Meals Of Water
The history and health benefits of making time to just drink.
Dear Healthy Jew,
Last week we learned about the central role of water in our lives: the essence of life is a flowing spring, and we need lots of water to live.
Drinking Problems
In practice, many folks have a hard time drinking enough water. Perpetually at the threshold of dehydration, they suffer from headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and mental fog.
Perhaps even more concerning is that it’s unsafe to walk, hike, and run in the summer heat without drinking plenty of water. It can even be dangerous to step out of the air conditioning.
Why is it so hard to drink enough?
Dietitians explain that our thirst sense is relatively weak and is easily tricked, in three ways:
Eating can satisfy thirst, so frequent snacking can confuse our bodies to think it’s drinking when it’s in fact eating.
Sweet drinks signal that drinking means sweet – which won’t exactly make us want to drink plain water.
We feel hungry in our stomachs, but thirsty in our mouths. Drinking a sip or two moistens the mouth, quickly quieting the urge to drink. (It’s kind of like feeling full after a bite or two of food.)
Each of these reasons stems from a larger challenge in eating well, and their solutions are correspondingly apparent although not necessarily easy.
For the first two, this is obvious:
Eat regular meals.
Don’t drink sugar.
The third point is more subtle because feeling satisfied from a little bit of water results from human physiology, not lifestyle choices.
But it’s also the most important area to focus on because it holds the best solution to the drinking problem: eating regular water-meals, with as little drinking as possible in between.
Meals of Water
Eating regular meals of food – instead of grazing all day – is a critical part of healthy eating. Similarly, drinking regular meals of water – instead of sipping all day - is the heart of drinking well.
I suggest following Maimonides’ (Hilchos Deos 4:3) advice not to drink during meals but around an hour or two afterwards. (Before a meal is also fine.) This way drinking has its own time and place and isn’t just another part of eating. (There may also be other health reasons for this.)
A careful reading of Maimonides (Hilchos Tefillah 7:14) offers a profound precedent for this way of drinking.
The earliest Sages of the Second Temple Period – known as the Men of the Great Assembly – instructed every Jew to recite 100 blessings every day. Maimonides counted the blessings they taught to recite: 84 are daily prayers, and another 12 are blessings for two meals of bread. (See note for a bit more background.1)
What are the final 4 blessings?
For drinking water twice a day: two before, and two afterwards.
Why weren’t these 4 subsumed by the blessings for bread, which ordinarily exempt all other foods? Because, as Maimonides already advised earlier, the time for drinking-meals is long after the food-meal. Drinking is its own event that earns its own place in the spiritual structure of the Jew’s daily blessings.
Millennia of Jewish scholars and sages have pondered the concept of 100 daily blessings, expounding on why blessings must be counted, and why to this number.
I’m fascinated by something more elementary: that they viewed just drinking as worthy of counting.
By stopping to formally drink water, we’re joining the flow of just life, a flow that’s no less important than life’s broad variety of tastes, textures, and fragrances – and no less worthy of blessing its Source.
How to Drink Meals
How much should you drink in a water-meal? And should you only drink twice a day, as Maimonides counted?
In my view, the details matter less than the principle.
Our lifestyles are drastically different from Maimonides’ 12th century Egypt, certainly the Men of the Great Assembly’s 4th century BCE Jerusalem. Because their context has been lost, we can’t responsibly copy and paste Maimonides’ many healthy lifestyle suggestions. For better or for worse, we eat and drink different foods, in different amounts, and in different intervals, than Maimonides and the Men.
We can and must rely on modern scientific research, as I’ve explained here. What hasn’t changed is the basic nature of the human body, mind, and spirit. For that reason, many of the general principles of healthy living that Maimonides taught are as applicable today as ever.
In regards to drinking, we can find balance and health by eating designated meals of food and drinking designated meals of water, just as Maimonides and the Men instructed.
This is what my daily water-meal schedule usually looks like. You might want to try something similar.
Wake up, go to the bathroom – then drink a water-meal, which is 2-3 cups.
Get the kids out to school, pray – then drink a water-meal.
A bit later, breakfast - followed an hour or so afterwards by a water-meal.
Lunch, followed… (okay, you get the idea)
I drink lots of water but haven’t the faintest clue how many ounces, cups, or gallons a day. I’m not a car that buys gas by the gallon, but a human being for whom drinking water is an essential part of living well.
After discussing the daily morning blessings to thank God for our minds, vision, spinal integrity, and a host of other functions of the body and spirit, Maimonides introduced the 100 blessing requirement like this:
A person is obligated to recite 100 blessings every day, between the day and night. What are the 100 blessings?…
Maimondes’ language implies that the number 100 isn't a random requirement to make sure to reach that amount, but that the same Sages who instituted the blessings - the Great Assembly - also set a regimen of 100 inside the daily liturgy and activities of life. This reading is borne out from the next law where Maimonides refers to additional blessings that were added “in our times,” which result in having “five extra blessings” - as opposed to the original reckoning of the Sages who instituted these 100 only.