The 3-Day Juice Cleanse

I had been wanting to get on to the Juice Cleanse bandwagon for a while now. But was always kind of put off because they were usually pretty expensive and of course my hubby always said to me, that I would never last! He knows how much I love to eat and cook. But I figured how hard can it be, you just drink a bottle of juice every 2 hours, there's no way you should feel hungry. So I recently came across a relatively inexpensive deal on Groupon for a 3 Day Juice Cleanse by J3 healthier juice.soda. You can see the groupon deal here. For $99.80 with free delivery, you get 7 juice bottles a day for 3 days. So for 21 bottles of juice, that works out to only around $3.70 per 350ml bottle which isn't expensive at all considering it's pure cold pressed juice. Some even have up to 11 different types of fruits and vegetables!

The juice is delivered on your nominated date and time and is delivered in a cooler bag. The juices are not pasteurized so needs to be refrigerated immediately.

Detox Type 1 consists of - Wheatgrass, Pineapple, Guava, Orange, Green Apple, Cabbage, Carrot, Spinach, Plum, Mix Berries, Cucumber

There were 2 options you could choose from, Fundamental Package and the Greener Package. The difference being the Fundamental Package included two types of Refresher Juices. The Refresher Juices were just purely fruits (wait, is cucumber a fruit?), about 5-6 types of fruit mix. So this is the kind of juice I'm more used to drinking. The other juices in the package included raw vegetables like Kale, Cabbage, Broccoli, Celery, Spinach - these were the ones I wasn't used to drinking. It just tasted too earthy and raw....but I did finish the juices. The worst one in my opinion is the Nut Milk which is a mixture of Almond, Cashew, Walnut, Honey and Alkaline Water. This just tasted really unpleasant for my palate. I've had almond milk before so that's nothing new but this mix had a slight sour taste to it. Now I'm pretty sure it hadn't gone off, I think it was just the Alkaline Water that gave it that funny taste. The Nut Milk bottles were the only ones I couldn't bring myself to finish. You can check out the J3 website to read what each bottle consists of. One of the reasons I also chose the juice cleanse from this company was because I generally thought that I liked the mix of juices per bottle and wouldn't have a big problem drinking them. Some other juice cleanses have a lot of things in them that I don't like such as Ginger or maybe Coriander, etc. Do keep in mind this is Cold Pressed, so the juice is quite thick. I'm ok and used to this because I actually have a cold press juicer at home. And your next question will be why then don't I just make my own juice cleanse. Well considering how many types of fruits and vegetables went into it, the prep work would just be too time consuming not to mention all the washing.

Now this is probably the part that will interest most people, how did I feel while I was on the cleanse. Well I tell you, it was quite torturing, I felt a little light headed on the first day and just a general lack of energy. Oh and did I mention that I was literally starving for all of the 3 days! Even on the first day I couldn't hack it and resorted to eating something here and there. I ate some eggs thinking the protein will help make me feel full for a little while and that definitely helped. I also ate some fruits - I figured hey I'm drinking fruit anyway. But fruit has never really ever satiated my hunger in the past and it was the same this time. It was more like a temporary filler. The second day was easier and I was set on trying not to eat anything, just juice. But again I had to eat something here and there just to take away the edge of the hunger. I was never hallucinating or dreaming about food while I was on the cleanse, I was just thinking about how hungry I was and what I could eat to just take the edge of. This is a bit different to how I feel when I'm on a strict diet where I most of the time would be dreaming of all the food I couldn't have. Perhaps I also cheated because I really lack discipline :p There's also something that no one really considers before doing a Juice Cleanse. That is, that you will crave something warm and savoury. Not necessarily together because if you crave something warm, you can just drink tea I guess. But the savoury bit, that was hard for me because I don't really have a sweet tooth, I am more of a savoury person. So that's why I had a pan fried egg in between with a healthy sprinkling of soy sauce and pepper. That was enough to help me not feel blah about having to drink so much sweet stuff all day. Another thing that makes it difficult to stick to these kind of cleanses is if you are a mother/parent who needs to prepare meals for their little ones. You're basically waging war against yourself, lol! This is also why I'm not very successful in sticking to diets.

What about the end result? Well I did lose maybe about a kg or slightly under a kg, about 2 pounds I guess. My silhouette does look slightly slimmer (yay!) and what I also noticed is how healthy my hair seems! I don't regret doing it at all and if you want to do it, just go for it. If you realise half way that you can't just go without eating, then just take the juice and drink it as a compliment with your meals. And hey it's still cheaper than drinking coffee from Starbucks! But if I had to repeat this again....um...let me think about it first...hehehe :D


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Doing the Dukan Diet in Singapore

I have in all honesty never ever gone on a diet before. Growing up I was a stick thin kid, it wasn't till after Uni that the weight started to pile on...little by little....then marriage and pregnancy happened....and then well I pretty much physically turned into a different person. I don't know how anyone in Singapore can stay so thin, ok perhaps they have an active life etc, which was what I had in oz, but not here, but there's so much good food everywhere you look! It's not food is just found in shopping centre food courts, it is literally within reach here. Sometimes shopping centres have 2 food courts AND  a basement dedicated to the selling of food!

So after my recent trip to US, stepping on the scales when we got back I gasped and literally stared in disbelief and horror. I won't tell you how much I weighed cos it's just far too embarrasing. On the plus side, I am tall for a Chinese girl (I think), I'm 1.7m - but I am sadly overweight. But if I were short, I would look completely pudgy at the weight that I was at.

I desperately wanted to lose weight and was wishing that there was a Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers in Singapore. I wasn't going to fork out thousands of dollars at slimming centres that just leech off your wallet. And by chance I came across an article about the Dukan Diet in some magazine and it mentioned that Kate the royal and her mother had gone on this diet prior to her big shin dig, and JLo was also a big fan of the diet. So off I went and ordered the book.

Now diets really terrify me, just the thought of having to restrict yourself etc...I didn't think I had that kind of will power. But after reading the book, it seemed 'easy' enough and vowed that I'd stick to it. So to make a long story short, I started the diet 16th December and since then I have lost 5.5kgs and about 9-10cm off my waist. The difference is incredible, I feel so great because I know I look better. The diet was definitely hard to begin with, I did pure proteins for 5 days and tried to stick to the book as much as possible. Cheated here and there with tomato sauce etc that you're not supposed to have. And I endured Christmas and Chinese New Year (where I did cheat many times) and have kept the 5.5kgs off. I haven't reached my target weight yet, but to think how far I've come, I'm really proud of myself.

You'd think doing a western diet in Singapore would be difficult, as most of the recipes they offer is western. But surprisingly you can find a lot of the things you need for this diet at the regular supermarket. For example, Oat Bran, No Fat No Sugar added Yogurt and low fat cottage cheese and you can even find 0.01% milk at the bigger supermarkets. Now days they even have Fat Free cream cheese and in some superrmarkets you'll be able to find Non Fat, No sugar added Jell-O....although the price is a little bit more expensive, it's worth it if you're craving sweet stuff. Just too bad in Singapore there aren't much variety on Diet drinks which are permitted on the diet. So you're basically stuck on just drinking Coke Light/Zero or Pepzi Light/Max...which gets boring after a while. Sugar substitutes are also a bit expensive, I found that Equal was the cheapest amongst the brands. Beef is also more expensive here than in the west, but if you go to certain Cold Storages you can find marked down beef cuts which helps on the pocket.

In terms of exercise I don't do much simply because I don't have the time, I only walk my kid to and fro school which amounts to about 40mins a day. Perhaps if I did more exercise I would be able to lose more weight? But anyway, I am happy with the results and have realised it's also about changing habits and the way you normally eat. You do get used to it...but temptations are always there especially if you have a family.

Oh and another thing that I think might make this diet difficult for Singaporeans is you do HAVE to cook on this diet. There is no way around it since it is a High Protein diet which means you have to cook your meats, chicken, seafood etc - unless you survive on sashimi all day long....And when it comes time to Protein and Veg days on the Cruise Phase, you either have to eat a salad which I know is not favourable by a lot of singaporeans simply because they're not used to eating raw veg, or you'll have to go and cook your green veg like Kangkong, Wombok, etc....So it can be time consuming if you're not used to cooking.

If you are thinking of trying a diet, this diet really does work, give it a go, what have you got to lose? :)