I’m four hours into my five-day juice cleanse and already fantasizing about Kind bars. (Don’t worry, I think the burger/pizza/red velvet cake fantasies start during Day 3.)
Lord help me.
Why am I doing this, you ask? Well, why not? I figure it never hurts to pump your body full of healthy goodness, and more importantly, it will make for funny tweets when I start to hallucinate.
I’m not doing this to lose weight (but I’m thinking that might happen and I won’t be mad about it). I’m a pretty healthy person (eat clean/drink Chuice regularly, try to stay away from processed/bad-for-you food, etc.) so I figured I would take it to the next level with Roots Juices‘ intermediate cleanse, which consists of drinking six cold-pressed juices a day packed with ingredients like apple, spinach, kale, orange, cucumber, ginger, lemon, almonds, etc. I look at it as simply detoxing your body/liver (I can always use that) by going totally raw, but if you were to eat all the fruits and veggies that go into making the 30 juices for a 5-day cleanse, you would have to spend all day chowing down (ain’t nobody got time for that) and the produce would probably fill up your entire kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and then some (and I doubt you want to store food next to your toilet).
The Roots guys (who are awesome, btw) gave me their blessing to eat raw veggies during the cleanse, especially if I’m working out, so I fully intend to nosh on some carrots, tomatoes, kale, and maybe even raw almonds when I start to feel like I’m going to die. The intermediate cleanse has 1,500 calories per day and I think it’s really important to eat enough calories so you don’t throw your bod into starvation mode where it will start STORING FAT (check out this post from Cara for more info). For me, I should get at least 1,700-1,900 cals daily (even in weight loss mode), so I feel good about supplementing the juices occasionally with stuff I can chew. The worst part is definitely going to be no coffee (I could barely type that without shedding a tear).
And get this: My friend Liza is doing the cleanse with me because misery loves company it’s more fun with friends! We love to eat and drink (remember our Asheville trip?), so knew we’d be on the same page throughout the week and be able to complain to support each other. Liza has done a weeklong cleanse before (she looked and felt ahhh-mazing afterward), so since she’s an old pro, I can go to her with concerns like, “I was just drooling…over my dog’s dinner,” or “I drove by Chick-fil-a and started crying,” and she’ll assure me I can get through it.
Our first conversation today…at 10 a.m.:
Me: I’m hungry.
Liza: hahaha. after a weekend of eating and drinking nonstop, i think my stomach is like, “hold up, what is this bullshit?”
Me: i know. that’s why they tell you to eat raw a few days before. FML.
Liza: yeah, well, i did whatever the opposite of eating raw for a few days is.
Me: my stomach is like, “what are you doing, girl?”
Liza: food baby wants some pancakes.
Me: why did you have to say pancakes?
Liza: the ‘p’ word.
We’ll be reporting back on the process this week, so stay tuned and wish us luck!
And don’t you dare mention the p-word.
LYLAS,
Ashley