The Juice Will Set You Free

Cold pressed juice and alkalized water are two of the latest trends in healthy living and I thought I'd try a three day exercise in self-denial.

Living in Virginia Beach I have easy access to Town Center Cold Pressed juice, which is collocated with the Daily Grind in the (surprise) Town Center.

There are several cold pressed juice places in Virginia Beach, it turns out, but this one came recommended by a coworker who does this on a regular basis. As it happens, if two or more people sign up for a cleanse there is a discount applied which puts the price just below what it would be if you bought the juice separately. The juice listed on the site cost about $7 each and the water is about $3. You get 18 juices and 2 gallons of water for $125 if you get the 20% group discount. Otherwise it’s closer to $150. To be fair the juices in the cleanse are not the same as they have listed individually so there may be more to them.

Four of us did the three day but each did it different days. Three of us compared our experiences. Before I go in to my experience I need to note that we did not all get the same juices. We ordered the same program but some of the juices were different. There was one kale juice that tasted far too much like kale for one coworker to drink. Another coworker’s juice number five for each day tasted like straight cayenne pepper but the number five juices the rest of us had were green and tangy, more like a Granny Smith apple juice. My coworker with the cayenne juice also found a fruit label in one bottle. I had none of those problems personally. Every juice I had was consistent and tasty.

Surviving on six juices a day is a scary prospect when you’re accustomed to eating some small amount six times a day. I follow a healthy diet and stay active. If this is news to you I hope you’re enjoying your first visit to this blog. Thank you and please tip your wait staff on the way out. Anyway, I found it a mental exercise as much as anything. I weighed my options of when to do the program and decided three weekdays would be best because being at work makes me structure my time better than when I’m at home and I have other things to think about than food. My coworkers who did the program over weekends agreed with me after the fact. Boredom is the enemy.

Not to draw any comparison but I can’t imagine Jesus looked forward to His three day ordeal any more than I looked forward to this. I knew it was coming and time was counting down and I had to mentally prepare for it.

You must order and pay for this in advance and say when you’ll pick it up. I picked it up on a Tuesday. You have to get it between 8:30 and 10AM or so. They’re flexible but they open at 7:30AM and they need time to prepare it and they have limited space to store the prepared juice. Three bags of six juice bottles and three gallons of water took me two trips to my apartment, which is in the same building. They would have helped carry it to my car if I needed but since it’s mostly college aged girls working the counter an old man asking a college girl to come to his apartment would have been inappropriate and immediately rejected, I’m sure.

I started on a Wednesday at 7:00AM. The first juice was sweet and tasty with hints of mango. My next juice was supposed to be at 10AM but I had meetings and got it at 11AM. The second was my favorite in that it had a strong taste of ginger. I looked forward to it each day. Number three would have been at noon and it was green and probably had the most kale in it. It didn’t taste like any one thing in particular and it was satisfying. Number four was red and probably had some amount of pomegranate. It was also just a little spicy but I liked it. Number five I drank on the way home and it was so tart and tangy I probably made a face but it was still good.

Number six would normally be at 6PM and was black because it had activated charcoal in it. This one is worth discussing. I was an EMT at one point in my life and I know that activated charcoal is something given to poisoning victims so I’m aware of its ability to “detox”. Still, it’s freaking charcoal. A dish of it in a smelly fridge will do wonders, by the way. Most people who drink activated charcoal do it to try to avoid impending death and most of it will come out one way or the other, hopefully after absorbing a good amount of toxins. So, with that in mind I was prepared for the worst. It wasn’t that bad. A little gritty, as you can imagine, but not repulsive. They have enough apple juice and whatever to make it pretty palatable.

So this and a full gallon of battery water was the deal for three days. I was surprised how satisfied I was just with that. I was only hungry from 2PM to 6PM each day and my more active coworker said it was the same with him. The juice takes about thirty minutes to drink and because of that time it seems to satisfy my hunger.

I felt more energized, I will admit. I did not have the afternoon lull from 2 to 3PM like I normally would. I slept better but not longer. I did have morning headaches from, I expect, no caffeine for those three days. Day three I was dragging a little in the morning.

The cleansing did continue the full time. That is to say there was elimination even though there was no solid food. A lot of that can be attributed to the alkaline water and the charcoal. The end result is you do feel cleaner, even if it’s in your head.

As for working out, I didn’t. I have been lifting a lot but with zero protein on board that wasn’t happening. I may have been able to do some cardio but a coworker said his HIIT session on day one nearly killed him. My other coworker said she couldn’t lift even close to her normal rep weight. So I sat out those days. Getting back to it afterwards I saw how much my muscle tone and strength suffered. My rep weights are lower and I’m burning out sooner. So be warned, loss of muscle tone is the price you pay for going without protein.

I had no noticeable weight loss. My coworker who did the HIIT session lost about 5 pounds but it was mostly water. In three days your body will utilize its glycogen stores to get energy. So you’re burning stored glucose which isn’t a bad store to clean out but it also draws out water. The loss of muscle also releases water into your system so yes, you pee a lot. A lot more than the gallon of water and 96 ounces of juice. But once you start (slowly) eating normally and restore the glycogen and add back muscle the weight comes back. Slowly is key, by the way. Your metabolism will have slowed somewhat and that will cause your body to hold on to whatever it can and throw most of it into fat stores.

So, what did I learn? If your goal is sustainable weight loss look elsewhere. The point to healthy weight loss is to lose fat and keep or create lean muscle which raises your metabolism and a juice fast will not accomplish that. You’re getting carbs and sugar, albeit naturally, and that gives you energy and possibly fat, even though you’re only ingesting about 1500 calories a day. If you like your muscles and want to cut there are better and more natural whole foods you can eat to accomplish that and your body will respond to the balance better.

Remember your body is a machine and it needs to right fuel to run properly. Imagine it like a coal fired locomotive. Coal burns at a certain temperature for a certain length of time and that heat is what the boilers need to turn the wheels and yadda yadda. Your body needs the right food to power its systems too and if you do it right there won’t be much left to clean out. Still, it’s not bad to flush out the ashes in the firebox from time to time.

If your goal is to simply clean yourself out this will work. If you want to feel healthier and have a bit more energy for a while this is a good thing to try. It’s possible a straight up three day fast with only alkalized water would do the same but not having the nutrients and calories from the juice would make it hard and possibly do more damage.

For me I get some amount of satisfaction that I did it. I wasn’t sure I could handle it but it was not as hard as I expected. I have had my usual winter slide as far as my weight goes, primarily because early sunsets shut off my normal cardio routine, and this feels like I was able to take an extreme measure to make a change. It may not have any long lasting physical benefits, in fact it probably will not, but mentally I feel stronger.