As collegiettes, we hear over and over about ways to “get skinny fast” or “be healthy with this quick fix”, and constantly have societal pressure to look a certain way. One of the trends that has popped up is juice cleansing, where you only drink juices for anywhere from three days to three weeks. While the juices are chock full of fruits and vegetables, it certainly isn’t an easy way to lose weight or a smart way to be healthy. Here are the main reasons why you should stay away.
It’s expensive, clocking in at around $10 a bottle! Why buy seven bottles of juice when you can get a whole week’s worth of nutritious groceries?
It’s missing vital components of a healthy diet like complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and protein, not to mention fiber and other vitamins and minerals. The juice is pretty much just sugar that goes straight to your bloodstream, spiking your blood sugar and giving you energy surges and crashes all day long.
It’s highly restrictive with cleanses having at most 1000 calories a day, and you’ll feel less satisfied since there is no fiber in the juice to slow digestion.
There are tons of negative side effects like caffeine withdrawal, lightheadedness, weakness, jittery sensations, dry skin, feeling cold, mild depression, nausea, fatigue, diarrhea, and mood swings. Because the brain needs healthy fats like omega-3s to function, taking them out of your diet makes you feel totally out of whack.
It can make it harder to lose weight because your metabolism slows down when it’s in starvation mode. This means that once you stop cleansing, it’ll be harder to lose weight in a healthy way.
Your body detoxes on its own with our liver and pancreas! The whole idea that a cleanse “removes toxins” from your body is pure marketing. If you have a healthy diet of mostly unprocessed, whole foods then your body functions in tip-top shape.
They don’t work. Period. You may lose weight while on a cleanse, but it will all be water weight and muscle mass (which you want to keep)! Once you return to normal eating, all the weight will come back, and you’ll have less muscle leading to a slower metabolism.
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