I did a 24 hour juice cleanse. Here’s what happened.

Does a liquid detox make us feel better, or just leave us broke and unsatisfied?

A whole day without solid food is an unappealing prospect for many of us.

Finding the energy to power through a whole day of just being alive seems almost impossible without regular meals and snacks. Obviously, there’s that whole part of it just being a bit bloody miserable too.

However, despite our obvious human requirement for food, and our emotional attachments to it, the juice cleanse (or juice fast) is still a popular short-term diet. Some of these cleanse packages can claim to offer everything from rapid weight loss to a full body detox.

Reader, I remain skeptical.

The basis of these cleanses is the consumption of only juice for anything between 1 and 30 days. Naturally, they are often also prohibitively expensive.

Questions and doubts abound. Where will I get protein from? Where will I get fat from? Will my pee be green? Will my teeth rot? Will all this expense be worth it?

To cement my own feelings about this trend, and to provide my lovely YouTube viewers with some juicy schadenfreude, I tried it out.

Looking to a local juicing company, whom I had previously ordered from in the name of supporting small business, I ordered my day’s worth of plant-based fluids. 5 bottled drinks to be consumed over the course of the 12–16 hours I would be awake for.

Scotland is not exactly the wellness capital of the world, so anyone to whom I disclosed my juicy plan was utterly horrified. I carried on regardless, starting my day feeling uncharacteristically open-minded.

You can watch a vlog version of this article here!

Juice 1 ~ 09:00

The morning began on a positive note. The first drink of the cleanse was a plant-based chocolate milk. Not strictly a juice, but made of cashews, dates, raw cacao powder and vanilla.

Genuinely delicious, and the viscosity made it relatively satisfying.

Absolutely no negatives to be drawn from this one. I was happy and satiated until my next drink and didn’t feel any unpleasant side effects.

Juice 2 ~12:30

Similarly, no big deal. A bright orange bottle of carrot and orange juice with lime and turmeric.

This one was nice and refreshing. The carrot wasn’t too earthy and the orange wasn’t too sickly sweet or acidic. Again, wholly enjoyable.

However, taking a 30-minute lunch break felt entirely redundant when all I had in front of me was a bottle of juice. Watching my partner enjoy a full plate of food as I slowly sipped through a straw just felt wrong.

Juice 3 ~ 15:30

The wall is here. I have hit the wall. The wall has hit me.

It’s time for the green one. A bottle of truly swamp-green apple, cucumber, celery, spinach and lemon.

Admittedly, this juice was better than expected. Heavy on the celery, but that did also mean it wasn’t pure sugary apple juice. Again, it was refreshing and relatively enjoyable.

It was around this time that the human emotions took over my logical brain.

Hunger. Fatigue. Overall grumpiness.

Almost as if my body had suddenly come to the realisation that it hadn’t had any solid food in over 15 hours, it rebelled. I could barely keep my eyes open to do the work I’d been trying to get done all morning. I would read without absorbing a single thing my eyes had seen. My stomach rumbled and stung with hunger, nothing unbearable but enough to distract oneself from just about everything else. Of course, knowing there was to be no real food for approximately another 18 hours did not help.

Juice 4 ~18:30

Potentially the least excited I have ever been to ingest something.

A bottle of vibrant purple carrot, beetroot, cucumber, apple, lime and ginger juice greeted me at the fridge. Not one for those who loathe beetroot…or for those who have already had over 1 litre of plant-based blends that same day.

The juice was tasty, as they all were. The bold beetroot flavour mellowed out by the cucumber and apple. I would have probably really enjoyed this under different circumstances.

Sadly, by this point I was irritability incarnate.

I couldn’t be bothered going for a walk, my only real form of exercise in our current state of quarantine. I envied every sight or smell of proper food. I had to continue explaining the juice cleanse to every face that popped up on a Zoom call. Worst of all, this juice felt like it went straight through me, doing nothing to alleviate peckishness or tiredness.

Juice 5 ~ 21:30

The final bottle of prescribed liquid contained a plant-based vanilla milkshake. One of the better drinks of the day, it was thick and sweet and genuinely very good. I had saved this second creamy drink for last in a vain attempt to improve my mood before heading off to bed with an empty stomach.

It was mildly better received than the other drinks of the day, in the fact it at least contained some varied macronutrients. Unfortunately, by this point I was in such a bad mood I resented even ingesting it. I needed the calories, and hoped it would help, but ultimately it did very little.

How did I feel?

Not great.

The juice cleanse had started positively, but ultimately declined into a wavy cycle of fatigue and hunger. It felt as though I could actually tell when my blood sugar was spiking and crashing, something most of us probably don’t experience in our everyday diet.

Some part of me felt virtuous. Drinking so many readily-available nutrient rich fluids, and water in between, made me the most hydrated I’ve been in a long time. I also didn’t have the occasional uncomfortably-full feeling that greedy creatures like myself often feel after overeating. It was like a 12 hour peek into being Gwyneth Paltrow.

…And on that note, sod being Gwyneth Paltrow.

Was it worth it?

Honestly, no.

While I enjoyed the actual products, the Juicing Co make some truly delicious and high-quality drinks, this was not for me.

This may be because I only did 24 hours instead of 72. This may be because the cost gave me unrealistically high expectations. This may be because I wasn’t wholeheartedly into the idea in the first place. Perhaps a mix of all three.

Regardless of the reason, this just wasn’t it.

I missed the ritual of preparing and savouring food. I missed enjoying a meal (or 3) with a loved one. I missed the freedom of noshing on whatever I wanted.

The whole experience brought feelings of restriction, of joylessness, and of genuinely unpleasant physical responses. Which really felt like a shame when the juices were actually really tasty.

Who should do a juice cleanse, and who shouldn’t?

Ultimately, I must acknowledge that I may not be the target market for such a product.

Maybe a juice cleanse or juice fast would be fantastic for someone trying to kick a really unhealthy or unbalanced diet. Maybe it would be great who struggled with the digestion of full meals. Maybe it would be a good way to psychologically reset after a period of over-indulgence.

To a regular person, this just felt like a waste of some money and of some opportunities to eat delicious food.

I love juices, I love plant-based drinks. I would never discourage you from buying and enjoying them, especially the yummy ones. However, I couldn’t recommend the commitment of a juice cleanse.

The rollercoaster of mental and physical effects was not worth the clarity of my urine.

Even if my strong Scottish liver disagrees, I’ll take my chances with the joy of fried food and cheap bottles of red rather than go through a juice cleanse again.