My Juice Cleanse Story

How do you go from eating 5 meals a day to starving? Answer: Juice cleanse. Before I started the cleanse, I did a little research on the internet, learning everything I could about the “3 day juice cleanse”. And might I say, there is A LOT of information. So before starting the juice cleanse I found my recipes from a blog focused on vegan cooking and juicing called vegancooking.com. You can check the blog out for the recipe and ingredient list of the 3 day body cleanse. There are a few rules to the cleanse, before and after that you should keep in mind.

PRE-CLEANSE:
Most of the blogs and website tell you to stop intake of processed foods, dairy, red meat, sugar and caffeine 48 hours prior to your juice cleanse. Try to consume more fruits and vegetables and lean protein.

CLEANSE:
DAY 1:
I am used to drinking 2 glasses of lemon water in the morning, so my body didn’t realize what I was putting it through. After that I had my cup of green tea and started making my first juice to have it around 8:30 am. I had my second juice around 11 am. I felt energized and didn’t even realize that I ditched my coffee this morning. It wasn’t until after my 4th juice that I started to feel tired and exhausted, mind you that my work involves me to be on my feet. Since I get migraines, my lack of solid food intake triggered that but I kept chugging water and had green tea to keep my body calm.  I had my last juice around 8pm, calming down the growling in my stomach which gave me the will to live again. By the end of the day I was so tired, that I went to bed by 10pm.

DAY 2:
I had a little late start to the day, I woke up around 9 am and I had my first juice at 12 pm. I don’t know why I didn’t feel hungry until 12 so I tried to delay it as much as I could to be able to last longer in the game. Since I was working from home, my second day wasn’t that bad as I got to plop on my couch and conserve a lot of energy. On my second day of this juice challenge, I really missed my coffee breaks and I wanted to munch on something. But thank god, I stayed strong and committed to my target.

DAY 3:
I woke up kind of tired, and didn’t sleep well the night before. I don’t know why. I was super excited to have my first smoothie, because I knew it was the beginning to the end and I was eager to finally chew on something. My head was a little heavy but nothing I couldn’t keep under control. I had my last smoothie, around 9 pm since I was working the whole day and didn’t get a chance to drink it on time. At last, I was finally done with my cleanse and I was extremely ecstatic to eat solid food that night.

POST-CLEANSE:
This juice cleanse was definitely an interesting experience. I would advise you to consult a physician before you start, because everyone’s body is different and what suited me might not be the thing for you. The only major problem I had during the 3 days were my headaches, they were kind of persistent but green tea and water helped me a great deal. I did feel that my skin got better during these three days since I was well hydrated and consuming a lot of good stuff. Make sure after you’re done, you don’t consume food that’s harder for your body to digest.
Meaning, don’t eat pizza and a big mac right after you’re done your 3 days. Follow the pre cleanse routine till 2 days after, to help your body adjust to solid foods once again. I won’t be telling the truth if I said it was easy and I can do it again in a month. It was definitely harder and I would rather stick to one juice a day with my meals, or as a meal replacement but not go on a full throttle cleanse.

I believe it is very important to listen to our bodies. If you think that your body isn’t dealing well with the sudden change in food. Take it slow first, have a juice with your meal or in between instead of doing a 180 degree and going head on into the cleanse. What this cleanse taught me is to focus on eating clean rather than juicing and detoxifying your body because you eat too much junk. Such dramatic episodes will not do well to your body. If
you focus on keeping a healthy mind and body, it’ll turn into an automatic cleanse for you.

Contributor: Zainab Mushtaq

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