48-Hour Juice Cleanse Challenge

Hello again, everyone! I am loving this beautiful, cooler weather--it's certainly getting me in the mood for autumn, my favorite time of year. Time for leaves and pumpkins and sweaters, oh my!

Anyway, as I said in my last post, I've been transitioning into a new, healthy lifestyle. I've been eating healthier, staying more active and trying new things. One of these new things was a juice cleanse, or a juice detox. The concept is to consume only raw fruit and vegetable purees and juices over some period of time, usually 2-4 days, which cleans out your digestive system, rids your body of toxins and essentially pushes the "reset" button on your body. I'd been hearing a lot about them, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Look scary?

The verdict: not so bad.

Here I am, at the end of two days of a straight liquid diet, and I can honestly say I feel good. Not entirely different, which I guess just says my system didn't need too much flushing out. However, I did lose about 2 pounds. I'll take it.

The challenging part was not hunger, surprisingly. I expected to be hungry all the time, but all the juice and smoothies I was drinking definitely kept me nourished. Also, I expected to spend a lot more time in the bathroom. This was not the case, but I won't go into further detail there. If you really want to know those details, you can ask me privately.

What was challenging were the cravings: knowing I couldn't have that cheeseburger made me crave it all the more, when I normally wouldn't think about it so much.

Interested in doing a cleanse yourself? Either you can spend hundreds on an expensive juice delivery service or do it yourself with store-bought juice and a few ingredients for about 20 bucks. There's not too much prep work involved, actually. See below for how I did it.

Note: I am in no way a doctor and therefore I can't advise you to do this. Though it should be completely safe and I didn't experience any adverse effects, you should do your research and make sure your body can handle it before you dive into anything.

48-Hour Juice Cleanse

Schedule:
8:00am: Juice 1 - Green Smoothie
10:00am: Juice 2 - Fruit Smoothie
12:00pm: Juice 3 - Green Smoothie
3:00pm: Juice 4 - Spicy Lemonade
6:00pm: Juice 5 - Odwalla Superfood
8:00pm: Juice 6 - Almond Milk

Ingredients:
1 large jug Odwalla Superfood
16 oz. organic lemonade (with agave nectar instead of sugar)
2 15.2 oz bottles Naked Smoothies, or other organic fruit smoothie, whichever flavors you like
16 oz. pure unsweetened almond milk
1 cucumber
2 cups spinach
1 head romaine lettuce
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions:
1. Get all your supplies together, including the ingredients listed above, a blender and some plastic bottles. I needed enough bottles to take Juices 1-4 to work, and prepared Juices 5 and 6 when I got home.

Making Juice 1 and Juice 3: Green Smoothie
2. Peel, seed and chop the cucumber. Add to blender.

3. Wash and chop the lettuce and add it and the spinach to the blender. Pictured here is the baby bok choy I used instead of lettuce, which I would not advise.

Cabbage + smoothie = yuck. Use lettuce.

4. Add the 3/4 cup of water and blend away!
5. Take 4 plastic bottles and divide the blended cucumber/spinach/lettuce mixture among each. Top them off with the Odwalla Superfood (making sure to reserve two servings for later). Refrigerate until you're ready to drink.

 **You may be wondering why I added more green stuff to Odwalla Superfood, which is already pretty green-looking. The reason is this: even though it is green in color, a peek at the ingredients list shows that it is mostly fruit. By beefing up its green veggie content, we create a more effective cleanse.**

Making Juice 2: Fruit Smoothie
6. The beauty of this step is, there is no step! Because I used store-bought fruit smoothies, the prep work was all done for me. I used Naked's Mango Veggie and Berry Blast.

Making Juice 4: Spicy Lemonade
7. For one serving, mix 8 ounces of lemonade with half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Add more if you can tolerate the spice, but don't get heavy-handed: this stuff really scours you out. Refrigerate until you're ready to drink, and make sure to give it a good stir or shake before you do.

Making Juice 5: Odwalla Superfood
8. Similar to the fruit smoothies, this one's already done for you. Just split the remaining Odwalla into 2 servings, enough for each day of the cleanse.

Making Juice 6: Almond Milk (which isn't juice at all)
9. Gotta have some protein, right? To make one serving, pour 8 ounces unsweetened almond milk into a mug and add 1 tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Microwave for 2 minutes and stir well.

Important Notes:

• A few days before the cleanse, start eliminating alcohol, sugar, meat and dairy from your diet. However, I will say that I had a little bit of chocolate and some goat cheese the day before I started and nothing bad happened to me. But I'd say stop eating meat and alcohol at least 24 hours before. 
• Drink plenty of water throughout the days you are detoxing.
• If you need something to chew on, grab some sugar-free gum.
• If your cravings are distracting you, try to keep busy, like by doing a craft from Pinterest (pictured at right).
• You can still work out during the cleanse (I did), but stop if you get dizzy.
• Once the cleanse is over, don't run out and buy a cheeseburger. Give your body a few days to re-acclimate before gumming up the works with too much greasy stuff.

Like I said, I'm not a doctor. But I did try this myself and I'd say it worked pretty well. I might try it again in a few months, or maybe a couple days after Thanksgiving...I'm sure I'll need a detox then!

Good luck, and please feel free to ask questions in the comments.

****
P.S. The day after the cleanse, you may notice that you are as hungry as a bottomless pit. Resist that cheeseburger. Your body will thank you!