Juice Angry. Juice Happy. Juice Sad.

As promised, here is the last installment of my latest juicing saga.  I call this a tale of 3 juice personalities and I want to use this time to tell you how the juice made me feel the last time around.

Let’s level set.  After my last juice cleanse, I said “Do the pre-cleanse!” I continue to prove I can not be trusted to take my own advice.  I ignored the pre-cleanse again.  I also determined up front that I would not give up caffeine.  I gave up my Fat Free Half and Half and Splenda in favor of black coffee sweetened with Agave nectar, but I didn’t even consider ditching the caffeine after the last fiasco.  I also purposely purchased some cucumbers, lemons, and spring-mix salad…just in case.  Better to break and eat cucumbers than, well everything.

I should also say my co-workers were reluctant for me to embark upon this experiment because apparently my last juice cleanse made me, “juice angry.”  If you read my last series of posts, you can see clear illustrations of my juice anger in my attitude to the “liars” that claimed to not be hungry.  Not my finest moment, but as anyone who has ever been to Wal-Mart or the self-checkout line can attest, certainly not my worst either.  Either way, the juicing basically made me Hangry for 48 hours.

This last time around, Day one was not as miserable as last time.  Maybe it was because I drank coffee, maybe it is because I knew what to expect.  I was starving.  I drank a ton of water, which helped, but I was starving.  Nina and I traded emails through the day and at first she, “wasn’t hungry at all.”  By mid-afternoon there was a list of shameful things she would have done for Chinese food.  I avoided the veggies, but I did drink an extra juice.

The next two days were much much better.  I finally experienced this not so hungry Zen feeling everyone yaps about.  I mean I was still hungry and ogled food, but I wasn’t starving or angry.  I was actually jovially resigned,  I lost about 2 pounds on day one and kept going down which contributed to me being juice happy.  At the end, I even extended two days and lost a total of 8 pounds.  Yay Juice!

So, what about Juice sad?  Where does juice sad come in?  It came in on the tail end (pun intended) of day two with some rather intense gas and frequent trips to the restroom so my body could have its juice revenge.  I actually left work so I could spend quality time on my personal can rather than fearing someone would recognize my shoes in the ladies room at work.  I was pretty sure I was dying of healthiness.  This phase passed, but it was sort of miserable while it lasted.

Final verdict, I again say go for it!  Especially if you’re doing it to cleanse.  Those 8 pounds didn’t stay off after I got back on food, but a good 4 of them did and most importantly, it motivated me to keep eating better.  The down side, it’s expensive.  At $50-$75 a day for juice, it’s not economical, but if you have the dough – try it and let me know how it goes.

I Juice? Part 2 – Suja and Whole Food Juice Reviews.

Greetings and Salutations.  I realize this post is many days behind the initial post on my second/third juicing experience.  I have no excuse.  I suck.  But, better late than never!  As I mentioned in the first part of this post, I juice? Still? Seriously? https://prettydamnuseful.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/i-juice/, I strayed from just Blueprint juices this time around.  Actually – I only had one Blueprint Juice, the Cinnamon Cashew Milk and we all know from the first time around, I find this drink to be heavenly.  This time around I mixed juices from Suja and Whole Foods to create my own custom, you don’t have a damn degree in juicing either, cleanse.  So for all you blueprinters or first time users of these products, here are my thoughts on the juices I tried from each brand.

One last note, I tried to follow the Blueprint type format So each day I drank 3 green juices, 2 fruit juices, and a nut milk.

 

The Suja Cleanse Juice Line.

Suja Juices

So, overall, the Suja juices were comparable to Blueprint juices.  The Suja juices were cheaper at whole foods, $6.99 a bottle in comparison to $8.99 a bottle and the nut milk (almond coconut) was also $6.99 in comparison to the $11.99 price tag on the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  I’d like to make one note, the Suja juices are named by their benefit (I guess) so the cute names aren’t mine.  I actually found them annoying because I had to try to remember what’s in them and the name.  Just a nit.  Here’s brief overview of the juices I tried:

• Green Supreme – This was supposed to be the last green juice of the day.  I didn’t look that up until day 2, so I started with this juice.  Oh well.  This can be described as Salad in a bottle.  If you like the Kale Blueprint juice – you’ll like this one.  If you don’t like that one, you won’t.  It wasn’t particularly sweet and while I like green juice, my experience is most people find this one to be outright yucky.   Nina found it to be “grassy”.
• Glow – This was still salad in a bottle, not much sweeter than the Blueprint green juice and while it had some extra stuff, tasted very similarly to Green Supreme.
• FIJI – Not sure I could differentiate between this one and Glow.
• Fuel – Tastes like carrots.  If you like carrots, you’ll like this one.  If you don’t, you won’t, but as the second juice of the day, it is no PAM (Pineapple Apple Mint from Blueprint).
• Vanilla Cloud – The Suja answer to the Cinnamon Cashew Milk…. For $5 less, it passes and it is good, sweet, and filling.  It is however, not nearly as heavenly as the Cinnamon Cashew Milk.  However, don’t get me wrong, it is very very good – especially after a day of basically vegetable juices.
• Purify – I didn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.  This kid does NOT do beets.

Whole Food Juices

Whole Foods Fresh Squeezed Juices

Whole Foods also has a line of fresh pressed juices.  While I was staring at the dwindling juice choices in the aisle, another helpful customer pointed out the Whole Foods Juices stating they were cheaper, but she wouldn’t drink them because they aren’t Organic.  I find that hard to believe.  Isn’t everything at Whole Foods Organic?  Either way, they were cheaper and available and organic or not – I do not really care.  I believe on my trip their juice bottles were in the $5.99/$6.99 range.  Also, they have cute names, but for some irrational reason they don’t irritate me as much as the Suja names.  My peeves don’t have to make sense, they are mine.   I tried two of the juices there:

• Greens with Envy: Contains: Green Kale, Curly Parsley, Baby Spinach, Broccoli, Cucumber, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Lemon.  This green juice was actually quite sweet to me.  I think the pineapple made the difference, but it was DEFINITELY sweeter than either the Blueprint or the Suja green juices.  It almost felt like a green juice cheat.  It was good though.  I couldn’t say much about the nutritional information because the label wasn’t detailed enough to compare to the other brands, but this is definitely the most delicious of the juices, especially for green juice haters.
• Belly Rub:  Contains: Green Cabbage, Bartlett Pears, Pineapples, Curly Parsley, Fresh Mint, Fresh Ginger.  This was the closest thing to PAM I found.  A co-worker examined the bottle and reminded me that the cabbage diet was used to and I quote “clean you right out” so I should be careful.  Between you and me, this juice gave me killer gas.  I actually had to excuse myself to the bathroom and then wait it out until empty to “unload”.  I guess cabbage can be quite brutal.  The juice was tasty, but may be best consumed when you are not likely to be in public or around people that can hear or smell for a while.

My final verdict – if you want to save a little money over Blueprint (and it’s actually cheaper at your store)  go for Suja.  It seemed to be basically same difference to me and the juices were pretty tasty.  If you REALLY hate green juice, ease into it with the Whole Foods Greens With Envy.  It’s much less Salad in a Bottle.  If you are a regular juicer, this may seem a bit on the sweet end of the spectrum for you.

In my next post – I’ll talk about my four/five-ish day experience and how it compared to the first juice cleanse I did.  I shall call this post Juice Angry.  Juice Crazy.  Juice Happy.

For more information on Suja Cleanses see: http://www.sujajuice.com/collections/juice-cleanses

For more information on Whole Foods juices see: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/service/cold-pressed-raw-juice

I Juice? Still? Seriously?

Apparently, I do.

After my first fiasco with Blueprint Cleanse, you figured I’d never ever juice again even though I told you It was pretty da** useful.  You figured I’d given up juicing for life because as my co-workers said, I got Juice Angry.  But alas dear readers, you forget the power of the mind to FORGET and gloss-over old pains.  So, I juiced again.  Twice and….drumroll, it didn’t exactly suck.  The second time was a moral support to a friend (I’ll Call her Nina) also juicing, the third time round was just me.   There’s so much I want to share of this juicing experience that I shall drag it out into 3, yes THREE posts.  In this first post, I’m simply going to tell you about my process this time, I did a bit of mixing up :).  In the next post, I’ll tell you about the NEW juices I tried and their yum factor alone and relative to Blueprint.  In the final post, we’ll talk about the actual experience, what changed from the last time, and my takeaways.

So, if you’re not weeks early in deciding to order and hate paying shipping (I am both), you can still buy juices from Blueprint at Whole Foods.  As I trooped off to buy my three day cleanse juices (starting Monday – purchased on Sunday), I realized this juice thing has REALLY taken off.  So much so that all of the juices I’d need for the Blueprint Foundation cleanse (no icky Beet Juice for me) weren’t available.  They were TOTALLY out of green juice, PAM, and the lemonade.  So a better description is the only things left were that horrifying beet juice and the heavenly Cashew Cinnamon milk.  I was screwed.  I then noticed two things, a brand called Suja and that Whole Foods had their own juices.  So of course, I made myself an expert and created my OWN combination cleanse.  I purchased Suja green juices (Green Supreme, FIJI, and GLOW), Suja Carrot Juice, Whole Foods green juice (Greens with Envy), Whole foods fruity juice (Belly Rub), and Whole Foods Carrot/Apple/Ginger juice.  I purchased a combination of the Suja Vanilla Cloud Coconut Almond (2), and the Blueprint Cashew Cinnamon (1).  So, I guess all in all, I did a combo Suja/Whole Foods juice cleanse.  The formula I determined was somewhat simple, probably wrong, but I’d try to follow the Blueprint format – mostly.  Green Juice, Fruity Juice, Green Juice, Fruity Juice, Green Juice, Nut Milk.  After the checkout guy ensured me I was insane to only have juice for three days and I made sure to stock up on cucumbers just in case, I took my juice home and prepared for my first day of cleansing by ordering a pizza.  Yum.  Yum.

For more information on the Blueprint Cleanse: http://blueprintcleanse.com/choose-your-cleanse

Don’t forget to read the next installment – Juice Angry.  Juice Crazy.  Juice Happy.   The Experience.

Blueprint Cleanse – The Verdict & Recommendations

The lone survivor of my 3 day cleanse

The three day cleanse is over and while I thought I’d hop out of bed this morning and run, not walk to the nearest piece of bacon, 2 things stop me.  First, after the pre-cleanse fiasco, I’ve learned not to wily nily buck the suggestions of those who invented the cleanse, including the pre-cleanse and the post cleanse routine.  Two, I don’t actually have the craving anymore.  If anything, I want some pineapple, apple, mint juice and may just stop by whole foods on the way to work to get some.

The final verdict?  Worth it.  I feel better, I feel healthier, I feel lighter.  The first day was hell on earth, but again, I attribute that to my crazy caffeine addiction more than anything else.

Coffee = The Sweet Nectar of the Gods….

Which, is another thing I’ve learned.  I knew I relied on the caffeine to get me up and moving and that if I didn’t have any, I’d get headaches.  Usually when the headache threatens, I down a diet coke and move on. Trying to live through the headache has convinced me that if I ever get kidnapped or have to live in the wilderness or something that forces me to give up caffeine and have to live off my wits and the will of my body, I am prey.  With that said, perhaps we’ll deal with that issue soon.  Anyone who knows me knows my general attitude is that a gal has to have a few vices (long as none are illegal or hurting others).  For now, I’m embracing my caffeine addiction and hoping that the world stays just the same until I can break it.

I’ve already discussed my general reviews of each of the juices and that hasn’t changed.  I will admit that 3 green juices is a bit much.  By the third one, I was over it most days.  I chugged them down at that point just to be one juice closer to my cashew dream.

A poor mans Cashew Agave Cinnamon milk.

Speaking of the cashew dream, I have been googling cashew milk recipes and you better believe you’ll be seeing a step by step of my first cashew making experiment on this forum soon.  I LOVE IT.  I usually drink almond milk and this morning I plan to see if the stuff I bought at the store with some cinnamon measures up.  I expect to be disappointed.

Finally, I did lose some weight.  It wasn’t my primary goal, I really did want to just clean myself up a bit, but overall I’m down about 5 pounds.  Now, I’m sure as soon as I start to eat solids again, most of that will go away, but people always wonder about the weight loss, so there it is.  Oh and the poop factor.  From my experience, you will not live in the bathroom.  The first morning was a little rough, but after that pretty normal experience.  If you are not used to drinking a bunch of water, you should know you’ll have to pee a lot.

Next….My recommendations if you plan to do this cleanse.

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