Why I will never juice cleanse again!
I’ve always been a fan of health and nutrition and am forever looking for ways to boost well-being and to fit in lots of vitamins and nutrients into my daily diet. When you have a sweet tooth like mine and find it difficult to say no to every biscuit, doughnut, cake offered, it’s in my best interest to balance things out with healthy and nutrient-dense meals and snacks. In my younger (read: misinformed/a bit stupid) days, I would take things to the extreme and be all or nothing when it came to my relationship with food, but over the years I’ve tried to find a healthier, more balanced approach where I live by the “everything in moderation” way. #beautifullybalanced
As part of the 80:20 lifestyle I’ve adopted over the years, the 80% part usually involves some type of daily green juice or green smoothie. And whilst I have incorporated this into my life for a long time now, I have always been intrigued to try a proper juice cleanse to see what the effects are over a longer period of time. I have read a lot about the benefits of a 3 to 5 day green juice cleanse and how it can really reset your system, give your digestion a well earned rest, cleanse your body of old gunk that’s been laying around for decades (yuck!) and generally leave you glowing and vibrant with a boosted immune system. What’s not to like! So, finally, after many many years of wanting to try this, I leapt into this a couple of weeks ago, and the results were somewhat interesting.
I decided to go for a 3 day green juice cleanse because, well, to be honest, they are super expensive and I couldn’t really justify anything longer than that. Plus, I read that your body goes into starvation mode after 4 days, and nobody wants that.
I knew that it was going to be a challenge (Duh! You’re not eating for 3 days, it’s not going to be easy!) and so I read as much as I could about what to expect and how to prepare so that I didn’t give up after just a few hours. I knew that the whole process would take 2 weeks in total because there would be a three day ease in period, 3 days of just pure juice, and then gradually adding back in solids and returning to a normal, healthy way of eating (this last stage is actually the most important as it is here that you can cause damage to your tummy/digestion if you ignore the ease back in and lunge head-first into burgers and fries… ouch!).
I’d opted for the “more veg, less fruit” varieties of juice on the plan that I chose, just because I’d read that when you juice fruit (which removes the fibre) it can have an effect on the body which spikes sugar levels and then causes a drastic drop, which can leave you feeling low in energy and very hungry, and which ultimately might mean you give up before you even really start.
It helped that my friend from work was crazy enough to do this with me and so I had an ally – yay!
The clue is in the title that things didn’t go particularly to plan….
For three days before the juice cleanse, I ate a mainly plant-based diet, made up of light, easily-digestible meals. This wasn’t too tricky for me as I do eat a lot of plant-based food (and, as you will know if you’ve read my post about Plant Goodness It’s Friday here, I do make sure I eat like this at least one day a week anyway), but during the course of a week I also have chicken, fish and some treats (which inevitably contain all the wheat/dairy/sugar you can fit into a lovely helping of yumminess!), so these obviously didn’t make an appearance here. This pre-cleanse diet is supposed to get your body ready for what’s to come and helps ease any detox symptoms (of which there are quite a lot apparently: from headaches, nausea, aches and pains, fatigue… I could go on but I won’t). On the plus side, I don’t drink coffee or proper tea (I have herbal), so the caffeine withdrawal wasn’t something that would affect me, thank goodness!
So the 3 day pre-cleanse was fine and I enjoyed all the healthy and delicious plant-based foods and I was genuinely excited to start the next phase. Then came the juice days….
Day 1 started off well. I had my six green juices ready to go and I had already decided I would have one every 2 hours to keep the hunger at bay (and ease the boredom from not eating – you don’t realise just how much time is taken up with thinking about food, as well as preparing and eating it). I had my usual big glass of hot water and lemon with a pinch of salt (weird, I know, but see my post about migraines here and you’ll find out why I do this). At 9am I had my first drink and it was a little on the “earthy” side but nothing too horrid and I sipped it and tried to make it last as long as possible. I continued on like this for the rest of the day. So far so good. For my poor friend, she was not having a good experience and after just a few hours (2 drinks in to be precise) she was experiencing flu-like symptoms and really feeling quite ill. She hadn’t done the 3 days ease in and was an avid strong coffee drinker, so I think this is where it might have gone downhill for her. She persevered for as long as she could, but by mid-afternoon she couldn’t take it any longer and had to go out and buy some lunch (it was a healthy hummus and falafel salad, so it’s not as though she caved and ordered in Domino’s), but she was very disappointed to say the least. [So as not to waste her remaining juices, she had a couple a day over the next week as well as her usual food]. I got through Day 1 and went to bed in the evening feeling fine and not too hungry, which was good.
Days 2 and 3 were much the same. I did have some very vivid dreams about food and each morning woke up thinking I’d cheated because I could literally taste the food in my dreams haha! I was relieved to know that I had not been sleep eating, and merely had an overactive food imagination. I ended Day 3 feeling proud of myself for completing it and feeling light and energetic, and my tummy was definitely flatter (no surprises seeing as though it was completely empty of solid food!). My skin was also clear and soft. I was pretty happy at this point.
Day 1 post-cleanse - I was now allowed to add in some broth-type soups, as well as the juices. The soup was such a welcome from only having cold juices solidly for 3 days; like a hug in a mug. However, ironically this is the day the hunger really struck! I must have used up all my energy reserves by now because by the end of the day I was absolutely starving and so hungry that I struggled to sleep. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling my best the day after as I was tired and hungry. But once again, I stuck to the plan and only had what I was allowed.
Post cleanse+ - It continued like this for the next few days – adding in chunky soup, then fruit, then raw veg, lentils and beans, rice and quinoa and finally chicken and fish. This took me to 14 days in total and I was excited to see what the official results would be after sticking with this religiously. I knew I had lost a few pounds as I definitely felt a little slimmer. Although nothing prepared me for the insatiable hunger that started after introducing more food into my day. (I’m still ravenously hungry now, 2 weeks after starting this!!).
Results
I forgot to mention that just before starting this, I went and had one of those body composition tests done where they weigh you and check how much muscle mass, fat, water etc you have, as well as your metabolic age (if your metabolic age is lower than you actual age, it means your body is in good health. It is based on your activity level, basal metabolic rate (BMR – the amount of calories required to keep your body functioning at rest), genetics, height, weight and actual age and compares it with the BMR of your age group).
At the end of the 2 week period I went back to have the body composition test done again and the results were staggering. I dropped 5.5lbs! Yay! Actually, not yay! This was ALL muscle, which meant that my body fat percentage went up and my lean muscle mass percentage dropped!! Are you kidding me?! My metabolic age increased by 2 years as well. My BMR dropped by 150 calories, which means in order to maintain my weight I have to eat 150 calories a day less than I was doing before. My visceral fat (the unhealthy fat that you keep around your middle and which surrounds your organs: the lower the number the better) stayed the same – thank goodness for small mercies. Overall, the complete opposite of what I wanted to happen and the resulting effect was that I was now “skinny fat” ie a person who is normal weight or maybe even underweight but has a high fat percentage and lacks muscle tone. What the heck!
As you can imagine, I was not at all happy with these results and although there were some positives that came out of doing the cleanse (see pros below), the results from the body composition test left me feeling like all that hard work was for nothing.
Pros
I felt light and lean.
My skin was clear and soft.
I definitely felt hydrated.
I was proud of myself for sticking to it for the full length of time.
It frees up a lot of time when you are not thinking about, preparing and making food three+ times a day.
Cons
Very expensive (if you’re prepared to do all your own juicing, then this would definitely bring the cost down. But do you really have time to be juicing 6 times a day?!).
I lost weight but it was ALL MUSCLE.
My body fat percentage went up·
My muscle mass went down.
My metabolic age increased.
My BMR went down.
Food takes on an almost forbidden, euphoric quality and I noticed food EVERYWHERE – you know things are bad when you’re eyeing up what the homeless man is eating whilst walking past (*shakes head in shame).
I was ravenously hungry (and this still hasn’t passed almost two weeks later!).
A three day cleanse takes two weeks to complete properly, so as not to harm digestion, therefore this is definitely not something you should jump into without proper planning.
It’s a real test of your willpower to not eat/chew anything for 3+ days.
I couldn’t do any “proper” workouts whilst on the cleanse as I just wasn’t taking in enough calories, so walking and light stretching and yoga were all I managed to do.
My work friend will not stop reminding me of what a terrible idea this was haha!
In conclusion
The cons far outweigh the pros and I will not be doing it again. I will stick to my 80:20 approach and when I am feeling a little bit sluggish and in need of some extra vitality, I will add extra green juices into my day, but they will not be replacing any meals. So, in conclusion, save yourself the money and muscle mass and just stick to a balanced, healthy approach to food and life.
L x
Have you ever tried a juice cleanse? If you have, what was your experience? Let me know in the comments below.