I’ve been attempting to lose weight in a gentle fashion, by making concious lifestyle changes, not doing a specific diet. Just paying attention to having more veggies than carbs, enough protein, etc. And I’ve lost over 11 kg (25 lb) by now. But I think the biggest thing I did was stopping to make my sports drink. It is a great recipe, but it has a lot of sugar, despite my trying to cut back on the amount of sugar in it. I can’t use sugar substitutes because they hurt my stomach.
The thing is, there is a reason I was drinking lots of my sports drink. I have POTS and I get dizzy without lots of liquids and salts, and it is hard to make myself drink so much plain water and taking salt pills makes me nauseous. So I haven’t been drinking it, and the result is more dizziness and more exhaustion.
So I made it my mission to try to figure out another recipe for an electrolyte drink that had very minimal sugar, but still tasted good so I’d want to drink it.
I came up with this. It has only 2.5 teaspoons in the entire 1.5 liters, making an entire bottle only have 50 calories, which isn’t bad at all. It isn’t very sweet but it has enough sweetness to balance out the saltiness. It is pleasant to drink, light and refreshing, because of the lemon and the mint or lemon verbena. I use lemon verbena because I have a plant in my yard, but feel free to use whatever other herb you like to infuse in your drinks, like lemon balm or whatever.
I still prefer the taste of my other sports drink, but in the meantime, this is a good recipe and is what I’ll be making on a regular basis.
I know the lemon slice might seem superfluous since there’s already lemon juice in there, but the pith adds a bit of bitterness that rounds out the flavor of the salt, sweet, and sour, and makes it tastier and more enjoyable to drink.
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 sprigs mint or lemon verbena
- 1 slice lemon
- ~1.5 liter water
Instructions
- Mix all the ingredients together in a 1.5 liter bottle.
- Add enough water to fill to the top.
- Shake well until the sugar and salt are dissolved.
- Serve immediately or chilled.
- This also tastes good hours later, perhaps even better once the lemon and herbs get infused more into the water.
Do you also need to drink a lot? How do you make sure you get enough electrolytes? Do you also try to cut down on sugar? What is your method of drinking enough without downing too much sugar? Does this look like a recipe you’d try?
One Response
Nice! I’m very sensitive to sugar, and I find that green leaf stevia (literal stevia leaves) and erythritol work for me as substitutes. (The stevia goes well in herbal tea.)
Keep up the good work.