Juice cleanses are all the rage right now. Being marketed as a quick fix for fast weight loss, the idea of a juice cleanse can sound incredibly appealing when you first hear about them… However, that is not the whole story and in fact, juice cleanses can have some disastrous effects on your body!
What is a juice cleanse?
The main goal of a juice cleanse is put your body in a serious calorie deficit. You will be cutting out most (if not all) of your whole meals for the day and replace them with blended up fruit or vegetable smoothies and juices. This means that over time, your your body will be lowering its energy needs, resulting in a loss of muscle mass and slowing down your metabolism, giving you large amounts of weight loss in a short period of time.
Most juice diets allow you to consume around 600–1,000 calories per day. Obviously, consuming less than half of your recommended daily calories will leave you feeling hungry and fatigued regardlessly. But because juices lack the crucial fibre and protein nutrients which solid foods contain, your body is even less likely to feel full, which can send it into “starvation mode” (aka. Metabolic Damage).
Whilst the initial quick weight loss may sound appealing, what it actually means is that once you do reintroduce whole foods back into your diet, your body will not know how to react properly. When your body senses starvation, it acts to preserve calories by burning fewer of them. Meaning that you will be storing the foods as fat and quickly putting that weight back on.
Not only this, but fruit juices can be especially problematic for your blood levels. Due to the level of sugars in fruits and them becoming free sugars, they can cause some serious swings in your blood sugar levels, causing you to spike and then very quickly come crashing down.
Is it sustainable?
A good question to ask yourself before starting any ‘diet’ or ‘cleanse’ is “Can I see myself doing this for the rest of my life?” If the answer is no, then what you are doing is NOT sustainable.
Juice diets are not a long term or sustainable solution for weight loss. No one wants to live off of just juice for the rest of their life.
Instead of doing calorie restrictive diets for fast results, the most sustainable way to achieve long term weight loss is to instead focus on slowing introducing new, beneficial habits into your diet which you can continue for the rest of your life. For example, if you struggle with snacking, try carrying around some fruit with you to satisfy those cravings. It is the small things which, over time, create the biggest differences.
It’s not all bad news…
That being said, juices are not all bad and can still have a number of benefits when added into your diet correctly, so don't think you have to avoid them completely.
Juices are full of antioxidants which can help the health of your skin and also strengthens your immune system. Likewise, if a smoothie or juice is made out of vegetables instead of fruit, the risk of spiking your blood sugar is significantly reduced and can be a great method of getting some extra vitamins into your diet.
All in all, juices CAN be a great addition to your diet and can be viewed as a low calorie energy boost, however should NOT be something that you are solely living off of.
