Day 3: End of the Road!

Check out Day Zero of the Juice Cleanse here!

It is the last day!!!

I'm not going to lie to you, dear readers..... I totally cheated.  As soon as I hit "Publish" on the last entry, I brewed a pot of coffee and drank it all.

Here's my logic:  I'm doing this for myself, and if I'm not going to advocate for myself (and the poor folks around me), and listen to my drug-dependent body, then who is?  I have decided I can survive on any crazy diet, as long as my good pal coffee is beside me.

For the rest of the day, I stuck to the cleanse and felt fabulous!  I even was able to hold off on dinner until a little later, so I wasn't freaking out at the end of the day.  I even managed to be proactive and craft today's juice last night so I could just put it in my work bag today.  Caffeine: it works, people.  Actually, it probably has worked even better on this cleanse, because it hasn't had to fight with the other carbs and calories for my attention!

So let's end this with a bang:  Day 3 - Liver & Kidney Flush!!!

My Ingredients:

6 apples

1 beet + roots

1 bunch celery

1 handful of failure spinach

1 cucumber

1 lemon

2 tomatoes

15 carrots

My finished product!  It looks exactly the same as yesterdays, except not as pretty.  Sorry, folks.

So, I did that all day, and came home and had my chicken + broccoli + spinach dinner.  Again.  Tomorrow, I don't have to do anything, but I'm PLANNING for this to roll into some more responsible eating at home and at work.  I've got a lot of leftover veggies and fruits for one thing.  I also have some lunches at the ready.

Here are my takeaways:

1.  Using a juicer is pretty fun, and even though the prep and clean-up can take some time, if you've got a system down (and employ some life hacks), it can be a fun and exciting experience for the food nerd!

2.  I definitely felt like I was wasting a lot of food.  If you think about the fact that I've taken all these beautiful ingredient pictures and reduced them to about 40 ounces of juice, I start to feel like a wasteful monster.

3.  The juices were delicious, and definitely tasted fresher and healthier than any commercial juice!  I usually don't drink store-bought juice because they are always too sweet and jam-packed with added sugar.  I may be a freak though, because I still diluted these juices for being too sweet, even though they were just the naked ingredients.

4.  Although juicing itself is cool, and I will employ the machine in the future, I don't think I could do any type of juice cleanse or fast again.  I need to chew food!  I need to eat!  Liquids aren't food.

5.  This actually wasn't as expensive as I expected, especially considering all I have left over.  I spent about $38 through Peapod to get the fruits and veggies (and chamomile tea!) for this.  It may seem like a lot, but when you consider the fact that I still have two crisper drawers and then some full of extra produce which I can use for other purposes, and weigh that against what you might pay for food (and the extra!) on an average 3-day weekend, it isn't insane.  Again though, I felt like I wasted a lot, but there are many things I could have done with the pulp and chose not to!


Final Thoughts:  Do I feel cleansed and flushed from yesterday's Colon Cleanse and today's Liver & Kidney Flush?  I'd say this video accurately describes how today has gone: