Getting Juiced: Does it Work?

So spring break is next week and everyone seems to be headed to the gym lately to work on their beach bod. There are many ways of losing weight and toning up right before beach season, but not all of them tend to work the way we wish they would. Recently I fell upon the idea of a juice diet after watching the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. Being on a juice diet does not mean drinking any flavor OceanSpray drink you can get your hands on. You actually have to make the juice and very rarely do these healthy mixtures come prepackaged or taste all that great. After seeing the documentary I convinced my mom to buy a juicer and lots of fruits and vegetables to get us started on a one-week juice detox; sure enough she bought into it. 
 

Imagine spending a week just consuming this bad boy

Our first task was to figure out how to work the juicer. Once we figured that out we were headed to the grocery store to pick up all kinds of fruits and vegetables, some that I never tried before such as ginger and kale. There are tons of websites with recipes for different juices but my mom and I decided to create our own combinations based off of what we liked and what we thought went well together, basically a form of trial and error. My least favorite drinks were any that included kale or spinach and my favorites were ones that were majority fruit. 

Did I see any results? Definitely, after only a week I dropped six pounds. The problem is as soon as I stopped the detox I gained it all back, mainly because as soon as I finished I was back to eating pizza and ice cream. If you choose to do a juice detox once you go back to real food you have to maintain a healthy diet, rich in fruits and vegetables. I spent all week nearly starving and practically in tears every time I had to see a Domino’s commercial just so I could lose six pounds and gain it all back within three days. It definitely requires a lot of willpower and it is not much of a long term solution. Even though fruits and vegetables are overflowing with all your necessary nutrients, they also tend to be loaded with sugar, which ultimately turns to fat so you have to be careful. If you are looking to lose a couple pounds I suggest sticking to the traditional routine of eating right and working out!