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.

1. When juicing, make the CAR juice last so the carrots don’t take over any of your other juices.
2. Also, dates have pits – at least the ones I got. Take them out before blending. Again…whoops!
3. Make each juice and divide into 3 bottles + fill to top with filtered water.
4. You will definitely need a juicer to make this happen.
5. 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!