My 5 day Juice Spring Clean

I’ve been feeling blah & lethargic lately, I felt like I needed a reset so I decided to give my body a spring clean.

I knew my symptom’s weren’t CFS related it was simply because I have been eating rubbish lately. See certain foods make me feel yuck, “if you eat crap, you feel crap” I do.

Most importantly, it wasn’t just how I felt physically it was my mental state of mind, lazy, non-productive and brain fog slowly returning

So action needed to be taken…

I’ve been regularly juicing for 3 years and done a 3 day juice programme before but could I do 2 extra days living on juice?

Like anything preparation was key to ensure that I had all the ingredients, mind-set and the motivation.

I decided to buy the shopping for the first 3 days as I wanted to keep veggies and fruit as fresh as possible then I brought the rest in the middle of the week for the last 2 days. Just looking at the abundance of veggies, colours and the thought that I would be removing all the rubbish from my body given myself as much nutrients as I could made me feel better even before I started.

My days consisted of 4 juices and an apple & ginger shot in the morning, drinking lots of water & mint tea throughout the day. On day 2 I noticed I had a bit of a detox head which carried on until Wednesday morning but after having my Berry Banana Crunch which is lush, it subsided & I started to feel a lot more energetic & brighter.

Hunger wise the worse part of the day had to be early evenings my tummy rumbled and gurgled, I reminded myself why I wanted to do this and keep my mind-set positive and had a mint tea.

I woke up on Thursday & definitely felt a lot more rejuvenated, I also noticed that I was sleeping a lot more sounder and not feeling tired upon waking which I had been even after having 8 hours. I had a sports massage today and normally get a post massage head later in the day but this didn’t happen probably because my body was well hydrated?!

I had one of my favourite juices today called Minty Sunshine, it consisted of 2 oranges, 3 carrots, ginger & mint. It was like drinking liquid sunshine and very filling.

Day 5 Friday my last day, I noticed that my mind started to think about food, what was I going to eat first, what had I missed? I popped in to have a quick mint tea before my next appointment at Bellaluz square and there was an overwhelming smell of bacon. Your sense of smell does get stronger with food odours.

Today’s juice was my nemesis as it had parsnip in it, I love all vegetables except parsnip so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I was pleasantly surprised by my Pear n Parsnip concoction and was quite tasty.

Saturday I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed, I honestly felt more alive, as though my inner GPS had totally been reset.

I had made it!

I did weigh myself at the beginning of the week although Im not hung up on scales I thought it would be interesting to see the difference, I had lost 7lbs according to them. But more accurately was my body statistics: bust, waist & hips and had lost 6 inches, 3 being from my tum.

Goodbye Buddha belly!!

I didnt do any additional exercise whilst on the plan, I done my normal teaching, walking and 2 regular spin classes.

If there was any downside to this programme was probably the frequent toilet stops throughout the day and night weeing and the amount of times I had to wash up the juicer. Although you can prepare them in advance and also freeze them I preferred to make them fresh as I went along.

The total cost of the 5 days worked out at 40 euros.

Over the weekend I have been mindful about introducing foods back into my diet and leaving out the ones I don’t want creeping back in. I’m not going to be obsessive as if I fancy a bit of chocolate I will have some but I don’t my sweet tooth seems to have gone, well anyway for now.

Its a question of balance and isn’t until we eliminate certain foods we notice how good we can feel physically, mentally and emotionally.