Last Days Of The Juice Cleanse And Why I Wouldn’t Do It Again

A lot of the unfortunate things that happened during the final two days of my juice cleanse are undoubtedly my fault, but it’s safe to say that I probably won’t ever do a store-bought cleanse ever again. (Day 1 here)

DAY 2

I woke up on Monday feeling groggy and ill (even after 8 hours of sleep), like I was hungover. It was probably dehydration from not drinking anything the entire night.

The nasty All Greens juice was actually quite refreshing first thing in the morning, though it still took me an hour to finish. I could feel my shriveled insides absorbing the liquid; the constant peeing didn’t start until 1.5 hours after I started juicing. I made sure to have lotion with me, other wise my hands would’ve gone raw from all the hand-washing.

(TMI alert) At this point, there probably wasn’t very much solid food left in me, but I was usually gassy. Suffice to say that I was making some strange noises in the bathroom at work. Not sure what that was about!

I wasn’t necessarily hungry throughout the day, but I didn’t feel satisfied either. It was that weird limbo of not being hungry but still wanting to put food in my mouth, which is an affliction for most people who aren’t even doing a cleanse. The constant drinking meant that I didn’t even have time to chew gum.

In general, I felt bored, and I had to remind myself of why I chose to do the cleanse. One of my main concerns prior to starting was a sort of chronic fatigue  no doubt brought on by some internal chemical imbalance (namely, too much sugar) — I just wanted to sleep all the time, especially after eating, which was just annoying. I liked naps to begin with, but I was becoming dependent on them, and sometimes lying down to rest my eyes would turn into a three-hour snooze.

After the crazy-tiring first day of cleansing, my energy levels were overall pretty consistent, which is what I was looking for. At 3 p.m., when I’d normally start my zombie transformation, I still felt the same as I did at 10 a.m. Huzzah!

The worst part was how cold I was. Offices are cold to begin with, and drinking nothing but cold juice really doesn’t help. It’d probably be torturous to do a cleanse during the winter.

Royal Flush: I was looking forward to a juice like what most people expect juice to taste like, but the prevailing flavor in this one is ginger. Blehh. Still, even a hint of pineapple beats the overpowering taste of celery. Initially I thought the “liver-kidney-lymph detox” ingredient was actually made of liver and kidney, which I just shrugged off — in that episode of Bizarre Food I watched, some Portland mom fed her kids banana smoothies with raw liver mixed in for a boost of iron. I happen to love liver, so… (to be clear, there’s no liver in Liquiteria juices).

It was my last day at Redbook, and I had to stay late to finish some work. By the time I got to Liquiteria to pick up my third day’s juices, they were out of a few flavors, so I got these two as replacement:

I didn’t experience the same nighttime crash and ended up sleeping at my normal time (2 a.m.).

DAY 3

On the way to the office in the morning, I was drinking All Greens on the subway when I bumped into my coworker. He had done homemade juicing and recommended adding a squeeze of citrus – orange, lemon, grapefruit, etc. — to improve the flavor of any vegetable juice. Good tip.

Mixed Veggies: This one tastes like straight-up carrot juice; it’s a little sweeter than All Greens With Carrot. As a raw carrot-lover, I’d say this one was pretty good.

When I got home, it took all of my willpower to keep from eating something, anything. It didn’t help that my roommate was in the living room eating sushi with little C and talking about how delicious their salmon was…ugh. Instead, I took a nap.

Immune Rocket Booster: I drank this right after brushing my teeth, so some of the flavor got lost on me, though I could still taste the ginger and carrot. I looked forward to never drinking liquified ginger again — the stuff is just not for me. Halfway through the bottle, I just gave up. It had a thicker consistency — probably due to the flax seed oil — that I just couldn’t stomach.

So I wandered to the kitchen and ate a bagel. HAHAHA FAIL… It wasn’t a delicious bagel by any means, but it was still so satisfying to chew. I decided to spread my remaining 3.5 juices over the next few days.

DAY 4

I choked down the rest of the Immune Rocket Booster before heading off to my last day at MyBankTracker. I knew I had to pace my eating after coming down from a cleanse, but there just happened to be an unusual amount of delicious food in the office.

For lunch, we ordered delicious pizza from Il Porto, and I managed to restrict myself to just one slice. Then in the afternoon, we were celebrating someone’s birthday with two amazing cakes from Almondine Bakery. I could not help gorging myself on a huge piece of chocolate mousse cake because it was SOOO GOOD.

I was stuffed but otherwise fine until dinner — my coworkers took me out for Mexican food as a farewell, and boy did we order a lot more food than we could handle. The sudden intake of rich carbs, oily meat and half a cocktail caused pandemonium in my digestive system. Let’s just say I made friends with the delightfully posh interior of Gran Electrica‘s bathroom at the end of the meal.

Even the trip to the toilet wasn’t enough, and I felt nauseated for the next 24 hours, so much so that I missed my professor’s end-of-semester party at her Long Island house the next day. (I didn’t want to embarrass myself by puking all over my classmates, which is most certainly what would have happened.)

After that, I ended up freezing the remaining bottles of juice. Maybe they’ll taste better after some time spent away.

Pros:

• You’ll definitely feel balanced — gone are the typical highs and crashes from eating sugar-laden simple carbs.
• Drinking juice out of a bottle all day keeps your lipstick from smearing (small but significant victory!).
• Like any meal plan, this is good for people who hate cooking or are indecisive about what to eat.
• You get lots of exercise walking to the bathroom 25 times a day.
• Fresh juice means no stanky breath.

Cons:

• If you think a juice cleanse will be a quick fix to get thin, you’ll probably be disappointed (unless your normal eating habits are THAT bad). Sure, I was slightly slimmer from the lack of salt and solid food, but I didn’t feel significantly svelter afterward. So it could be a con depending on your motivations. Frankly, I’ve lost more weight eating $1 cans of beans for every meal.
• You might think you love carrot juice, but you’ll probably hate it afterward :( I can still taste the mix of carrots and ginger, and it gives me nightmares.
• Think about how much celery, lettuce, spinach and carrots you could buy for regular eating with $150! Many a delicious salad could be made.

Ultimately, I would not choose to do another pre-bottled juice cleanse (unless someone paid me to do it, maaaybe). The tangible benefits don’t seem to be that much greater than just eating a healthier diet. One bottle would probably be good for a snack or energy boost, and that’s only if you truly enjoy the taste of raw carrots, celery or ginger. For the price, I’d expect the cleanse to be either delicious or miraculous, and it wasn’t either.

Skeptics, you win this round!

(Please note that this is only a review of Liquiteria’s 3-day level one cleanse and not of any other system, brand or at-home program.)

Juice Cleanse: Day 1

A juice cleanse isn’t meant to be taken lightly. Not only is it expensive, it’s also not as delicious as one might imagine (though maybe I’m the only one delusional enough to imagine such things). Such is what I learned on the first day of my Liquiteria cleanse.

Sunday started with a trip to the gym, where I biked while watching Bizarre Foods America (I learned that Andrew Zimmern hates oatmeal, of all things). The dishes might’ve been unusual, but it all looked delicious — even elk heart tartare topped with raw turkey egg yolk — and I started missing solid food before I even got any juice inside me.

The Path To Clean Digestion?

The end of the semester is nigh! You can tell that I’ve been busy because I haven’t posted here since February(!!); where did the time go?! Oh, right, I was doing two internships and taking an intensive writing & reporting class. What is life??

This past month, I’ve almost lost my mind from stress a few times, and sleep deprivation has been high. There were a few weeks where I wrangled my diet into shape (salads for lunch, brown rice + vegetables for dinner) — I even started going to the gym again! — but the rest of the time was filled with Pommes Frites and ice cream, thus my body has not been feeling its best. Getting a massage helped, but I’ve still been fatigued and irritable, and my skin is not happy.

I Vont To Suck

Anybody who knows me well should know that I still enjoy watching children’s movies — for example, Wreck-It Ralph was one of my favorite films of 2012. So last fall, when a trio of horror-based animated films came out, I ranked them in the order I wanted to see them the most:

1. ParaNorman
2. Hotel Transylvania
3. Frankenweenie

ParaNorman, as I expected, was clever and thrilling and even a little bit disturbing, which is what I liked so much about its predecessor Coraline (one of my favorite movies). I decided not to watch Frankenweenie after reading some “meh” reviews and watching Tim Burton’s original live-action short film.

Yesterday, due to the impending doom of snowstorm Nemo, I settled in at home to watch Hotel Transylvania. It seemed like an interesting twist on the usual fare. Monsters that are afraid of us? Ha! A human accidentally infiltrating their midst? Haha! Sounds like there’s a lot of humorous material to work with.

Sadly, it was mostly a disappointment.

A Dollop Of Drama, A Ladle Of Laughs

I watch so many shows that whenever someone asks me what I watch, I often don’t even know where to start. Thus, I’ve decided to compile a master list and share my thoughts on each one. A summary of my tastes: I dislike most sitcoms (laugh tracks, ugh, plus the same sets over and over again, boooring), and I prefer beautiful people (OK so I’m shallow, but it’s entertainment, so I’m allowed, right??). Also, I’m not really into reality TV, and I’ve never watched an Asian drama other than 还珠格格. Gimme all the American dramedies!!

I have yet to meet someone with mostly similar tastes — my friends are almost all ardent fans of either Glee, HIMYM or The Office/Community/Parks & Rec, hugely popular shows that I have absolutely zero interest in. Are you my TV-watching soul mate? Read on and find out…

Are You Ready To Get Back To Work?

The last — and possibly first and only — movie that my parents, brother and I watched in a movie theater together was Casino Royale. It was Thanksgiving week of my senior year of high school, and because I was working part-time at the theater, I could get free tickets for myself and my parents.

Thanks to my rising social media influence (LOL) on Klout, I scored free tickets to an advanced screening of Skyfall, which I braved wind, rain and snow to see on Wednesday night. Below, I spell out my thoughts and give or take points for excellence, logic, etc. in the style of Vulture’s Gossip Girl recaps.

SPOILERS AHEAD >>>

Hurricane Hygiene

Monday

Damn, you knew you should’ve taken a shower this afternoon before the power went out. You were too busy reading hurricane updates to actually prepare for the hurricane. Before going to bed (much earlier today than usual), you wash your feet by flashlight because you still have some dignity. Being in the bathroom in the dark is scary. Bloody Mary bloody Mary…

Tuesday

You don’t bother to apply makeup because you know for sure you’re not going outside today. Also, hair is up in a bun because you were supposed to wash it yesterday and now it’s been three days and it’s getting kind of icky. If you’re lucky enough to still have running water, you can at leaset wash your hands and face. Otherwise, there’s always hand sanitizer! There’s no point in washing any other part of your body because you’ve been completely sedentary the whole day.

Wednesday

What? That’s not dandruff…it’s…kindling…for the fire you’re building in the middle of the living room to keep warm! Rub some coconut oil on your head; it’ll help.

Today you put on some makeup because you’re heading to a friend’s place uptown. If you’re one of those people who won’t go out in public without a little eyeliner or mascara, you’d better hope you’re applying something semi-permanent because you, in your rushed naiveté, assume that you’ll be back home by nightfall and thus neglect to pack anything. Even a toothbrush.

Now would be a really nice time to own some comfy sweatpants, but you only have jeans because this is New York, where your closet (if you have one) doesn’t have enough room to store extraneous clothing items. Sigh.

After hiking five miles to your friend’s apartment (still faster than a bus!) without breaking a sweat (because it’s cold outside), you are rewarded with a shower. Now you really wish you had brought a change of clothes or toiletries, but you bum a toothbrush, towel and some gym shorts off your friend. You don’t bother washing your hair (still wound tightly in a bun) because it’s long and plentiful and you’re just too tired to deal with it. Without your Clarisonic brush and the daily 5-product regimen you use on your face, your skin also gets dryyy. But considering how oily your face usually is, perhaps it’s an improvement.

You sleep in the shirt you’ve been wearing all day. Don’t worry; it’s okay to do that if you didn’t sweat. No shame.

Thursday

Your friend kindly lends you a shirt, and you don your pants, socks and hoodie from yesterday and journey to another friend’s casa. By now, your hair (still in a bun) is a certified mess. When hair is in need of washing, some people’s scalps are oily enough to start a grease fire, while others’ are dry enough to start a forest fire. You finally let down your hair and give it a thorough washing. How did people deal before showers were invented?

None of your friends had floss. Who needs floss anyway? You’ve never heard of anyone actually getting gingivitis. You use your old t-shirt to wrap your wet hair and wear your friend’s shirt, the one you’ve been wearing all day, to sleep. You realize that you haven’t shaved your legs in two weeks (it is fall, after all) and hope the extra fuzz will keep your legs warmer. In any case, it’s November now, so you have a valid excuse not to shave all month.

Friday

You don’t bother changing after waking up — your friend’s clothes are actually pretty comfortable, and besides, you’re just spending the day bumming around her apartment while she’s at work. Amazingly, your eye makeup has managed to stay on, which means you haven’t rubbed your eyes for 60 hours. What self-control!

After hearing that electricity is back in your apartment, you gleefully return home to find your kitchen only faintly smelling of the rotting garbage and perishable food you left behind. Forget taking a shower; the water is still blisteringly cold. The thing you’re most excited about doing? Changing out of the underwear you’ve been wearing for the past three days.