So it’s three weeks until your best friend’s wedding and you’re wondering if juice fasting will help you fit into your little black dress. It’s gained in popularity in the last 5 years as a way to shed pounds and get healthy on the double. But does it really work?
Overview
Fasting is one of the oldest ways to alter the body’s state and has been used by religious groups for thousands of years as a way to clear the mind and reach a higher state.
Juice fasting has become trendy in recent years as a type of fasting that will detox the body and ramp up weight loss.
The Claim
Drink just fruit and vegetable juice for days or weeks and watch the pounds fly off.
The Hype
Many celebrities get reported on about using juice fasting to slim down for a role, or to get rid of post baby-weight. This creates instant hype leading many women and men to think that this will work for them as well, and will give it a try get ready for an upcoming special event like a wedding, or the holidays.
What isn’t usually brought up during these interviews and special reports is that these celebrities were already fit, either before they had a baby, or just in general. They didn’t use juice fasting as a cure-all to take them from fat to fit.
The Cost
Juice fasting can be more or less expensive than other dieting methods depending on which route you take. If you get a juicer and juice your own fresh fruits and vegetables the costs can be quite high, even higher than eating normal food. Fresh produce is one of the most expensive items in the store, and juicing them does not yield very much product and produces a lot of waste.
If you buy pre-made juice in the store you can expect to save more money, but should not expect as good results as if you blended your own. Food and drink manufacturers are notorious for cutting as many costs as possible, and the juice that you’ll buy in the store probably has just as many harmful things in it as good. The point of juice fasting is to remove impurities from your body, and you just can’t do that with store-bought ready-made juice.
The Commitment
Different juice fasting programs will have varying levels of what sort of commitment they require. The one thing that all will have in common is that you must eliminate most every other food and replace it with drinking juice. Most will come with their own recipes for the types of juice you should drink, as well as which foods you should avoid and which are OK.
The other variation is the length of time you’ll need to be on them. Some can last a few hours, a common one is 24 hours, while others may last a week or several weeks. The longer the program the more you’re usually able to supplement your juice intake with other foods, keeping you feeling satisfied but still purging the body of toxins and stored fat.
Evaluation
Does Juice Fasting Really Work?
It depends entirely on what your goals are. If you want to lose weight and keep it off for the long term then juice fasting will probably not get you the desired results. It can make a good start to a dieting program, but is not designed to be a diet program in and of itself. You may notice some immediately weight loss, but this is do to the drastic drop off of calories, and you will gain this back as soon as you are done fasting.
If your goal is to give your digestive system a break, or to reach a higher state while you practice mediating, or to help remove toxins from your body during a detox regimen, then juice fasting may help you to achieve this end.
Our Recommendation
Using juice fasting as a quick fix to lose weight is not a healthy option. If you want to start a weight loss program or have an important social even in the near future, be sure to give yourself ample time to start things off the right way. Eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise are the only time-tested proven ways to lose weight and keep it off.
The thing that most people seem to forget is that those same celebrities that make the news because they went on a juice fast, end up back in the news months or years later as they battle their weight gain.
I might try this actually, if I ever find myself needing to fit into something tight in just a few days. But I imagine the cost would be really high, seeing as more affordable juices by bigger companies that you can buy at the grocery are loaded with sugar, sucralose, and other junk that isn’t good for you. If I was going to do this, I would use Northland’s or Knudsen, juices that don’t have any of that extra stuff. I wonder how much juice you’re supposed to drink, though. Wouldn’t enough juice to make you feel full be a lot of calories?
Juice fasting, just like Atkins or the much more recent ‘Paleo-diet’, DEFINITELY WORK. But let me say, they only work because they apply the most logical approach to weight loss there is, which is that if you consume less calories than you burn off, you will decrease in mass. It’s science. The reason these techniques always work, is because they are not promising that by taking some magic pill you will lose weight without any effort. THESE DIETS REQUIRE A LOT OF EFFORT. They are hard to stick to because they are radically changing what you feed on. This is the only real way to lose weight.
Exactly! I was told by people who have done it that you can lose weight quickly. But it’s usually with unhealthy results. If you’re losing 11 pounds in less than 2 days than you have problem. While it can give you short term results you’ll end up gaining back all the weight you lost if you not careful. That’s why it takes longer for healthy weight loss. So maybe after doing this, make sure you eat healthy, drink a lot of water and do some sort of exercise for at least 30-60 minutes to keep the weight from coming back.
God damn celebs have a lot to answer for. I’ve tried out the juice fasting and can confirm that it does work if you’re looking for a quick fix to drop a few lbs.
However, i felt like rubbish after a couple of days and didn’t have much energy. I wouldn’t recommend people do this for an extended period of time and be weary of putting the weight straight back on once you finish it.