Juice Cleanse OVER

I lasted a day and a half.

As I said in my post yesterday, I was just so sick of juice! It took me over an hour to get through half of my first bottle of the day. Every sip made me nauseous. Finally, I took a look at the oyster crackers on my desk and decided to go for it.

So, the pros and the cons.

Pros
- I didn't feel hungry at all.
- My stomach felt much more settled than it has in awhile.
- Some of the juices were tasty.

Cons
- Six huge bottles of juice a day is too much juice.
- I had very little energy by the end of day one, falling asleep at 9 p.m.
- I had a headache the full duration of the cleanse.
- Some of the juices were pretty revolting.
- The juices are very expensive.
- I was dizzy and a bit of a crab most of the time.

My verdict? Don't do it. Or just do it for a day. I don't really care to repeat the juice cleanse experience anytime soon!

Of course, randomly browsing the internet tonight, I found this on Buzzfeed. Timely, eh?

Juice Cleanse Day 1

After 24 hours of consuming little more than juice, I've arrived at the following conclusions: whoever said day one was easy was lying and man is not meant to live on juice alone, regardless of how many cold-pressed fruits and vegetables are in them.

One thing I was NOT expecting was the fact that I was physically incapable of drinking all six bottles of juice throughout the day. It was just too much juice. By mid-afternoon, I just wanted something salty. I eventually satisfied that craving by having a chopped up avocado and tomato with salt for dinner (raw fruits and vegetables are recommended if you decide you need something more than juice, as is avocado specifically). But before I had my little avocado and tomato salt salad, I simply could not stomach any more juice. I only drank half of Fiji (mid-afternoon juice) and skipped Green Supreme altogether (dinner drink), then only had about a third of my "dessert" drink.

Man is not meant to live on juice alone.

Despite my issues above, there were definitely some positives that came out of day one. My stomach, which is frequently upset, has been totally fine. Surprisingly, I have not been hungry at all. My salt cravings have made me more or less forget my sugar cravings. I'm not sure that trading one craving for another is a good thing, but we'll see how this pans out.

So, after considering bailing on this juice cleanse after day one (for both the reasons above and the fact that it basically costs $50 a day even with the juices on sale this week at Whole Foods), I'm opting to do a hybrid juice/raw food/smoothie cleanse for the remaining two days. I'm going to keep drinking the Suja juices I still have left (sipping on Glow at the moment!), but after those run out, I'm going to switch to raw food and alternative juices.

Stay tuned.

We'll see if this juice cleanse thing really works...

If you follow Hollywood news at all, you've probably heard plenty about juice cleanses. I've had many friends try them out and preach about them, but I've always been a skeptic. Why? I have a science background and I know that your body is completely capable of detoxing itself without spending a couple of days limiting your diet to cayenne-maple syrup lemonade.

However, I've decided to give it a shot. After doing a bit of research, I have a few reasons:

1. I have a serious sugar addiction. From what I've read online, a three-day juice cleanse is fantastic for kicking sugar cravings.
2. I've been sick a LOT lately. At this point, I'm willing to try just about anything to improve my immune system health.
3. The juice cleanse I've chosen (Suja, primarily because it is readily available at Whole Foods and I don't have to pay crazy amount for shipping) is packed full of fruits and vegetables and who doesn't need more of those in their life?

So, I've decided to blog about this for accountability purposes. I'm told day one is easy but that it gets progressively more difficult from there.

I'm currently drinking my first juice, Glow. It smells like celery but has a nice apple taste to it. The juices are a pretty decent size, so you can enjoy sipping it for awhile (we'll see if that's a good thing when I get to the juice I'm dreading most - Green Supreme). 

Here's today's menu. Wish me luck!