When my friend asked me if I wanted to do a juice cleanse with her, I was skeptical and nervous. I am the queen of snacking and essentially eating all day long. But I’ve always been curious about these multi-day cleanses, so I decided to give it a shot in order to give my body a hard reset before jumping into the final 3.5 months of wedding body-ready health & wellness.
However, instead of spending $129 at Pressed Juicery on a 3-day cleanse*, I told her I would figure out how to DIY it ourselves. Using the Pressed Juicery ingredients as inspiration, I structured the cleanse like a couple others I had read about online…greens, citrus, greens, spicy lemonade, CAR, and almond.
Overall, prepping for the cleanse took 1 hour and 50 minutes start to finish. Two hours if you count showering off all the veggie leftovers on me. It was extremely messy. Especially on juice 5 & 6 when I started getting lazy and letting some of the juice pour out of the bottle and into the sink…and floor. Whoops.
I spent $58.13 on the ingredients at Trader Joes, realizing later that Ralphs would have been much cheaper. Duly noted.
*My friend later told me that Pressed Juicery sometimes has specials on their 3-day cleanses for $69. In that case, I would recommend going with that if it’s available and skipping the whole juicing out of your kitchen “messy” method.
The Cleanse
I wasn’t feeling in tip top shape after a fairly aggressive weekend, so I ended up only doing the cleanse for one day, and freezing the rest of the bottles. This turned out to be a good thing because I don’t think I could ever not eat solid food for 3 days straight.
On my one day cleanse, I have never peed so much in my life. Crazily enough, I was down 3.5 lbs by 5 pm. How ’bout that water weight? Since then, I swear my stomach shrank so I’ve eating more proportional amounts and much healthier overall. One day was pretty easy and did the trick. I’ll take it!
Recipes
Couple tips first.
- When juicing, make the CAR juice last so the carrots don’t take over any of your other juices.
- Also, dates have pits – at least the ones I got. Take them out before blending. Again…whoops!
- Make each juice and divide into 3 bottles + fill to top with filtered water.
- You will definitely need a juicer to make this happen.
- If you want to do a one day cleanse, just cut the recipes below by 1/3.
Juice 1: Green 1
- 12 stalks celery
- 3 cucumbers
- 3 handfuls kale
- 3 lemons
- 3 small handfuls parsley
- 3 large leaves romaine
- 3 handfuls spinach
- Sea salt – a pinch
Juice 2: Citrus
- 6 large green apples
- 3 lemon
- 1 small handful of mint
- 2 pineapples
- 5 cucumbers
Juice 3: Green 2
- 6 large green apples
- 12 stalks celery
- 5 cucumbers
- 3 handfuls kale
- 3 lemons
- 3 small handfuls parsley
- 3 large leaves romaine
- 3 handfuls spinach
- 1 small ginger root
Juice 4: Spicy Lemonade
- 3 lemons
- 3 tsp honey
- 3 pinches of cayenne pepper
Juice 5: CAR
- 6 red apples (fuji or another)
- 3 Carrot
- 3 Lemon
- 1 large ginger root
Juice 6: Chocolate Almond (mix in blender)
- 7/8 full bottle of unsweetened almond milk
- 1/2 tsp cacao
- 9 dates
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 3 pinches of sea salt
The Rules
Schedule: Drink juices at 9 am | 11 am | 1 pm | 3 pm | 5 pm | 7 pm
- 3 day pre-cleanse: start drinking 8 glasses of water per day & eliminate unhealthy foods
- 3 day post-cleanse:
- Day 1: add in fruits, greens, 8 glasses of water
- Day 2: add in nuts, gluten-free grains (brown rice), yogurt & eggs
- Day 3: add in meats, fish, gluten grains
- Caffeine: Green Tea only
- If you must eat, eat only organic fruits, veggies, nuts & seeds
- Limit exercise – walks, yoga, stretching
Start out the day with a glass of water with lemon (cut up slices from last lemon and bring to work)
Shopping List
- 12 green apples
- 6 red apples
- 16 lemons
- 2 pineapples
- Ginger
- 1 bag kale
- 1 bag spinach
- 1 bag romaine
- 7 cucumbers
- 24 stalks celery
- 1 bushel of mint
- 3 large carrots
- 9 dates
- Honey
- Cacao powder
- Cinnamon
- Cayenne pepper
- Sea Salt
- Almond milk
Extra snacks & things:
- Almonds
- Celery
- Berries
- Straws
- Water bottles
Overall, I think the cleanse was a great way to purge the toxins and start me on a solid health spree. I plan to split the last two days of the cleanse later this summer when I’m feeling I need it. If you can stomach to do three days, more power to ya!
for the juice 2 citrus. you said 5 pineapple . is that 5 pieces, stripes or a whole pineapple?
So sorry to be so delayed – somehow I never saw your comment. That was a typo – should be 2 pineapples 🙂
also does it taste like pressed juicery citrus 2?
Just followed this for 3 days- thank you for sharing. I’ll be using this over again.
Great, so glad you liked it!!
This is fabulous! I just finished my first day, and my juices for days 2-3 are waiting in the fridge. Each one tastes so good
That’s awesome! Glad to hear it!! Good luck this week!!