Ok, let me warn you right off I have no solution for this debate, the end of this post will not reveal the amazing truth about juice cleanses and if they are actually good or bad, this is really just me yapping about them and trying to figure out just how good or bad they might be…
The idea of doing a juice cleanse/diet came to me when out with a friend last night, she had read up on one (I’m not sure which specific one) and was saying how she was going to do this for a month or so just to get rid of that final bit of weight. Now, she is not fat, nowhere near! But like me she acts which means there is even more pressure to be super thin then what the average non-acting person feels, which is pretty freaky when you think about how much pressure the non-acting person feels, especially women, but that is a topic for another day! 😛
So, she’s talking a bit about this and it got me thinking, maybe that is what I need, something drastic, something I have never done, something that will get me over that bump in the road, and hey, even if it doesn’t work no damage done right? Welllllll, maybe not “right”, maybe, depending on which article you read, maybe really wrong! Oh dear.
I’ve read a whole wackload of articles, checked out a bunch of websites (that seem to be run by fanatics from one or the other side of the juice fence) and have ended up confused. What the hell? I am an educated, decently smart, grown woman, and yet, I can’t figure out which articles to put more faith in, which side to give my vote for, how is this possible?
Well, it’s possible because nobody seems to want to give an unbiased opinion or refer to unbiased research or references. The topic of juice cleanses/diets really seems to bring out the fanatics and everyone knows you can’t trust them, anyone who claims anything is all good or all bad and has no wiggle room and isn’t open to listening to other opinions is not giving you the whole truth, how can they be when they are blocking it even from themselves?
Which means, brace yourself for this, I’m on my own when it comes to making this decision, *dun dun dun* This is not a good place to be! If so many of the articles I read hadn’t said that doing a juice cleanse doesn’t only slow down your metabolism but can also stop it almost all together (a sentence that made my blood run cold!) and that your body starts using your muscle to feed itself (which means all that weight work down the tubes!) aaaaand that you only lose water weight which you will of course gain back once you start eating like a normal person again (or as close to normal as you get…although, with how obese North America is what is normal and do we want to be eating that way? hmm…) well, then I’d be jumping on the bandwagon no problem. I have no issue doing something that may be considered an unhealthy way to lose weight, I’ve done the healthy route, I lost a bunch of weight that way and am keeping it off (which is awesome) but I’ve been stuck at this weight for a year and no matter what healthy route I try nothing happens (or what does happen is so tiny of a change and reverts back if I even so much as look at a cinnamon bun) that there doesn’t seem to be any point, sigh. The problem with healthy routes to weight loss is that they are intended to get you to a healthy weight, well, I am technically aiming for being underweight (hey, don’t judge me, that is the industry I am in) and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that to get to a weight that health people say is unhealthy (I’m only talking like ten pounds underweight people so don’t go freaking out or anything as you read this) I’m going to have to do something unhealthy. I don’t know what took me so long to come to this conclusion, why I didn’t see the logical route to my goal a year ago, but I see it now. 🙂
The articles still don’t help me though…I am so pumped full of health and fitness information from all the books, articles, websites etc I researched and studied since starting my weight loss journey that I read the deets on a juice cleanse and all I see are the ways in which it is bad for me *rolls eyes* All that sugar, ugh, no protein, hmm, fruit and veg have lots of carbs, oh dear…and what about food groups? and portions? and sustainability? (by that I mean, can I do a juice cleanse everyday for the rest of my life? uh, by the way, the answer is no!) How is this a good option? What weight I do lose won’t be “real weight”, it’ll be water weight and loss of muscle mass, which means as soon as I start eating again, even if I eat super duper healthy my body will be so happy to have food in it again and so worried I might turn in to an evil dictator and force it to survive on just juice again that whatever I do eat will be tucked away as fat and held on to for dear life. Erg…
But! My brain keeps thinking, if I can manage to lose even just 5 pounds doing a juice cleanse who cares where the weight came off it’s off and surely there is some way to keep it off, extra gym sessions or cutting back on calories or something…
I keep circling around the same pro and con arguments in my head, I know logically why the juice route won’t help me long term, but I also don’t care about long term, I care about now and right now I need to lose ten to fifteen pounds and this seems a quick route to do it…yin and yang, up and down, black and white, I could argue both sides of the juice cleanse/diet for hours and still be nowhere…told you I wouldn’t have a solution for you! 😉
Lil sidenote, something I found entertaining, an article I was reading that was listing all the reasons juice cleanses/diets are bad had an ad on the side for some pomegranate drink that will apparently make me look better naked…gotta love the health/diet industry, even while they are saying a certain system doesn’t work they are making money from that system via advertising or whatnot. 😛
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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