Cran water! My magic potion to breezing through the holidays without packing on too many extra pounds! From Thanksgiving, through Christmas to New Year it’s party city! Now who wants to deprive themselves of all that good stuff? Not me!! A habit I always practice religiously through the holidays is drinking cran water. This magic potion acts as a natural diuretic and flushes bloat from your system. Most holiday/ party foods are high in sodium, sugar, fat: all bloat makers. By ridding yourself of bloat, you will feel lighter and healthier. Cran water will not make you lose fat, but it will make you lose water weight which for some people can be as much as 5-7 lbs. The important thing is to be consistent. Making cran water is simple and easy. Sip it though the day and you will see a difference!
How to make cran water
Buy 100% pure cranberry juice. It has to be just cranberry juice, not cranberry mixed with other juices that you find in grocery stores. Pure cranberry juice can be purchased in health food stores, whole food stores and usually retails about $3.50 – $5.00/32 ounces. I buy mine at Trader Joe’s or Whole foods. You only need about 4-6 ounces/day so 32 ounces can last you a week. That’s quite good value for a bloat buster. You can also make fresh cranberry juice using a juicer and dilute with water.
Once you’ve purchased pure cranberry juice, you mix one ounce of pure cranberry juice with 7 ounces of water and you have cran water. The water looks red, is quite tasteless with a slight tart taste which you get used to. You can drink 2 ounces out of a water bottle and add 2 ounces of pure cranberry juice to it and sip cram water straight out of a bottle. Since I like to minimize use of plastics, I prefer the aluminum BPA free bottles which I fill with cran water. Try to drink at least 4 glasses of cran water /day. After sometime it becomes second nature. Jazz up your cran water with lemon, seltzer or mint. I like my cran water plain. I sometimes carry it into a meeting and have people asking me if I am drinking punch! Help! Well I’ve converted a lot of people to becoming cran water drinkers with my red punch. Make your own cran water, try it and see if it doesn’t work.
Warning: This stuff is super potent so don’t drink it when you’re on the move a lot unless you have access to a rest room. You can always drink 2 glasses at a shot when you get home.
Added bonus: Cran water is good for urinary tract infection and digestive health! Cranberries are super high in antioxidants, phytochemical, healing nutrients that are good for your system. So as you’re flushing bloat out, you’re also fortifying your system with good stuff!
A little post I wrote a few years back if you want to read !
Hi there! I’m Sunithi, AKA Sue, a registered dietitian with a sweet tooth and a passion for eating healthy (quite a combo) currently working as an independent consultant in the DC Metro area. I’m also a blogger, health nut, nutrition geek who jogs to keep sane :)! I love to revamp recipes and add some ‘Nutrition Bytes’ to them. All my recipes are gluten free! I also blog on natural health and fitness! Visit often and drop me a note if you have any nutrition queries!
Interesting, thanks so much for sharing.
Thanks for reading !! Glad you liked it!!
Wonderful tip for the Holidays! Cranberries really are a superfood indeed!
Thanks! I drink cran water by the gallon once the holidays start 🙂
Does it taste good though?
I like it! Kinda plain and tasteless, Slightly tart!
If I juice fresh cranberries how much should I dilute with water?
Try about 2 ounces fresh juice to 6 ounces water.
The\at worked great. Thank you.
Don’t put cranberries through a juicer. Just buy a bag of organic cranberries, dump the 12 oz bag into a saucepan and add 4 cups of filtered water. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and leave until the majority of berries have “popped”. Let cool and strain through cheesecloth or a muslin dish towel. Then use this to make your individual glass of cran-water by adding 1 oz of the homemade juice to 7 or 8 oz of filtered water. You can add a few ice cubes if you like a cold drink, or you can warm it so it’s like tea. Some people prefer it just room-temperature.
You can doll it up by adding a spritz of lime juice, a spritz of lemon juice and a dash of stevia. It’s kinda like lemonade that way, if you add ice. You can also put that mixture through a blender and it comes out like a frappe. Refreshing on a hot summer day.