Finally.
After years of watching the juice cleanse craze come and go, reading dozens of articles on it, scrolling through Instagram gawking at aesthetic bottles of magical green elixirs, I had the chance to try it myself.
While performing, it wasn’t really an option.
First, I didn’t want to risk messing up my energy levels throughout the day. Working an office job or being a student is one thing, but swinging around a couple meters in the air takes a little more caution surrounding daily routine.
Second, juice cleanses aren’t really a bit thing in Asian or European countries (maybe they realized the preposterousness of drinking 5 bottles of green juice as your entire sustenance for the day?)
Third, to blatantly state what I alluded to above, there is nothing strikingly healthy or beneficial about a juice cleanse. Although marketed as a health-concept for body-conscious, hip individuals, nothing mentions the reality that a juice cleanse is nothing but a few colorful bottles of straight sugars and possibly some micronutrients.
Still, I had to try it.
One Sunny afternoon, I surprisingly found myself without homework or obligation, so I took a stroll over to the Stanford Shopping Center near Stanford’s campus.
From down the street, you could see the line that extended out and across the sidewalk.
Pressed Juicery, a storefront designed for social media fame, was so well-branded that it was almost inspiring. The creamy, off-white walls accented the sleek bottles and the curvy lowercase font used in their logo. Even the customers who waited eagerly in line matched the vibe of the store, each a different shade of faded pastel and overly-chique suburban style.
A promotion: six bottles for $29 dollars closed the deal. Juice cleanses can often run upwards of a couple hundred dollars, another opportunity to pay for style.
Based on Pressed Juicery’s pre-orderable packages, I designed my own program: A two-day cleanse, six bottles a day. Three green juices, one citrus, one roots, and an almond drink to finish the day.
Packing the cute bottles into the mini fridge in my dorm room, I was ready.
Day 1 started off well.
I was sold on the idea and still enchanted by the experience that the juice cleanse was selling. I had bought completely into the whole concept, whether because of build-up or pure desire to want to be the kind of person who can actually do a juice cleanse.
The morning was relatively easy, and I had spaced out the juices so that I would have them in two-or-three-hour increments throughout the day. I tried to refill the bottle with water and finish that between each juice.
I had never gone to the bathroom so many times in a day. (Is this the ‘cleanse’ part?)
As a person with a pretty regular eating schedule, I was hungry by late afternoon. It was easy to forget about food throughout a day of classes and meetings, but as soon as my schedule opened up I could tell I wasn’t getting enough calories.
There was no energy dip like I expected… actually the opposite. As the day went on, I began to feel really energetic and almost jittery. I felt very wired, attentive and reactive, but in a buzzed way.
Day 2 was a little harder.
I tried to distract myself by reading in the beautiful weather (California is a nice place to be).
The juices tasted great, but at some point I got sick of drinking so much liquid and went for hours without having anything at all. This meant that in the afternoon I had a few juices to catch up on.
On a positive note, the bottles were great for photos on Snapchat and Instagram.
I really felt the difference when I went to frisbee practice that evening. It was hard to focus, and a few times I felt like I really should not be exercising. It was clear to me that juice cleanses are not a great choice for people who plan to be running around for an extended period of time.
Conclusion
I’m grateful that I had the chance to finally try the famous ‘juice cleanse’ that covered the blogs and magazines for so many months.
I experienced no significant changes to my body and my mind, other than frenzied energy levels and lots of hunger during the two days.
Now I can finally say that I’ve done a juice cleanse, it was fine, and I likely won’t do another one. However, I will definitely grab a pretty juice when opportunity arises, and I still want to open a juice shop someday.
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Have you tried a juice cleanse? What kind of experience did you have? Comment below 🙂