In the age of Kardashians posing with bright blue gummy bear vitamins, in an attempt to get you to shell out $30 a month on over-hyped sugar pills, and Gwyneth Paltrow urging you to shove a $66 jade egg into your vagina to balance your hormones and awaken your sexual energy, it only makes sense that Juice Cleanses are now a $5 Billion dollar industry. These holy grail juice cleanses are praised by kale crunching celebs and suburban soccer moms alike. What is all the hype about? Drinking cold pressed fruits and veggies for anywhere from 3 days to multiple weeks at a time, claims to carry with it the benefits of detoxifying the body, aiding in weight-loss, and hell, some of them even claim they will get you closer to God. I have never been someone who jumps on the latest trend bandwagon, but after a couple of weeks of eating poorly, sleeping poorly, and feeling overall rundown, the magic juice elixir was calling my name. So, in an attempt to hit the reset button on my diet, I decided to embark on a three day juice cleanse to settle this once and for all. My partner, Kyle, also agreed to undergo this spiritual colon cleanse alongside me. Now, I think it is worth noting that both Kyle and myself are relatively healthy individuals to begin with. He trains Mixed Martial Arts several times a week, and up until an unfortunate injury a few months ago, was training for the Honolulu Marathon. I practice Yoga and Pilates several times a week, and focus quite intently on eating a balanced, predominately plant-based diet. So, we were entering the juice cleanse with a pretty nice head start on some of the average juice cleanse participants. Kyle weighs himself almost daily, so the day before the cleanse he weighed himself in an attempt to see if the weight-loss claims had any merit. I never weigh myself, I try to be more intuitive about my overall health based on my complexion, energy levels, and how much give I have in my blue jeans. I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror the day before I started the cleanse and got a baseline idea of how I looked and felt. We decided to purchase the 3-Day cleanse series from our local Clean Juice. "The Cleanse" as they call it, consists of drinking 6 cold pressed juices, in an order they have deemed appropriate, every 2.5 - 3 hours for three days. Oh, and this little reset, will set you back $156 per person, for 18 juices. The price alone super turned me off from this juice cleanse before we even started. I could buy my own juicer, and organic produce, and make these myself for less money. But, we were both still very curious, and if the cleanse did what it claimed, I suppose an investment in personal health isn't a huge waste of money. Per Clean Juice, the benefits of the cleanse would include:
I would also like to note that Clean Juice itself (in very very small print) mentions that these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. What they do not mention is the part where the FDA has actually taken actions against several companies that sell detoxes and cleanses because they contained illegal, potentially harmful ingredients, were marketed using false claims that they could treat serious diseases, or were marketed for unapproved uses. Kyle and I also measured our BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) before undergoing the cleanse. Your BMR calculates how many calories your body would burn if you stayed in bed all day. This gives you a nice baseline number of calories that you should consume on a daily basis in order to nourish your body. Based on my age, height, and current weight, my BMR is 1403.8 calories. Lemme tell ya, these juices do not provide anything close to that many calories per day. We entered Day 1 of the Juice Cleanse optimistically. I opted to drink the recommended first juice of the day, Sweet Green, and Kyle opted to drink the Cashew Milk Latte. His drink came with the added benefit of containing coffee and some protein from the cashews. Obviously the first few hours of were the easiest. Kyle was on a steady course, but I grew very hungry very quickly. I am someone who likes to wake up, make some coffee, and get right into making breakfast. I wake famished, and today I was undergoing voluntary starvation - obviously my college degree was worth it. By the mid-way point in our day, both of us were struggling. The Recommended Cleanse Order is as follows:
Kyle and I both decided that the Green Juice (#3) tasted like grass, so we swapped it out for the Cashew Milk Latte, which contains - Cold Brew Coffee, Cashews, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Maple Syrup, Himalayan Pink Sea Salt. Apparently swapping out Cleanse approved juices is not frowned upon. We also asked the employees at Clean Juice what to do if we got super hungry, and they recommended eating a handful of nuts, or a small salad, or a piece of chicken. I thought it was odd that "The Cleanse" was in such a specific order, and these drinks are supposed to do very specific things, and yet snacking isn't going to upset the delicate detoxification process that your body is going through while on this cleanse. Hello, red flag, we meet again. As I mentioned, Kyle and I were both struggling pretty hard by the halfway point in our day, but we decided to trudge through. After enjoying the spicy Yellow drink, and trudging through the dirt flavored Red, we were already convinced that this entire "cleanse" was bogus. We were both suffering from serious brain fog, mood swings, headaches, and general malaise. We both agreed that we needed to go ahead and nix the idea of drinking nothing but these juices for the next two days, and decided to instead create our own version of Clean Juice's "Juice Til' Dinner" plan. On the night of Day 1, I made a small dinner of steamed broccoli and small baked chicken breasts. The act of chewing was oddly satisfying. We both caught ourselves taking our sweet time savoring every single bite of food, and by the end of our sad little dinner we both felt hungrier than before we ate. We decided to drink the White drink as dessert and go to bed early. Kyle and I both found that we slept like dead people, but woke up exhausted the next morning. For Day 2 of our "cleanse" we continued our "Juice Til' Dinner" plan, eating small salads, or more chicken and broccoli for dinner. By Day 3, we were both hangry and over all things "juice" related. We drank our juices just as we had the other two days, saving our White one for dessert, but we decided to eat a normal dinner of some steamed rice, and teriyaki chicken and broccoli (you would think we would be sick of chicken and broccoli, but honestly those two things are staples in our diets). I felt like an idiot by the end of Day 3. We had shelled out so much money, and trust me, nothing was glowing about either of us by the end of it all. In fact, we both ended up weighing more at the end of it. Sure, we ate dinner, but the bulk of our day was cold pressed, organic, God-approved juices (Clean Juice is apparently a Christian juice bar). Even the NIH warns against juice cleanses and detox fads. The juices on this cleanse were not pasteurized, which has the potential to be very dangerous, especially for individuals with weakened immune systems. The NIH also mentions that drinking large quantities of juice can be dangerous for people with kidney disease, because some juices are high in oxalate which can make kidney issues worse. People with diabetes should not undergo a juice cleanse such as this, because many of these juices are very high in sugar content. As someone who has a finicky blood sugar, I was scared of this becoming an issue before starting the juice cleanse. I did undergo a few instances of feeling like my blood sugar was bottoming out on me. The NIH also talks about how cleanses such as this one do not lead to sustainable weight loss, and fasting can lead to headaches, fainting, weakness, dehydration, and hunger pangs (and I can vouch for all of these possible side effects. Final Thoughts: I went into this cleanse looking at it as a way to hit reset on my diet, in a way, this kind of happened. I feel like I hit the reset button on intuitive eating and set myself back in my workouts (you're not supposed to undergo rigorous activity during a cleanse such as this), and I set myself back in terms of the functionality of my metabolism. As someone who has a long history of disordered eating, I absolutely do not recommend a juice cleanse to anyone. Instead, I suggest trying to eat a balanced diet that fits the nutritional needs of your unique body and mind. The juice cleanse taught me a lot over the span of three days about myself and has reinvigorated my desire to live a balanced life. In the week after the cleanse, I have recommitted to cooking most of my meals at home and incorporating more physical activity into my daily routine. Our bodies don't need magical elixirs, and overpriced bougie smoothies, just some TLC. Stay Happy and Caffeinated,
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Lindsey. 26. Writer. Pun Maker. Stargazer.
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