Getting ready for a food filled 2014 with a 3-day juice cleanse!

The beginning of a New Year is always about making resolutions for the upcoming year and reflecting on the previous year. It’s safe to say that in 2013 we ate our fair share of good food and met so many new people who share the same love for food as us. 

With the indulgence of food over the Christmas holidays, it's no surprise that one of the top ten New Year's Resolution for many people is to "lose weight".  While it’s certainly great to have goals to start off the year, a vague goal such as “lose weight” is often hard to maintain or easily sidetracked. In most cases, you probably don’t even need to lose weight but made this goal out of guilt from all the pies and chocolate you consumed during the holidays. A more realistic goal might be to incorporate more veggies into your diet or make wiser choices when you want to snack without having to sacrifice eating what you want!

To bounce back from consuming all the goodies over the holidays and to give my body a break from digesting the turkey, roast beef, ice cream and pie, I decided to try a three-day juice cleanse. 

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a juice cleanse after reading about the benefits such as increased energy levels and radiant skin just to name a few. These juice cleanse benefits makes sense since you are filling your body with so many healthly nutrients. I’ve also read about the negatives of a juice cleanse and how your body doesn’t get all the healthy fats, proteins that it needs and that it actually slows down your metabolism. I finally decided to bite the bullet and head to the grocery store before making any other excuses. 

Here is my summary of the three day juice cleanse that can be found here.

 I made a few adaptions to the juice recipes based on personal references but stuck to everything else. 

Overview of the juice cleanse:

• It’s a three-day cleanse where you will drink 5 juices a day made with various fruits and veggies. You WILL NEED a juicer, which will make your entire experience much more tolerable. You will be drinking a breakfast juice, mid-morning juice, lunch juice, afternoon snack juice and pre dinner juice. You can choose the timing of the juices depending on a typical day and for myself I started off the first juice at 9am and spaced them out every 2 hrs and had my dinner meal around 7pm. 

• You will be able to eat one meal each day (dinner time), which will only consists of fruits and veggies. 

• You will be drinking the same juices each day and the juices will range from 500ml to one litre so be prepared to make frequent trips to the bathroom :)

• I spent approximately $50-$60 dollars buying the fresh fruits and veggies. 

Day 1

Start off every morning with a cup of hot water with a slice of ginger and some lemon juice. I did this around 7:30-8:00am right when I woke up. The hot drink kept me from feeling hungry right away which gave me time to prepare the juices. 

Breakfast Juice –Carrot, apple ginger juice 9:00am

• 3 carrots

• 2 apples

• 1 inch piece of ginger

ginger missing from photo

Mid-morning juice – Mean green juice 11:00am

• ½ cucumber

• 4 celery stalks

• 2 apples

• 6 kale leaves

• ½ Lemon

• 1 inch piece of ginger

parsley and red onion missing from photo

Lunch Juice – Gazpacho juice 1:00pm

• 4 plum tomatoes

• 1 large cucumber

• 2 celery stalks

• 1 red bell pepper

• ¼ small red onion

• 2 cups of parsley roughly chopped

• 1 lime

*This was definitely my least favourite juice out of the five and it makes about 1 litre of juice so it was definitely hard to finish the whole thing in a decent amount of time! 

Afternoon snack juice – Citrus inspired green juice 3:00pm

• 6 kale leaves

• 8 leaves swiss chard

• ½ cucumber

• 6 clementines

Pre-dinner juice - Sunset blend juice 5:00pm 

• 1 large sweet potato

• 1 medium carrot

• 1 red bell pepper

• 2 large red beets

• 2 golden delicious apples

• 1 orange 

For dinner I had two baked Korean sweet potatoes and a banana. 

Day 1 for me was the most difficult as it was a huge shock to consume such a small amount of solid foods and opening the fridge to see leftover turkey definitely didn’t make things any easier. At the end of the day, I didn’t feel all that different but I was a bit tired throughout the day and had to take a nap. My body didn’t physically feel hungry as the juice is a lot of liquid but mentally I wanted to eat solid food. 

I managed to juice twice a day, once right in the morning where I made the breakfast and mid-morning juice and once again in the afternoon around 12:30 right before the lunch juice where I made the remaining three juices. 

Day 2

The juices and schedule were exactly the same as day 1. For dinner on day 2, I stirfried half a head of broccoli with only salt and pepper as seasoning. I also had a small Korean sweet potato on the side. 

The mental hunger definitely went away by day 2 and I was feeling more energized and had a great night’s sleep. I didn’t feel hungry at all and I think a big part of that was the timing of the juices. By the time I felt like I needed to consume something else, it was already time for the next juice. I drank water in between the juices on day 2 which I didn’t do on day 1 to help flush out the toxins faster. I managed to exercise lightly without feeling tired or hungry! 

Day 3

By the last day of the cleanse, the juicing process had become pretty tiresome having to prepare all the fruits and vegetables and cleaning the juicer in between juices. I had a great sleep the night before again and did not feel hungry at all during the day. Of all three days, I definitely felt I had the most energy on the last day of the cleanse. 

PROS

• I definitely felt more energized

• Mentally it was refreshing to know that I was consuming so many fruits and veggies

• It was an easy cleanse to follow and the recipes were simple 

• I liked that the cleanse allowed for one solid meal a day even if it was restricted to only fruits 

and veggies

• Much more cost efficient compared to cleanses you can purchase online that are delivered to 

your door. 

• I did not feel hungry during the cleanse

CONS

• It’s very time consuming making all the juices

• Slightly restrictive in terms of goi out due to the frequent bathroom trips 

• I didn’t see results immediately

• If you are looking to lose weight fast, this cleanse is not what you’re looking for. 

Overall, I think the three-day juice cleanse was extremely manageable and a great way to kick start healthier eating habits. As the cleanse is only three days long, I think it’s a great place to start if you’re looking into eating more raw foods and the fact that you drink 5 juices a day with one meal rather than completely limiting yourself will help you get use to the entire process.