As a health nut/ future culinary school student, I thought it necessary to experiment with a juice cleanse. Last weekend was filled with tons of unhealthy food, so I figured that a reset might be really good for my body. I’d also always wanted to try one, so with 3 days costing only $113 at Juice Nashville, I was sold. Here is my pro/con list post-cleanse to help y’all decide if you want to do one, too- hint: don’t do it.
You will feel really skinny after Day 1, especially on Day 2. Except you know that whole “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” mantra? Simply not true. When I broke my cleanse, sushi tasted WAY better than I ever thought it could. Having a flat stomach is seriously overrated.
You will be constantly starving. I had read a significant amount of blog reviews saying that I wouldn’t feel hungry, especially if I supplemented with raw fruits and veggies. Maybe my body just isn’t meant for cleansing, because I was seriously ravenous after six hours. I had to take a two-hour nap on the first day just to pass the time until my next meal. Not normal.
If you like the taste of food, don’t do it. Some people can live off liquids, and that’s awesome. But if you like actually eating food and chewing it, you’ll hate cleansing. I had oatmeal on my second day and almost died because it tasted so good, and the texture was incredibly satisfying.
If you’re used to eating lots of protein, DON’T DO IT. I’m mostly paleo in my everyday life, so going from that to a juice cleanse was not smart, even though I did try to slowly introduce juices and veganism into my life pre-cleanse. The main thing I learned from my experience is that my body needs a lot of protein to survive, and without it, I am constantly hangry and annoying. But if you already don’t consume a lot of protein, you might be fine on a cleanse! To each their own.
Your body will feel lighter, but not by much. Also it goes away. I’m two days post-cleanse and I definitely don’t feel that skinny anymore. Most of the weight I lost was water weight, which felt awesome at the time, but it went away super quickly. However, I do notice some lasting benefits- my stomach is a teensy bit flatter and my appetite is smaller, so I can get by with eating less food. But that probably won’t last that long, so I feel like I would have been better off just trying to eat healthy this past week.
You won’t be able to work out. I’m an exercise fiend, and I wasn’t able to work out during my cleanse. I feel like I lost some muscle this past week, which actually sucks. So if you don’t like working out, you’ll probably like cleansing. But if you’re already used to making exercise a part of your day, you will feel REALLY thrown off during a cleanse.
In the end, I’d recommend a one day cleanse without reservations, especially if you supplement with egg whites and extra fruit/veggies/raw nut butter like I did. That was not that bad, I was still at a calorie deficit, and I woke up the next morning feeling pretty cleansed. But a three-day cleanse is HARD, especially if you have a fairly active lifestyle. I had to stop after day 2 because I honestly couldn’t stomach the taste of juice anymore and was hard-core craving solid food. In the future, I plan to replace snacks with juice to supplement my already healthy food regimen, but I don’t plan on cleansing again… at least until Christmas.
PS- Credits to Julia Gabriel for helping me think of the clever title for this article ;)