5 Days of CLEANSING

Back in December I decided to do a 5 day juice & vegan cleanse from one of my favourite vegan/vegetarian restaurants in the city, Fresh. It was right before the holidays, and I knew I would be indulging quite a bit over the next couple of weeks, which made it an optical time to reboot my system. The cleanse was a combination of about 4-5 juices a day and two small vegan salads that were all delivered fresh to my door. The entire service from Fresh and the quality of the ingredients were absolutely amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in a juice cleanse. Now, let’s get down to the real talk, what did I really think of the cleanse?

MORNINGS: My mornings have always been my favourite part of the day. I love a healthy breakfast and you know by now I love my coffee. Saying goodbye to those for 5 days was one of the tougher things in the beginning but I surprised myself by day 4, I was actually starting to crave the juice in the morning. However, a life without coffee in the morning is not something I would ever be okay with in the long run.

DINNER & LUNCH: I was allowed to eat a small vegan salad at lunch and dinner, which I thought I would be completely fine with, since I actually eat salad every day anyways. These two small salads definitely made the cleanse easier and if it’s your first time cleansing, than I would highly recommend easing your body into it this way. As much as the salads did fill me up a bit more than a regular juice, everything started tasting pretty much the same after day 3 and watching my boyfriend eat warm meals beside me made it that much more difficult.

BENEFITS: I love how this entire process becomes a good challenge,  I think it’s important to switch up your eating habits and see how different foods can really affect your overall body and mind. I did feel really good by the end of the week and that allowed me to be a lot easier on myself when I wanted to indulge in the next few days. However, you should know that indulging for me is not eating a tub of ice cream or an entire pizza, it’s was more about opening that bottle of wine and having some good cheese with friends.

Did I really notice a huge difference? To be honest, not really, but I don’t think that this particular juice cleanse is about dropping weight or noticing any major physical changes. I think a big factor here is that I eat healthy about 90% of the time already, I have always been an advocate on maintaining a healthy lifestyle so eating that many veggies wasn’t really new for my body. I think if you don’t eat that healthy or if you eat a lot of carbs and meats than you will definitely notice a lot more changes in your body over those 5 days. The worst thing for me, was that I felt extremely exhausted the first few days. By 2:00 PM, I was crashing and felt like I could take a nap instead of heading to the gym. I felt generally slower during my work outs and that was a huge negative about the entire cleanse.

Would I do it again? Yes, but on a few different terms. I would make sure to cleanse during a slower work week and perhaps after vacation to notice more changes.