Three Day Juice Cleanse

 

Right after I watched the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (see the trailer below), I went out and bought a juicer. I have been doing it here and there for about a year and a half, but recently I decided to do a 3 day cleanse. I have read a lot of articles (both for and against cleanses), and I wondered if I could do it. I treated the whole thing as a challenge. Do I have the self control?! The last time I tried, I lasted 6 hours as my sister told me I had to eat because we were going wedding dress shopping for her the next day and she wanted me in a good mood :) Thankfully this time I lasted the entire 3 days!!

Kelly MacLean recently wrote an article called Surviving Whole Foods. The whole thing is hilarious and painfully true. My favorite passage was about juicing. I almost peed my pants laughing when I read this...

"I pass the table where the guy invites me to join a group cleanse he's leading. For $179.99 I can not-eat not-alone... not-gonna-happen. They're doing the cleanse where you consume nothing but lemon juice, cayenne pepper and fiber pills for 10 days, what's that one called again? Oh, yeah...anorexia. I went on a cleanse once; it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I detoxified, I purified, I lost weight. On the other hand, I fell asleep on the highway, fantasized about eating a pigeon, and crapped my pants. I think I'll stick with the whole eating thing."

While thankfully those last 3 things didn't happen to me... I did survive!!

I know that there are many companies out there who sell juices you can buy, sometimes on Groupon for $100 or like the juice above for $180, but I bought all my fruits and vegetables at Costco and Trader Joes and this only cost me around $65.

Ingredients:

• 60 baby carrots
• 18 apples
• 6 inches of ginger root
• 9 cucumbers
• 18 stalks of celery
• 48 leaves of kale
• 3 lemons
• 12 tomatoes
• 6 red peppers
• 3 limes
• 9 oranges
• 3 sweet potatoes
• 6 beets

(Crazy to think I "ate" all of that in the past 3 days... our fridge is much emptier now!)

Directions:

1. Wake up - drink 16 oz. of hot water with lemon and ginger
2. Breakfast - Carrot Apple Ginger Juice
3. Mid-morning - Mean Green Juice
4. Lunch - Gazpacho Juice
5. Afternoon snack - Citrus Inspired Green Juice
6. Pre-dinner - Sunset Blend Juice
7. Dinner - eat only fruits and vegetables (I ate a banana)
8. Before bed - cup of hot tea
9. Repeat for a total of 3 days 

Buy organic (if you can) and clean fruits and vegetables well before juicing.

I did workout during this (one hour of strength circuit training Saturday, one and a half hours of yoga Sunday, and an hour of kickboxing Monday). If you want you can drink coconut water after working out, or if you're not feeling well don't workout at all.

The hardest part was going out to brunch with my family and then dinner with my friends and not being able to eat anything. Andrew even ordered a pizza on Saturday... that was cruel. But overall it wasn't so hard! Juicing everything took forever but I'd say that was the most frustrating part. On Saturday and Sunday I made the juices when I needed them, but then I made all of the juices for Monday on Sunday night and put the first 2 juices in the fridge and the last 3 in the freezer hoping they would stay fresh for as long as possible.

Enjoy! And good luck!!

Kelsey

Mean friends enjoying their pizza... and my juice. So lame.

I still got myself a slice for the next day. Let's be honest, I'll probably have this for breakfast tomorrow

All information found here