Right around Halloween this year, I was sitting at my computer thinking about when and what kind of juice cleanse I should do.
How long should it be? When would it least impact my day to day life and have the most benefit? Should I buy a juicer? or use a juicing company? What companies were out there?
I feel like I should tell you that I've done cleanses before, but this was my first one without solid food.
I didn't fully weigh the pros and cons of everything because I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do when.
After Thanksgiving. Short cleanse (3 days plus pre and post cleansing). Not buying a juicer since I didn't plan on doing it again and my husband had no interest in doing it with me.
Found 2 juice cleanse companies that looked good. I picked one and ordered my juices.
Decided to start on Wednesday, November 28th. I thought about starting right after Thanksgiving, but I had a mark party/pottery boutique scheduled with my mom for the 27th and I thought that would over-complicate things.
Two days before Thanksgiving, we watched Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead (Thanks for the recommendation, Rachel!) and Tim decided he was going to do the cleanse with me. Now it didn't make financial sense to use premade juices for my cleanse. Order cancelled. Then we thought if we were buying a juicer and making the juices ourselves, why limit ourselves to 3 days? Why not go longer? We decided to feel it out - start at 3 and go from there - but our goal was 10 days.
This also meant more work. Finding recipes, getting hold of 5 or 6 reusable bottles each, premaking all of our juices the night before so neither of us had to lug a juicer and big bag of produce around with us all day, a BIG trip to the market, and then, likely, one or two more.
Tim wanted to start right after his parents left after Thanksgiving. So, we bumped it up to Monday. I would deal with the snacks on Tuesday night.
Here goes...
Day 1
We made 4 juices the night before to split. I knew that wouldn't get me through even half the day, so I made myself another one in the morning.
By 1130am, I really wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. All I could think about was food. Following amazing food blogs did not help with this. I wanted to eat everything.
I was also reminded I am not a fan of celery.
When I got home from work, all I wanted was to eat some hot food. So I made some changes to my cleanse. I decided that I could eat whole fruits and vegetables, and eggs so I have a source of protein.
For dinner that night I had butternut squash, beets, broccoli, carrots, and two eggs.
Day 2
I made two different kinds of juices the night before - apple carrot beet cucumber and kale pineapple. Both were pretty good. Pineapple makes my mouth tingle. Isn't that a sign of a food allergy?
11am I was feeling pretty good. There was a tiny voice coming from my gut saying "give me solid food, give me solid foooood", but I just kept on with the juice.
By mid afternoon I was craving oreo cookies and brie (not together). Astonishingly, some amazing recipes were popping up online and while I definitely wanted to make them, I didn't really feel like I needed to run off and eat them.
That night my mom and I hosted our Pottery & Mark. boutique. I ate grapes all night. My mom wanted me to taste her gingerbread cookies because she thought they tasted a little off, but couldn't figure out why, so I had one cookie. I don't know if that completely undoes the entire cleanse, but I'm gonna say it doesn't.
Day 3
I woke up and weighed myself. I was 3 lbs lighter than when I started the cleanse. I'm not counting on it staying off because there are some foods I just can't go very long without - I would be so sad - but it was kind of surreal to wake up and feel skinny.
Hubs went out of town for business, so I only had to make juices for myself. I made tangerine carrot and apple spinach cranberry cucumber.
Same tiny voice called out for solid food around lunch time. It was a little easier to just keep on chugging through day 3.
It was on this day that I started to feel like all of the juices sort of tasted the same... as long as I didn't put celery in them. Barf.
I decided that day 3 would be the end of my "official" cleanse, but I like the addition of fresh juices to my diet, so I continued to look for recipes and kept drinking fresh juices after my cleanse was over.
In conclusion...
This may not have been a total "juice cleanse" like I originally planned. The cold weather made me crave nothing but hot food. Luckily I was able to restrict my hot food intake to the solid versions of the foods I was putting in my juices.
At the end of my cleanse, I feel pretty awesome, and I lost a few lbs - which I probably won't keep off, but I was already happy with my weight, so we're good there. :)
Would I recommend a juice cleanse? Yeah, I think I would. I probably wouldn't go longer than 3 days - especially in fall or winter. Our juicer is awesome. It's the Breville juice fountain- I think it's the one they used in the movie. I chose it because it got great reviews, was already a good price, and I had a coupon for 20% off.
Have you ever done a juice cleanse? Would you consider it? What would impact your decision making?
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