But, or paraplegic, they can't move, they have bathroom issues, there's there's things. But most of you can stop making kidney stones, but you got to do the work. Jeff ain't Santa Claus and I ain't Mrs.
Claus, okay? So, you've got to do the work. You follow what we're asking you to do here and you, too, can prevent kidney stones.
Fluids. Jill, my doctor told me to drink 120 oz a day. Jill, my doctor told me to drink a gallon of water a day.
So, Henry, who's 6'4" and weighs 210 lbs, is being told drink a gallon of water a day. Loretta, who's 5'1" and weighs 100 lbs, is given the same advice. How could that possibly be?
But that is what's going on. Now, Dr. Coe and I will tell you the Kidney Stone Diet goal is how much urine we want you to produce: at least 2.5 L of urine a day.
So think of a 2 L Coke plastic bottle. We want two and a half liters to 3 L of urine. How do I know, Jill, if it's that much?
When you do a urine collection, save the orange jug for you guys, and save the hat for you women. So once in a while you can pull these things out of the closet and say, "Hey, let me I think I've been off my game. Let me check how much I'm peeing lately." And that's how you'll know.
You can get those on, I think that, go to my favorite things, Jill, Kidney Stone Diet, they're on that list. Anyway, my favorite things, Kidney Stone Diet, Jill. So here's the issue I have with what doctors tell patients.
Loretta, who's 5'1" and is being told to drink a gallon, and even big old Henry, they're being told to drink a gallon tomorrow. That's a lot of the orders I hear. "My doctor said tomorrow I got to drink a gallon." If these two people have not had two glasses of water a day their whole life, you think they're drinking a gallon tomorrow?
It's never going to happen, folks. So my job is to manage your expectations. If you call me and say, "Jill, I haven't had a cup of water, what year is this?" Because th- they just haven't.
So I've got to take somebody who doesn't drink anything but soda pop all day long and now ask them to lower that and add water in, and we're not going to do it by asking people to do a gallon a day. What's going to happen is they're going to get to four cups of water, they're going to be peeing their brains out, they're going to be like, "I can't do this," and they're going to quit!
That's what's going to happen. We don't want people to quit. We want people to try, try, try.
So what I tell people is, "Have one glass of water today. Do that for the rest of the week. Then the second week do two each day.
For the third week do three that week, okay? And maybe three is where you need to be for a couple weeks before you bring four glasses of water a day. My point is this, you must go slowly.
The bladder is a muscle, it will acclimate. But you will be peeing a lot more, for sure. And that's what we want.
Why? I like telling patients and students why we want you to do the things we're asking you to do because when you don't do it, you could say, "Oh shit, what'd she say? What's happening in my body?
Oh, my urine becomes saturated with all these crystals. And when all these crystals are in my urine, they're looking for each other, like little magnets, phosphate, oxalate, calcium, binding together. The longer they sit in your urine, the more apt they are to find each other.
But if you're peeing most of the day, you're losing those crystals, they're not hanging out, you're peeing them out of the body. This is very important. Also, by the way, drinking more water, you'll lose a couple pounds doing it, cause you won't be as hungry.
So that's good. Some people will say, "I've increased my water, Jill. I'm so bloated I don't even know what to do." Because you're eating too much salt.
You've got to lower your salt. That's the number two number two most important thing to do is lower your sodium. Because if you're eating a high-salt diet and now you're drinking all this fluid, of course you're going to bloat.
And if you have cardiac problems, that's a problem, and blood pressure problem, you got to lower that sodium. Anyway, water! Slowly increase your fluids.
"Well, Jill, I do drink soda. Can I still drink it?" I don't love soda, as you can well imagine, but if you're drinking five sodas a day, can you go down to three and eventually stop drinking soda? And then maybe try a diet soda.
"Oh, Jill, artificial flavors, they're killing us." Come on, people, the dose makes the poison, okay? And we've got to think about it. If someone's drinking 5 to 10 sodas—don't think I haven't heard this, like every month, I hear this monthly.
5 to 10 sodas a day, that's hundreds of mill- that's hundreds of grams of, sugar. That'll kill you way before a little, stevia, okay? Also all the calories.
So, we've got to get that down. Typically, people who are drinking 5 and 10 sodas a day, they're overweight. So, all that added sugar is not good for us either.
It also makes us bloat, by the way, and keeps our sugar cravings going. So, I will count, if you go from five and eventually go down to one soda a day, of course I'm going to count that as fluid. You're going to have a couple diet sodas, I'm going to count that as fluid.
All fluids count, water is best. It's really important you know that. Now, also, as you, start drinking more water, you will be peeing more.
You will, and it's annoying. You will also be peeing at night, so you might want to shut the waterworks off a couple hours before bedtime. So I typically sip here and there between 8:00 and 10:00.
I go to bed around 10:30, but I actively stop drinking at like 8:00. Maybe I'll have a little tea before bed, and I'm getting up two to three times, but I run myself so ragged, I typically sleep, I go right back to sleep. Some folks will tell me, "Listen, Jill, I'm getting up all night and I'm exhausted the next day." Then you need to slow your roll.
You can't be exhausted the next day because you won't eat well and you won't exercise because you're going to be exhausted, and you're going to have cravings for carbs, typically carbs. It's going to be pretzels that give us comfort, not arugula. So, I mean, you know, we're typically making poor choices in food.
So I think it's really important that you always understand, and nobody talks about this enough in the diet world, when people ask you to make changes, please, I beg of you to be patient with yourself. Please don't give up. Please know that this takes a long time.
The diet world wants to tell you that everything is simple, and easy, and fast, and I'm here to tell you it's not. But I don't need to tell you, because you've done a million of these crazy things from cayenne, lemon, pepper, and all the bullshit to lose weight, and all the things you've done to gain it right back. So there's no such thing as something that's quick or fast.
There's just it's not. So I want you, cause usually people give up around the 3-week mark with changes. They're like, "ugh." Just know that you're going to have a couple days where you're going to feel like you don't want to do this anymore.
That's fine! Whatever you're really missing, have that day. Not spinach, chia, and almonds, and the really high-oxalate things, but maybe you need an ice cream cone that day.
It's okay! Our mantra here is we get right back to work, because nobody gets illness and nobody gains weight back when we get right back to work. It's when we beat ourselves up that we had a stupid ice cream cone, and then we just say screw it, we give up, and we go back to our old eating pattern.
So, I know this doesn't have anything to water, but it really does, because you may have days where you want to give up, because you're peeing all the time, or, you know, or you didn't make your goal that day. It's okay! I don't always make my goal for drinking water.
It's perfectly okay. What I say is, "How'd I do?" when I go to bed each night, "How'd I do with my goals?" " I didn't do so well with water, so tomorrow it's it's my focus." Okay, so we don't make a kidney stone in a day. We're not obese in a day.
We're not going to have to take insulin tomorrow cause we had a Jujube today. So folks, don't listen to the diet industry. Change takes time.
But I promise you, if you put the work in—I have thousands and thousands of students and patients I've worked with over the decades. They took the time, they took my advice, they stuck with it, they didn't quit, even on their shittiest days, they kept on plugging along, and they're still here to talk about their weight's off, their diabetes is gone, their blood pressure is gone.
It's not miraculous, they work every single day! And now it's a lifestyle, so guess what? I never feel like I'm working.
Jeff doesn't feel like he's working on a diet, because we have healthy lifestyles. It's our lifestyle. It's just what we do.
So, and then it becomes something you're just somebody who drinks more water and more fluids in general, and you will acclimate to it. So, please, don't give up. Fluids are very important.
If you're not drinking enough fluids, slowly get to where you need to be to per- produce 2.5 L a day. Three is great, but I want you to just get to 2.5. And if you're only at 1 L a day, I want you to get to 1.5.
You slowly get there, folks, and I promise you, you can lower your risk of making stones, but you got to go to work.
