The Big Juice Cleanse

As you may already know one of my goals for this year was to do a juice cleanse. I have happy to report that I have met this goal!

My hubby has a friend that started off his weight loss kick with a juice cleanse. Since both me and Mike were wanting to start 2013 off with our annual BATTLE OF THE BULGE, we thought a juice cleanse might just be the way to start as well.


I did a bunch of research online and after talking it over we decided to do a 3-day cleanse, and make all the juices ourselves. Let me warn you if you are planning to do this for yourself, make sure you pick three consecutive days where you have nothing planned in the evening! Why? Because it will take you about one to two hours to prepare the six juices you need each day. We went with doing it ourselves, because to use a cleanse company it would cost us around $500 shipped for a three day program for both of us. By buying the ingredients and doing our own juicing it was only around $125 for the three day stint. Almost a $400 dollars savings!

There are some detailed instructions including grocery shopping lists, recipes, and bottle labels at Juices 101. These basically imitate the Blue Print Cleanse juices. Of the juices she lists we did all of them except the Parsnips, Pear & Celery juice. We substituted a different green juice in for it.


Here is my review of the recipes, and some notes:

• Green Apple Juice - 3 out of 5 stars - We left out the parsley the second day, & put in less celery
• Pineapple, Apple, Mint Juice - 5 out of 5 stars - So yummy! I add ice and shake it up, added some Cuties to give it a more tropical taste.
• Spicy Lemonade - 1 out of 5 stars - So spicy I couldn't drink more than 1/2 a bottle and that took an hour
• Carrot Apple Beet Lemon Ginger Juice - 4 out of 5 stars - Pretty good stuff
• Cashew Nut Milk - 5 out of 5 stars - Delicious, add nutmeg, mix with some ice in the blender for a yummy milkshake like dessert

My confession - I didn't make it all three days, but lasted only two! I feel slightly guilty, but not totally. When I don't eat I get cranky, and by the end of the 2nd day I was super cranky. My kids were begging me to not do day three. It was a good first effort and I'm happy that I stuck with it for the second day.

Results - I now have a couple of good recipes for juicing my breakfasts and snacks. I use half  a recipe of the Cashew Nut Milk frequently in the evening to satisfy my urge to eat dessert. I lost 4.4 pounds in 2 days, some of which I'm sure was probably water weight. I am happy with the kick start that it gave me into making my healthy goals.

Tips for your success - 

• Prepare to bottle your juices by buying/saving bottles. We used 20 oz. Gatorade bottles that I bought in a large pack at Costco.
• Clean your fridge out before you buy all your fruit and veggies. They will take up a huge amount of space!
• Do lots of research. There are tons of blogs and informational pages related to this topic, take a couple days to peruse them to find the cleanse that is right for you.
• Eat lighter than usual for a couple days before you do your cleanse.  
• Check out some juice cleanse companies. It might be easier to buy your juices for your first cleanse. My sister used CoolerCleanse when she did her cleanse. They were very helpful and substituted out several juices due to dietary restrictions, when Blue Print Cleanse was unwilling to do so. Plus it was less expensive.

Pineapple, Apple, Mint Juice!

Good luck and Happy Juicing!