The Skinny on Juice Detoxing

In the last 7 years my weight has fluctuated by a whopping 30 kilograms. At 160cm / 5’3″ tall that’s quite an *achievement*. The ‘low’ point came via an illness, and the ‘high’ point was at the final stages of my second pregnancy. Like most women I do have a number that I like to see appear on the scales. While I try not to put too much emphasis on the number, for me the number represents a place where I feel the most energy, my clothes fit well, and I don’t have to be fanatical about what I’m eating.

Right now I’m at the upper end of my weight range, so I knew it was time to draw a line in the sand and do something serious. Enter Catherine Craig from Schkinny Manniny. Catherine contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in trialling a cold pressed juice detox. I’d previously done various detoxes and found them to be beneficial for a ‘reset’ so I took a thorough look at it and signed up for the following week. In the interest of complete honesty I did opt for the ‘easiest’ of the detox programs; selecting the program that included 4 juices and then an evening meal. The program is entirely vegan and (as much as possible) uses organic ingredients.

So, how did I go? The first day I felt both nervous and excited about the days ahead of me. The first juice of the day tasted really great; not overly sweet and very drinkable. By 9.30am I had started thinking about food (even though I wasn’t actually hungry) but committed to holding out until 10.00am for my next juice. I planned to have lunch at 1.00pm but cracked open my soup (which was delicious, even cold) at 11.45am. Again, I wasn’t actually hungry, but I was realising how much I just ‘think’ about food. By mid afternoon I experienced a  crash and began to feel extremely tired. (I may have even had a cat nap on the office floor… don’t tell the boss!). My afternoon juice picked me up again and the evening meal was a welcome change from a liquid diet. Thankfully ours is a household that all heads to bed around 7pm as I was still feeling tired and sleepy again.

The next morning the full gamut of symptoms listed on the website hit me. Like a tonne of bricks actually. My head was pounding, I felt slightly dizzy, had intermittent nausea, and wasn’t keen to move too far from a bathroom. I slowly sipped half of the breakfast juice and put the rest in the fridge for later – or not. Hard to believe that this time yesterday I was counting the minutes until my next juice. I weighed myself to see if there might be an upside to the way I was feeling and found that I’d lost 1.1kgs. It did make me feel slightly better. By late morning I was feeling much, much better. Not quite 100%, but certainly well enough to finish the rest of my breakfast juice, and all of my morning juice. Just like day one, I didn’t ever feel hungry, but what changed on day two is that my food thoughts and cravings started to ease.

I planned to have my lunchtime soup at 1pm and at 12pm I didn’t think I’d last that long (the mental challenge!) but I decided to sort out my wardrobe (I’ve just read Marie Kondo’s book) and nearly two hours later I sat down to the soup. Even without the clock telling me, I knew I was ready for the soup as I was starting to feel tired and headache-y again. The soup was nice but I did have a wandering thought that it would be even nicer with some warm, crusty sourdough to dunk in to it.

On the second night of the detox I had the best nights sleep I have had since before children. Hands down. My eyes sprung open at 4.30am and I felt ready to start the day… but I did doze for another hour. Wednesday is yoga morning, and as my alarm beeped at 5.30am I heard quiet footsteps at the front door delivering my juices for the day. The symptoms of day 2 were all but absent on day 3 and I felt confident that I could have continued for another couple of days if I’d chosen to.

The day after  the juice detox finished I felt a noticeable difference in not just my physical self but my spirit as well. We were out the door for school earlier than usual and my workmates noticed my upbeat mood too. I worried that I might ‘go crazy’ for food when I finished but thankfully the opposite has been true. My palate and stomach have experienced the reset they needed to go forward from here and JERF (Just East Real Food).