the bank.

sorry, big pet peeve of mine. Drink when you are thirsty, and please, remember what the ad says: plastic bottles stay with you for 5 minutes, and in a landfill forever.

I won t even go on with my thoughts on getting bottled water from Alaska because "oh, it's so very pure!" :-)

If you need to perk up your water with something... it simply means you are not thirsty.

I like to put a sprig of rosemary into a jug of water and then put it in the fridge. The cold infusion produces a pleasantly refreshing rosemary flavor.

I am not so convinced it's all thin air, maybe because I've also been told by docs. Anyway, guys, once you are thirsty, you are _already_ dehydrated! Don't wait to get thirsty to drink water!

Back to the "poll", I personally found it easy to develop a habit without any tricks but all the same I have a suggestion: "masticha" or "vanilla" is a moderately sweet gummy substance, one of the products of the mastic plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastic). It is scooped and served (stuck on the spoon!) in a glass of water. After each bite one wants to drink and the slightly mastic-flavoured water is gone in no time.
I don't claim to know but I bet you can find it in any city with a greek or turkish community. Here, I took a pic for you with the serving suggestion:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16846773@N04/2699937398/in/photostream/?edited=1

Fizz. I have a soda water maker from Soda Club. I drink at least a liter of it daily, often two. Very good with lemon or lime. Also good with homemade ginger syrup, but that defeats the purpose.

Recent studies show that people don't need to go nuts with water consumption. For most people, with average food and beverage consumption, about 3 good-sized glasses of water a day is enough to bring them up to the amount of hydration they need. There's no evidence that drinking lots of water either helps or harms you and certainly no reason for people to drink so much water that they grow bored with it.

There's been way too much talk about guzzling water constantly. People don't need to over-hydrate all the time. I drink about 32 oz. of water a day in addition to whatever else I happen to take in (small amounts of coffee, iced tea, cola, low fat milk). I probably drink more than most people because I teach and talk a lot (which dries the mouth).

People can actually croak from drinking too much water:

www.yourhomenow.com">too uch water

This doctor has good advice - follow your own sense of thirst.

i actually hate adding lemon, citrus, herbs, fizz, anything to my water. a nice tall glass of cool clean water doesn't need to "perked up" - it's delicious and refreshing as is.

Buy a Soda Club and make seltzer at home for less than it costs to buy (and no plastic containers or disposable cartridges). Refreshing, environmentally-friendly, and healthy.

Like room temp water. All by itself.
But I also like adding oranges or cucumbers to it.
Also nuun. But that's coz I run it really isn't all that tasty :)