I’m working hard to try to amend a few bad habits in 2012, and one of my worst habits is that I don’t drink enough water. Truthfully, I don’t actually like water. I know that sounds weird, but unless I’m at a restaurant or working out I’ll rarely have a glass of water.

On the other hand, I love Diet Coke. I could drink a couple of cans of it per day and think nothing of it. More than the flavor, I like the carbonation. I’ve always found it more refreshing than water, but I’d like to cut my caffeine intake and even diet soda isn’t healthy.

A few weeks ago someone posted on Pinterest that adding root beer stevia to sparkling water would result in a beverage that tasted much like root beer. I’ve tried sparkling water in the past and didn’t like the taste of it, but I was willing to give it a shot with the stevia. I’m not fully certain what stevia is, but it has lots of flavor, zero calories, and no sugar.

I ordered some root beer stevia from Amazon and picked up some Pellegrino. When I had both ingredients I made myself a water cocktail to great success! I actually LOVED it and have been going through sparkling water and stevia like it’s going out of style.

I think the root beer stevia + sparkling water combination tastes a lot like diet root beer. My fiance hated it, but he doesn’t go near diet anything and I wasn’t really expecting him to like it. The stevia masks the weird taste that comes with sparkling water, and it really tastes like you’re drinking a sode that has no sugar and no calories.

One word of caution: Drinking sparkling water and stevia is by no means a frugal way to jumpstart your water intake. The stevia costs $9.39 on Amazon and sparkling water has been costing me $1.39 per bottle, which is about 4 glasses worth of water.