I have followed the fresh-pressed juicing trend for some time now. In turns intrigued, in parts repelled by all the green juices that have floated around in my Instagram feed, I knew that I just had to give this trend a go sometime.
I started small last year just replacing a meal once or twice a week with a homemade juice. But I have never had the courage to do an all-day detox until last weekend, when I took the plunge and ordered the 1-day Fresh Pressery detox from Junglee. I ordered a batch of six juices that I am supposed to drink throughout the day as meal replacements.
Here are some insights as to how I fared and some things you might want to think about if you ever try a detox.
Before you start
I'd recommend doing a couple of meal replacements with juices before you embark on a full-day fast, if you have never done something like this before. If you are used to fasting (religious or otherwise), you can straight away start with a one-day detox.
Have a good meal (a nice combo of carbs and proteins) the night before you start the detox. This way you don't wake up very hungry. I had eaten pasta the night before, and so I didn't wake up ravenously like I usually do when I have just chappatis.
Do the detox on a day where you have nothing much going on. I did this detox on Sunday, where I didn't have any social obligations, and had not planned any physical exercise. While a mild walk or yoga is ok, I don't think I would have had the energy for a full-on run, or game of badminton.
And again unless you are used to fasting, it's a good idea not to try this on a working day.
My Detox Diary
This detox was kind of no-brainer because Fresh Pressery lays out all the details on the bottle out for you. You can buy these juices as part of a detox package, and each bottle comes labeled with a recommended time to drink.
So basically, my first juice of the day was the Green Flush juice that I was recommended to try at 9:00 am. Since I woke up early, by the time it turned 9 I was raring to try this juice. The ingredients didn't look very promising, doodhi (a very healthy vegetable called bottle gourd in English) is very good for health but it's also rather tasteless, and combining that with spinach didn't seem like a good idea. However the healthy doses of ginger, cucumber, and lemon overrode the doodhi/spinach flavor, and I found myself enjoying this juice quite a bit.
The second juice was the Red Purifier consisting of beetroot, tomato, red apple, ginger, cucumber, and lemon. Again, not bad, although not as good as the first one. I had this juice at the recommended time of 11:30.
The third juice was the real killer. This was the Super Green consisting of kale, celery, apple, bell pepper, parsley, lettuce, ginger, and lemon. And this was truly gag-inducing. I struggled to get this down, and ended up swigging it bit by bit for more than half an hour. At this point, my energy and enthusiasm levels for this detox also started to dip. How was I going to get through the rest of the day. It was only 2:00 pm!
The solution for this turned out to be simple. I put down Piglet for a quick nap, assigned some Maths practice for Snubnose, and huddled up under the blankets for a nap. This turned out to be brilliant. I was feeling very low-energy and tired, and pretty bored with the juices, and so it helped that I got a couple of hours of zzz to kill the time. Now you understand why I recommended doing this detox on a lazy do-nothing kind of day?
I napped through my next juice time, so I ended up feeling very hungry and gulped down my fourth juice almost an hour past the recommended time of 4:30. This is called the Purple Saver, which again contained hefty doses of beetroot, along with carrot, celery, spinach, lemon, and ginger. This was not bad, and I might have enjoyed it a lot more if by now, I wasn't just tired of the juicing already.
By 7:30, I was hungry again and ready for the next juice, which had always seemed to me the most promising of the lot. The Yellow Hydration looked and smelt yummy with pineapple (one of my favorite fruits) acting as the base, along with coconut water, amla, chia seeds, and aloe. Unfortunately, it was not as tasty as I hoped with the amla overtaking the sweetness of the pineapple, and overall I thought taste-wise, it was rather mixed.
The last juice of the day was supposed to be the Almond Milk mixed in with honey, sea salt, and vanilla. Unfortunately, it had turned completely bad. I had my suspicions about the bottle when I received it from the courier, and I should have returned it back to the company at that time itself. The courier had carried all the bottles around in his bike all day long without any kind of refrigeration whatsoever, and even when I received it, it was quite obvious that the milk had curdled.
So, I ended up doing the juice fast one juice short. Ordinarily, I would have overlooked something like this, but the almond milk was the drink that had all the protein that was lacking in the other juices, so I ended up doing a quite lopsided detox. And anyway, which company delivers food like that in a plastic bag on a hot day? I was quite indignant with the way the stuff came to me, and if I had not already pre-paid for the product, and if I wasn't so excited to get started, I would have refused to accept a drink that was clearly going bad.
Overall Feelings on the Detox
I had started this detox with great trepidation. While I am not a snacker, I do like my three meals a day, and the thought of skipping all three meals, and replacing them with juice every 2-3 hours, well, it was a big change. Surprisingly though, I didn't feel too bad. One reason I did the detox on a quiet day in was I was afraid of those embarrassing hunger growls in public, but honestly, I didn't feel hungry at all.
What I did feel was a little tired and light-headed towards the evening, and even that, I am not sure whether it was psychological. However, I am glad that I didn't plan much outdoor activity, or social gatherings, because I definitely didn't feel up for it.
So will I do this again?
I think I might do this off and on actually. The day after the detox, I woke up feeling lighter and less bloated than I normally do. I tend to have heavy dinners (not a good thing I know), so waking up post-detox was a very pleasant feeling. I also felt that my skin and hair felt and looked better, but again that could be psychological.
What I do know is that I am very bad at eating fresh produce and always tend to fall short on the 5 servings a day of fruit and veggies, so a day of detox is a nice way to catch up on my weekly quota, while at the same time cutting down the carbs and fat.
So, definitely I am going to be trying out these juices more often, occasionally replacing a meal with a juice, and maybe also the occasional all-day detoxes. What I still don't have the nerve is going all out for the longer 3-day or more detox fasts. I would really need some strong motivation to stick the course on anything longer than a day.
So have you tried juice fasts before? What was your experience?
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