A few weeks ago, I wrote about doing a juice cleanse for a day. I got a comment today asking about it, and realized I’d never written this follow-up post. I’d had some initial thoughts the day of the cleanse, but I’d wanted to think a bit more about the experience before posting.

If you’re too lazy to click over, basically, I felt kinda gross–gained some weight and just not generally healthy–and decided to do a juice cleanse for a day. I wanted to fit a little better into my fave skinny jeans.

Kelly, who is an RD, recently wrote a great post on five reasons not to juice cleanse.

Going into the juice cleanse, I didn’t expect miracles. I had been eating kinda crappily for awhile and was mostly looking for a mental reset, hoping that by forcing myself into a strict regimen of nothing but fruits and veggies in juice for a day, I’d have an easier time getting back to healthy ways. I didn’t expect it to magically “cleanse” my body. I one million percent agree with her point that the juices will not magically detox your body.

Also, juice cleanses are really expensive. Blueprint, which I did because it was on sale at Whole Foods, starts at $65/day. I spent around $40 on my juices on sale. Still not cheap, but a significant discount.

I chose to do this for one day instead of their typical 3-day cleanse because I could not imagine not eating real food for three days. One day, I could handle. Also, I’m currently at a point where I’d rather work out hard than consume less calories, so the idea of a lower-calorie regimen (Blueprint is about 1100 calories) for more than one day was not terribly appealing to me.

As I tried the first juice, I thought, okay, this could go two ways. I could just…have this juice…with my breakfast and just have a juice with breakfast. Or I could just try this for a day. The cleanse was six juices: two green juices, one lemonade-y juice, one beet juice (ew), one cashew milk (YUM) and one pineapple/apple/mint juice. All of the juices except the beet juice were tasty, and since you’re supposed to have plenty of water in between each juice, I never felt really hungry because I always felt so full of liquid.

I was about 4 juices down by dinnertime, and that was the only time I started missing food–so I went to a gentle yoga class. I came home and wanted to just do the cashew milk but finished the beet juice, too.

So? Did I lose weight? Yeah, a pound or two the next day, but that was certainly all water weight since I probably peed at least 10 times the day before. Did it “reset my cravings?” Yes, for the next two days until I went to a party and a few glasses of wine reset my cravings in a different way.

I think a cleanse like this is probably best if you have a big event coming up that you want to lose some quick water weight for, or if you have been eating crappy for a while and want something to force you to think a bit more closely about what you’re eating. (Or if you are having digestive issues–I know quite a few friends who’ve tried juicing to help with digestive issues.) I think a three-day cleanse would probably be more effective, especially from the mental/cravings standpoint, since it’s two extra days to reinforce the fruits and veggies. That said, I like my food and can’t imagine spending nearly $200 to not eat for three days.

Have you ever done a juice cleanse? Would you?