3-Day Juice Cleanse

I'm sure everyone can relate to the feeling that always seems to follow the holidays. You know what feeling I'm referring to...the bloated, stuffed, clogged, fat, greasy feeling. Well we sure felt it here in our home, so we decided to do something about it!

3 Day Juice Cleanse!

We've had friends complete this before and really loved the feeling they got and the detox they felt. We've watched documentaries, read research and asked people who have done them. Finally we decided to go for it. This is a great site to read if you're considering it!

http://www.rebootwithjoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RBWJ_3-dayplan-11-05.pdf

We decided on only a 3-day cleanse, especially since it's our first one we didn't want to go to extreme. We juiced 5-6 times a day and each recipe makes about 12-16 oz. We juiced each one once a day, then picked our favorites for the repeats. Here are the recipes we chose from everyday, each recipe makes one serving!

Carrot-Kale Combo
1 Green Apple
3 Handfuls Spinach
6-8 Kale Leaves
4 Large Carrots
1 Piece Ginger (thumb size)

Green Lemonade (Our Fav)
1 Green Apple
3 Handfuls Spinach
6-8 Kale Leaves
1/2 Cucumber
4 Celery Stalks
1/2 Lemon

All Green
(Use as much greens as needed)
Romaine
Kale
Spinach
2 Handfuls Parsley
2-3 Celery Stalks
1/2 Lemon
1 Piece Ginger

Apple-Beet-Carrot
1 Apple
2 Beets
3 Large Carrots
1 Piece Ginger
Spinach/Kale (optional)

Mean Green
1 Bulk Kale
4 Stalks Celery
1 Cucumber
2 Green Apples
1/2 Lemon
1 Piece Ginger Root

This is the juicer we're using, Jack LaLaane Power Juicer. We got it for Christmas last year. It's a hoss! Juices like a charm, very sturdy and easy to clean and assemble/disassemble. 

Also, if you're thinking you don't have the money for this, you're wrong. We calculated up how much we'd need of each vegetable to get us through three days (for two of us) and even went to Publix to get our produce (not as cheap as Walmart). We spent a total of $65.16. Divide that by 3, that's $11/day/person. Definitely affordable. 

Day 1: We felt drained. My husband especially because while you're fasting you aren't suppose to have any caffeine, vitamins etc. He's a cup of coffee every morning kind of guy, so he had a huge headache most of the day. Personally, I felt a little light-headed once or twice and a little drained but nothing too bad. We drank about 80 ounces of water each so we peed like crazy. Every time we felt that twang of hunger, we'd juice, so really didn't feel hungry at all. We ended up juicing 5 times this day. The beet drink was the hardest to get down...yuck! Lost almost 4.5 pounds in one day, probably mostly water though. No diarrhea or weird stomach issues yet.

Day 2: Felt more energetic. Still peed a ton. No headaches and still solid stool! The drinks were a bit easier to get down, didn't taste as bad as yesterday. We did see a Papa John's commercial and start drooling though. Today was HARD to not cheat, especially with a cupboard of perfectly good bread, lunch meat, cheese and soups waiting on you. My husband even had a referee meeting at a local Pizza Hut tonight, but only had one piece and felt yucky afterwards. Rock-star!

Day 3: I had to go to work, so I took juice with me. No temptations at work so it was easy to stick to it. My husband finally felt his energy come back. Today is also my birthday, so we ended the day with salad, miso soup and sushi! It was a nice ease back into food.

Overall, I think it helped flush us out for sure. We felt less icky, weighted down and at the end had our energy back that we lost over the holidays. We also got a jump start on our weight loss, bonus! Coming off a cleanse though, we had to be careful. We couldn't run to the nearest Papa Johns and load up, and really we didn't want to for some strange reason. We had to ease our bodies back into solids. We first had salads and soybean broth soup. Then ate a little sushi, we missed protein! We never had a "colon blowout" as my endearing husband kindly refers to as diarrhea. Also, seven days later I'm still keeping 4 pounds from the total 6.5 that I lost during the cleanse. Maybe it wasn't all just water! We'd do it again for sure, but next time try for maybe four days instead of three, just to see if there's more of a difference.

Here's to starting off 2014 clean and detoxed!