Live Blogging: 3-Day Juice Cleanse, Day 1

Yup, you read it right.  This food lovin'-eatin'-cookin' little lady is on a 3-day long juice cleanse.  Since I do not have much to do today (one is suppose to "take it easy" during a cleanse), I figure it is about time to update this blog and share an interesting and eye-opening experience with you all, as I am going through it!

First, let's start with questions...

1. What is a juice cleanse?  A juice cleanse is a detoxing program that allows your body to use all of the nutrients and energy obtained from freshly-pressed vegetable and fruit juices to "clean house".  Think in terms of car maintenance: after about 5000 miles of driving, you would change the engine oil so that the engines are properly maintained.  This is what you are doing to your body with a juice cleanse.  Rebooting your body by getting rid of toxins from processed foods, animal products, and even the environment.  The purpose of drinking juices all day is to let your digestive system rest, which I've come to find out, is always overworked and spends a lot of the body's energy to digest all the junk we eat every day.

2. What is involved in a juice cleanse?  There are different types and duration of cleanses, but after researching and talking to my friend (see question 5), a 3-day cleanse is a good one to start with.  Each day, you consume 6 bottles of different juices, as to replace meals and snacks throughout the day.  There should not be any solid food eating during the cleanse.  As you detox, you may experience symptoms such as headaches, nausea, or fatigue.  However, as your body adjusts to the juices, you may feel more energized and clear-minded!

3. Where can I get the juices, or do I have to make everything myself?  As a newbie to this entire cleansing business, the best way is to find companies that provide cleanses.  BluePrintCleanse is a company that ships nationwide in the US, and although I'm not sure if they are the "pioneers" of juice cleansing, they did write a book about it and was the first website I read about cleansing.  However, due to price (these programs are not cheap!), I wanted to find a local juicing company that provided easy cleansing programs.  Luckily, there were good choices in San Francisco (Juice To You, Living Greens, Juicey Lucy's, and Can Can Cleanse).  I am sure you can make your own juices and do a cleanse that way, but since I am a newbie, I have no advice in that regard.

4. Are there any preparations or foods to eliminate for the cleanse?  It is recommended that at least 3 days prior and 3 days after the juice cleanse that you eliminate many types of foods from your diet.  This is to ensure that you do not suffer greatly during the cleanse, and to slowly ease yourself back into eating solid foods.  You should not eat meat, seafood, dairy, eggs, wheat, processed sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine.  I know, your jaw is probably dropping because this is EVERYTHING you eat, but basically, a diet of raw vegetable, fruits, grains, and nuts are the way to go.  After the cleanse, slowly ease yourself back with smoothies and juices, then vegetables and fruits, and then finally everything else.

5. How did I get the notion to even do a juice cleanse?  My dear friend EC was the person that introduced me to the world of cleansing.  After hearing her experience and knowledge of cleanses, and then doing my own research, I found myself really interested in this concept of detoxing the body and that it wouldn't hurt to try!

Now on to my experience...

First of all, I am a lucky girl as my husband supports me in everything I do.  When I brought up my desire to cleanse, the first thing he said to me was, "I'm not doing it."  I'm not sure what or why he changed his mind... it may be due to curiosity, from talking to our cleansed friends, or maybe he just loves me that much, but he decided to do the juice cleanse with me.  Now I don't have to suffer and watch him eat during the cleanse!

I chose Juice To You due to price ($190 for a 3-day cleanse) and pick up times (was able to pick up on a Friday in order to cleanse over the weekend).  To note, all of these SF juice companies do not deliver too far outside of SF, so we had to rely on picking up the juices.  There is an entire crazy story of our pick up experience that I'm too lazy to get into right now, but basically it delayed our start time from Saturday to Sunday.  Although this means that we will have to be on the cleanse during 2 work days, our minds are set and we are doing it!

The juices

Helpful numbers for consumption

The menu and order of consumption:
Elixir #1: Blue-green algae... all-organic, wild-harvested botanical algae
Juice #1: Green Goddess... celery, cucumber, sunflower sprouts, and lemon
Juice #2: Lemon-aid... lemon, agave, ginger, cayenne pepper, and filtered water
Juice #3: Wellness Wonder... celery, cucumber, sunflower sprouts, kale, spinach, romaine, parsley, and lemon
Juice #4: Coconut Water
Juice #5: Blood Builder... celery, carrot, beets, ginger, and lemon
Juice #6: Almond Drink... raw almonds, coconut water, vanilla bean, Himalayan salt, and filtered water
Elixir #2: Aloe... aloe vera juice, young coconut water and lime juice

Each juice bottle is 16 oz, the algae elixir is 2 oz, and aloe elixir is 6 oz.  Every juice is consumed about 2 hours apart, with water consumption in between.

September 11, 2011 // Day 1:

8:08 PM... Done for the day.  The second drink I like is the Almond Drink, slight sweet and thick nutty liquid to end the day.  I was pretty hungry by 6 pm (time of last drink) so the Almond Drink was perfect.  Sigh.  Day 1 is done! 

To summarize Day 1, both the hubby and I had a good first day overall.  We woke up to the first elixir and drink and went on a 2.5 mile walk (took about an hour) by the beach.  We actually stayed in Monterey this past week for a little "staycation", so we were able to enjoy the beach for one last time this morning.  I have to say, Monterey in September is surprisingly nice!  Although the fog and clouds stay around in the morning, the sun comes out by noon to provide a constant 75 degrees of summery weather.  It was even hot enough to lay out in your swimsuit and tan.  We had packed mostly pants and long sleeves for the week, so the nice weather definitely caught us off guard. 

Nevertheless, the walk this morning was nice - a slightly breezy 67 degrees with sightings of dolphins or whales, or some sort of mammals with fins!  It was quite exciting.  We came back to relax for the rest of the day, the hubby with Sunday football and me with blogging.  Every two hours came quickly and it seemed like we had just finished with our previous drink.  It was also hard to look at food today, as I would get a small tingle of hungriness in my stomach each time, but I would just tell myself, "It's just for two more days".  Although unwilling, we are rested and ready for the work week ahead of us.

3:00 PM... I've consumed up to Juice #4. I'm not liking the green juices (#1 and #3) because they taste like salty celery.  Bleh.  The algae elixir tastes like raw seaweed, not a favorite of mine either.  I hope I will get used to it tomorrow!  The one I like so far is the Lemon-aid, which tastes like lemon and ginger juice.  Spicy and sweet!  The Coconut Water is nothing special, although the hubby did say, "This taste like corn water.  You know, when you boil corn and the leftover water in the pot would taste exactly like this."  I have to admit, there is some truth! 

So far, I am not experiencing any detox symptoms.  Feeling good but will get a bit hungry after about an hour.  Of course, a lot of water is coming out of me, meaning many trips to the bathroom, but not too bad.  The other thing I am trying to get used to are the loud grumbling noises coming from my lower abdomen.  Oh, those darn intestines!  I really hope that it's not too loud at work for the next 2 days that my cube neighbors can hear!