5 Day Juice Cleanse Tips & Shopping List

I will start off this post with a common sense disclaimer. I am not a medical professional and in no way qualified to give medical advice. I am only sharing my personal experiences and opinions. I have found juice cleanses to be a good thing for my body and my health, but I cannot stress the importance enough of knowing and listening to your own body and consulting professionals, when necessary.

A few other tips I have for anyone who may think of considering a juice cleanse:

1. Do not schedule yourself too heavily during the cleanse. Although it is nice to be busy and take your mind off of food, you do not know the effects detoxing will have on you and may be completely miserable if you have too much to do. I was pretty much incapacitated Days 2 & 3 and could not cope very well with life outside the perimeter of my couch. I came straight home from work and pretty much slept my evenings away.

2. Juice yourself. I absolutely love the convenience and quality of juices from The Living Root Cellar, but juicing at home was MUCH cheaper. I will post my full grocery list below. For all our produce, we ended up spending around $120, for 5 days.

3. Use the pulp as compost. Our garden thanks us every time we juice.

4. Similar to #1, try not to put yourself in a position to do too many physical activities. I was much weaker and got tired so much faster than normal. I definitely could not run during the cleanse and only managed some light yoga.

5. Take the time you would normally be preparing food, cooking or eating to think, meditate, be introspective, be quiet and learn something new about yourself.

6. If possible, do the cleanse with someone else. The process for me was so much easier having the support of my husband and someone who was going through the same situation. We were able to talk each other through more difficult moments and commiserate. Plus, it would have made is so much harder if he was eating in front of me.

The List:

My initial grocery store trip yielded the following:

• 21 English cucumbers
• 3 pineapple
• 20 lbs of carrots
• 7.5 lbs of celery
• 12 heads of romaine lettuce
• 6 bananas
• 5 lbs of frozen blueberries
• 12 green apples
• 2 lbs of dates
• 6 beets
• 4 bunches of parsley
• ginger

I had to make a mid week trip to the store, because I underestimated some of the juices. I also ended up purchasing:

• Another “claw” of ginger
• 12 green apples (seriously miscalculated those the first time)
• 2 pineapple

After the cleanse, I had leftover:

• romaine lettuce
• celery

I hope this information was helpful if you are thinking of doing a juice cleanse. Please let me know if there was anything I left out, or if you have further questions.