13 Things They Don’t Tell You About Juice Cleanses

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I am going on Vacation and needed some help starting my pre-vacation diet. After some research, I decided to go on a 3-day Juice cleanse. I’m 5’2, 21 years old and weighed 123 pounds at the start of the cleanse. I am FULLY aware this was not a healthy weight loss option but wanted to give it a stab anyway. Here is what I discovered.

1. You will lose weight.

Every single website I read said that juice cleanses are not an effective way to lose weight unless you are overweight. Well let me tell you, after three days of drinking pure-homemade juice, I was down 7 pounds. So yes, weight loss is absolutely possible even for people on the smaller side.

2. As well as mentally preparing yourself, you must mentally prepare your friends.

If I hadn’t talked about this cleanse for days before starting it, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the full three days. On the evening of Day 2 I was starving and I decided, “F this,” and texted about everyone I knew to go get dinner with me. Every response I got was something like, “No aren’t you on a juice cleanse?” If I hadn’t told anyone, someone would have most likely responded yes and the juice cleanse would have been a fail.

3. You will constantly think about juicing.

Every hour, every second, every minute of those three days I was thinking about juicing. What can I juice? When can I have my next juice? What fruits/vegetables would go into my next juice combination? Would I need to go to the store? Was my produce rotting? Did I unplug the juicer? I WAS OBSSESED!

4. You cant go in public the first day or two.

Any smell or familiar scent will make you instantly famished. I made the mistake of going to the gym for some light exercise and walked past a pile of vomit on my way. Just looking at those chunks of food caused extreme hunger. Gross, I know, but true story.

5. Adding celery to any juice is disgusting.

All those magic green juice recipes online tell you to add celery to the mix. Unless you like the taste of liquid celery, DON’T DO IT. Even one stalk overpowers the whole drink.

6. Making green juice is not easy.

Most recipes tell you to add anywhere to a few stalks to a cup of your selected greens to any juice. Adding a cup only gives you about a teaspoon of juice. I found that if I wanted anything close to a substantial amount of green juice, I would have to add endless amounts of whatever green thing I was using that day. It was a waste of money and a waste of produce.

7. Going to the bathroom is interesting.

Think about it, you’re only ingesting liquid things of varying colors, especially if you are juicing beets. You do the math.

8. Cleaning a juicer is the worst.

It takes about 10 minutes to disassemble and fully clean your juicer. I attempted to make all my juices for the day at the same time, but they just acquired a weird taste after sitting in the refrigerator for more than an hour. I know it’s time consuming, but if you decide to go on a juice cleanse, make your juice fresh every time.

9. You might not feel refreshed or energized.

A lot of websites had people claiming that on Day 3/4, they felt super refreshed and energized. I never felt that. On Day 4 I woke up feeling like I did on Days 2-3…hungry.

10. You’ll have to pee every 5 seconds.

Don’t make plans to leave your house during your juice cleanse, and if you do, make sure your plans involve being in close proximity to a bathroom.

11. Juicing is so expensive.

It was even worse for me because the closest store to me is Whole Foods aka “whole pay check.” In order to make juice 4 times a day for 3 days I found myself constantly running to the store and getting more produce, which was not cheap. Each trip was about $30, which equates to $7.5 dollars per juice. Not cheap.

12. Your face might break out.

I know mine did. If you’re going from eating pure crap to drinking nothing but juice like I did, then your body will not be able to handle all that health and rebel in the form of acne.

13. Eating real food again is hard and takes time.

I was only planning on doing the cleanse for 3 days. More then 3 days was said to be unhealthy. Day 4 was the day I was going to start easing myself back onto solids, starting off with some melon cubes, but I physically could not get myself to eat them and felt extremely nauseous even just thinking about it. I decided I would just make juice and try to eat again later when I was hungry. Throughout the rest of the day I never got hungry and had to force myself to even just get down some juice. Day 5 I was able to eat some melon and spaghetti squash and on Day 6 I ate some brown rice. Eating even this small amount of food made me feel extremely guilty, almost like I just ate an ice cream sundae. Even on Day 7 I just wanted juice. It was as if this juice cleanse was messing with my mind, making me think that eating any sort of food was wrong. After a few more days I was finally back up to eating 3 meals a day but it still felt wrong. The whole process was extremely weird and scary; I learned first-hand how eating disorders develop. So if you decide to go on a juice cleanse, be wary of this.