How to Prepare for a Juice Cleanse

If you’re preparing for your first juice cleanse, you may be feeling nervous, excited, or perhaps a mix of both. You’re taking your first steps to a healthier lifestyle and giving your body a break from processed foods, alcohol, and caffeine; it’s a big change. We’ll walk you through the exact steps to follow to prepare for a juice cleanse and explain how each of those can affect your experience. Whether you’re a first-time cleanser or repeat enthusiast, we’ll give you all the tools & information you need to prepare for your next juice cleanse. 

The Purpose & Benefits of a Juice Cleanse

A juice cleanse is a short-term fast that helps you rid your body of toxins, give your gut a break, and kickstart healthy new habits once it’s over. Over the course of 2-3 days, a steady diet of liquid fruits, vegetables, and other essential nutrients will reset your body to the finely tuned machine that it’s meant to be. 

Initially, you’ll experience increased energy levels, metabolic optimization, and smoother digestion, in addition to a number of other physical & mental benefits. Free from a steady diet of highly-processed foods, sugars, AGEs, and seed oils, your body will trigger its mammalian response, propelling you into a level of physical & mental performance that’s typically inaccessible on standard diets. 

Despite all of these great benefits, a juice cleanse is not a one-stop solution for weight loss, gut health, or mental fog. Instead, you should approach it as a clear transition between old, unhealthy habits and new, healthy ones. And to do that, you have to prepare correctly. 

6 Steps to Prepare for a Juice Cleanse

A juice cleanse begins long before you take your first sip, and the preparation can be as important as the actual cleanse itself. These tips will help set you up for total success. 

1. Determine Your Goals

There are several benefits to a juice cleanse, such as detoxification, gut reset, minor weight loss, and improved overall health. But truthfully, you may only be concerned with one or two of the benefits, depending on what your goals are. And to get the most out of your cleanse, it’s important to determine & set clear goals. 

Do you want to give your gut a break and promote the growth of healthy bacteria? Or are you transitioning to a healthy lifestyle, and just looking for a jumpstart? By defining your goals early on, you can choose the best juice cleanse to help you crush them over the next few days.

2. Choose the Right Juices & Cleanse Plan

There are plenty of juice & smoothie cleanses to choose from, but they’re not all the same. If you want to reap the full benefits of your juice cleanse, you need to prioritize high-quality, organic, and cold-pressed juices. Made from fresh ingredients from around the world, without any chemical additives or pesticides, these types of juices preserve the integrity of the fruits & vegetables and maximize nutrient absorption. At Raw Juicery, we preserve the full range of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants in every ingredient, ensuring that our organic juice cleanses are of the highest quality.

But we don’t stop there; each cleanse is loaded with herbs, adaptogens, nutrients, and phytochemicals. The diverse ingredient list delivers a wide range of nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are missing from your normal diet, but enhance the effectiveness of the juice diet. 

3. Gradually Prepare Your Body

Starting a juice cleanse is not something that you should take lightly. If you transition from normal eating, drinking, and exercise habits directly to a liquid diet, you will not be pleased with the results. Not to mention, you’ll likely experience sharp stomach pains & bowel movements. 

Adjust Your Diet

To avoid shocking your digestive system, start to cut back on certain foods like animal proteins, alcohol, stimulants, refined grains, sugars, and seed oils. You should also refrain from heavily-processed, preserved, and overly-cooked foods. 

Why? 

Because certain amino acids found in animal proteins will prevent your body from reaching autophagy, a metabolic process that forces your body to optimize its current supply of nutrients and energy stores. Similarly, one of the primary reasons for doing a juice cleanse is to break bad habits, and stimulants like coffee will be counterproductive to those efforts. 

By removing these from your diet, you’ll give your body a headstart on the detoxification process. Focus on eating healthy, plant-based foods like steamed vegetables, nuts, and whole grains. If you aren’t sure what to eat, we have a few easy recipes that are plant-based, oil-free, and loaded with essential nutrients. 

Drink More Water

As you adjust your diet in the days leading up to your cleanse, you should also increase your water intake. Even though fruit & vegetable juices are hydrating, your body still needs ample water to function. When you wake up, pour yourself a glass of lukewarm water with ½ a squeezed lemon. After drinking, wait 45 minutes until your first meal.  This will hydrate your organs, stimulate your metabolism, and alkalize the blood. Moreover, it will help you build healthy hydration habits for the cleanse and life afterwards. 

Sleep More

Over the next few days, your body will be forced to function with smaller energy stores because of the decreased caloric intake. After the first 24 hours, you’ll experience a jolt of energy as you enter autophagy, but you still need to set yourself up for success by resting up with 7-8+ hours of sleep each night. 

Most of the detoxification process occurs overnight while you sleep. The human body releases cerebrospinal fluids during deep sleep to flush out cellular toxins. Essentially, your cleanse will be more successful if you sleep longer. 

4. Strengthen Your Mind

Most of the conversations around juice cleanses focus on the physical benefits, but few of them mention the mental & emotional journey involved. As you battle hunger pangs, changes in digestion, and occasional headaches, you forge a direct path to a stronger, more centered, you. 

And just as with the gradual diet changes, you won’t simply wake up with the ability to ignore hunger and focus on the end goal – it takes a bit of training. In the days and even weeks leading up to your juice cleanse, start practicing mindfulness techniques like journaling, meditation, and grounding. These will help you battle through some of the feelings & emotions you experience during the first 24-36 hours of your cleanse.

If you decide to keep a journal, take notes of your daily goals, experiences, emotions, and what you’re grateful for. A few hours into your cleanse, you will get hungry and try to reason with yourself, deciding whether or not it’s worth it. You can return to your journal to center yourself and remind yourself of the goals you set for yourself, helping you to ignore those intrusive thoughts. If you opt for meditation, you’ll be able to separate your physical & mental state, enabling you to see cravings as the emotional thoughts they are. 

Keep in mind that your version of meditation & mindfulness don’t have to look like everyone else’s. If you’d prefer to go for a long walk or light workout instead of sitting in a quiet room, that’s totally fine! This will help distract you from hunger & other minor discomforts while also keeping your body active. Remember to start this routine a few days before the cleanse officially begins, and to maintain it during & afterwards.

5. Remove Junk Food & Other Temptations

Mindfulness is a great start, but the best way to make sure that you don’t give in to cravings or binge junk food is by removing those temptations. Before the cleanse starts, clean out your pantry & fridge of alcohol, caffeine, candy, chips, and other unhealthy foods. Without these in your home, you’ll be far less likely to break your commitment to the juice diet. One of the main goals of a juice cleanse is to transition to healthy habits, so you’ll need to throw these out eventually; it may as well be now. 

Another great way to stick to your health habits both during & after the cleanse is by partnering with someone. You and your accountability partner can provide moral support to each other and keep each other on track throughout the cleanse. Once it’s over, you’ll also have built a healthy relationship that can help both of you stay committed to new, healthy habits.

6. Plan for Physical Changes & Listen to Your Body

As you adjust your diet, hydration, and mindfulness habits in the days before your juice cleanse, your body will undergo some changes. And these changes will continue throughout the duration of the cleanse, leading you to develop consistent, healthy habits that stick with you long after it ends. 

But the good news is, your body will tell you exactly what it needs. If you feel thirsty, drink more water. If you feel tired, take a nap or go to bed one hour earlier. And if you plan to exercise during the cleanse, don’t be disappointed if you can’t perform at the same physical levels as normal. With lower energy stores, you’ll need to back off the intensity for a couple of days while you detox.