How to Prepare for Your First Juice Cleanse

I’m doing something I said I would never do: a juice cleanse. It seems pretty silly that I’d choose to drink six juices a day instead of eating delicious foods, right? Well, I started losing some weight doing the fight diet and I decided that I would also do a juice cleanse to help detox a bit more.

Before I started the cleanse, I read about how you should prepare for the all-juice diet. Here are my tips to prepare yourself:

1. Stop drinking all carbonated beverages. This was probably the most difficult change I had to make; my office has an unlimited supply of seltzer water (my beverage of choice) and I usually drink 4 liters a day. The seltzer has too much carbonation and gives your body extra gas that it doesn’t need (same with chewing gum!) I switched to water the week before the cleanse and actually enjoyed drinking regular water again. After I introduce solid foods back into my diet, I think I’ll drink seltzer only on special occasions (or only 1 liter a day).

2. Stop eating processed foods/eat only whole foods I started eating better during the fight diet but still ate Luna Bars/other energy bars because I craved something sweet. The Luna bars weren’t extremely processed but did have a lot of random ingredients that I wanted to take out of my diet. It was difficult, especially since our office seems to have a lot of good food around the office (last week I had more than my fair share of truffle-oil popcorn, Special K with strawberries and chips and guacamole) but I tried to moderate how much processed food I ate. You’re supposed to try to eat only raw foods 1-3 days before the diet, but I looked at a raw foods cookbook and decided it was way too impractical for me to eat raw. Instead, my lunches looked like this:

Trader Joe’s chicken, broccoli and one avocado per day: lots of lean proteins, good fats, and veggies.

3. Exercise Before the cleanse, I tried to exercise to get a little more energy because I knew going from an over 2,000 calorie/day diet to 1,100 calories was going to be difficult. (This post will be published on the last day of my cleanse but so far, my energy levels haven’t changed that much).

4. Figure out when you want to start your cleanse.This might seem like a no-brainer, but if it’s your first juice cleanse, you don’t know how your body is going to react. My friend had a bad experience when she tried to do her cleanse (flu-like symptoms) and I didn’t want to get sick during the middle of the week and miss work. I decided to pick up my cleanse on Friday night and start on Saturday morning – that way, I’d finish my cleanse at work on Monday, but I’d have the weekend to figure out how to adjust my daily activity based on my energy levels.

5. Inform your friends and family of your upcoming adventure. I had to warn Ken about my cleanse because I wasn’t sure how I’d react. Originally, he was supposed to play golf with his friends over the weekend so he wouldn’t see me on the first day of the cleanse, but his plans were rescheduled and we ended up spending the entire day together. Ken was very supportive and ate his meals in different rooms so I wouldn’t be tempted to cheat (although we did go to Bleecker Street Pizza together and I had to watch him eat two slices of pizza). I think we’re both surprised that I didn’t cheat during the juice cleanse (over the weekend, he ate Bleecker Street Pizza, Chicken and Rice, Bon Chon, Just Salad, and chips).

I’ll post again about my post cleanse thoughts – juice cleanses are definitely not for everyone (I seriously thought people that did them were crazy) but I’m really happy with the results and I think I will definitely eat better after this experience.