If you are trying to either drink more water, stop a soda addiction or just lowering your consumption of commercial drinks, there are a lot of healthy, delicious, options.

These are some easy, healthy options to sodas and commercial drinks.

Infused waters

Try to take maximum advantage of the opportunity to create a healthy habit. You are trying to change a habit, so it is better to change it for something healthy instead of switching soda for other sugary drinks. Infused water is a great choice. Let’s see some infused water examples.

Add zest

You may add any citric fruits and a little of their zest to your water. Orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit and other citric fruits taste great on their own. Just cut the fruits in rounds (don’t peel it) and add the water. Let it absorb the flavor for about 30 minutes and it is ready to drink. You can use the same fruit by just adding more water, as the flavor goes down you will know it is time to make a new batch.

Add Spice

You can use many spices to add more flavor and benefits to your water. For example, to the citrus mix you can add even more flavor with ginger. Ginger and lime infused water is one of my favorites. You can also use ginger on its own.

Ginger is great for flavor and health. It improves the immune system, helps with digestion and elimination, improves blood circulation and more.

You can also use cinnamon. As you may know cinnamon is good for our metabolism. Cinnamon goes well with apple and some berries.

Add cucumber

Cucumber is so refreshing. You can just add cucumber slices to water or mix it with other flavors such as citrus and berries.

Add herbs

All minty herbs are great so you can also try basil. Use them on their own or mix it with fruit.

You may store the flavored or infused water in your fridge for up to 2 days. If you want to store your infused waters for longer than a day, eliminate the fruit, spices or herbs.

Some tasty infused water combinations

Here are 10 of my favorite fruit, herbs and spice combinations to add flavor to my water:

• Lemon and orange
• Raspberry and lime
• Pineapple and mint
• Lime and mint (let’s call it mojito)
• Lemon and cucumber
• Grapefruit and orange
• Watermelon and basil
• Strawberry and basil
• Lemon and ginger
• Peach and ginger

Herbal tea

In addition to infused waters you can drink herbal teas. There are a lot of awesome herbal teas. You will need to make the tea in hot water and let it cool or drink it hot.

Green tea

Green tea has less caffeine that regular tea and much less than coffee and a lot of antioxidants. If you like the flavor, it is a good substitute for soda. Matcha tea is in fashion right not, but all types of green teas are great options. Prefer organic tea over regular tea.

Viva Agua Fresca

If you are not ready to kick off sugar, natural fruit drinks are a better choice. Agua Fresca is a Latin American drink made with a little bit of fruit, water and sugar. You can use small amounts of sugar or stevia. These are like diluted juices made in a blender.

An example of this is, some pineapple, add all the water you want, ice if you want and sugar or stevia. Blend it and enjoy it. If you add sugar, try to limit these types of drink to one a day.

Diluted juices

You can buy regular juice and add 3 parts or more water and 1 part of juice. This will add flavor without adding too many calories.

What about kombucha?

Kombucha is a good drink if you make it at home. If you buy it, be careful with the amount of sugar. I personally don’t like the flavor, but some people love it. The advantage of kombucha is that it has probiotics. A glass of kombucha a day is healthy. However, don’t feel that you have to drink something, because everybody is talking about it. As you know today it is kombucha and tomorrow who knows what.

Coconut water is also popular right now. It is healthy, but only one glass a day or so.

Bad options

Bottled teas, lemonades, and similar drinks are not good options because they are very acidic. Some of them are even more acidic than sodas. They are also full of sugar and/or artificial sweeteners and other ingredients. There are some better than others, so check the labels.

Other bad options are coffee and sugary coffee drinks. They have too much caffeine, the coffee used in these drinks is low quality and full of mold and tend to have a lot of sugar. Coffee in moderation is OK.

Water flavoring powders is another tricky option. Some of them maybe good, but they are still mostly artificial.

Read the first part: How to stop soda addiction

I hope these tips can be helpful to you. Subscribe to our newsletter if you like these type of topics. If you have any other tips and recipes please comment below.

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