I am a fan of hacks and shortcuts. If there is a way of getting from point A to point C without having to go through point B, then I will do it, no matter how dodgy it is. I once drank a pint of gelatine to stop my period, resulting in hours of stomach cramps. I can’t be bothered to wait between piercings and normally I get two at once, so that they get infected immediately and must be removed with tongs by a trained professional. I ate a whole bulb of raw garlic because I heard it was good for stomach aches, and couldn’t be troubled to walk to Boots. So, in the past, I have of course been fascinated by the wild possibilities of juice cleansing.

Juice cleansing is where one forgoes all solid food and lives on an assortment of liquified fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Apparently, this is a fabulous way to both instantly reset an unhealthy diet and shed a few pounds in just a few short days. There is little solid evidence as to the true benefits of juice cleansing. Everyone and anyone with the slightest medical know-how that I have consulted on the matter has told me this. Other side effects include lethargy, headaches, hunger pains, and a general feeling of despair. 

BUT- we are in lockdown. I have no life tasks to be impeded by such wretchedness. I’ve eaten nothing but cheese and potatoes since Tuesday, and I’m just really really curious about it. So why not?

The prep

It is recommended that I “pare down'' on unhealthy food for a week before. My family has been baking daily throughout lockdown, so it’s not likely that I’ll be “paring down” on anything. The smiley juice woman, whose plan I’m following, does not seem to understand that I would not need to try a juice cleanse if I had the willpower to eat healthily for a whole week under my own steam.

I trotted off to the shops the evening prior so I could gather all the necessary juicing paraphernalia. The whole shop cost £20 for only ONE DAY of the cleanse. Since I’m neither a Kardashian nor a fitness blogger, I do not have any sponsors to warrant dropping £60+ per week on dieting. As I turned over the vacuum-packed beetroot in my hands, I realised that if I ever tried to do this under normal circumstances at uni, I would have to allot my entire weekly-living budget to the task. I decided then and there to do one day instead of three. 

The process

I wake up on the day of the cleanse bright and early at 11:54am. Seeing as how the first juice is meant to be at 8am, my day of health and self-control has not gotten off to a great start. Juices are meant to be had every two hours starting from 8am to 7pm, but in keeping with my new semi-nocturnal lockdown sleep routine, I will have a juice every two hours from 12-10pm.

Green Juice @ Midday

(6 stalks of celery, 1 cucumber, 2 apples, kale, romaine, spinach, parsley, 1 lemon)

I half the ingredients because the amount I chopped was already looking ridiculous. I enjoy the green aesthetic, but the taste itself is vile. I blame the addition of the one whole cucumber(!!!). Post-green smoothie I do actually feel quite full, but my mother is rather cruelly baking fresh bread as we speak. Being healthy doesn’t taste as nice as toast.

P.A.M. juice @ 2pm

(1/ 3 pineapple, 1 apple and mint)

I spend so long taking photos of my green smoothie and drinking it that I have about ten minutes left before I need my next juice. A vast improvement, the P.A.M is much more reasonable with regards to ingredients. It tastes quite nice and has vaguely soothed my hunger cravings for a little while. However, my lasting impression of the smoothie is that it is crying out for two shots of rum and a hot tropical beach to drink it on. 

Green Tea @ 2:30pm

Apparently, I’m allowed all the water and green tea I like, so I quickly crack on with a green tea at 2:30pm. I’ve never had to think so often and so carefully about what I put in my body throughout the day, and it’s exhausting. It’s not like I fill every hour of my day with vital tasks and errands, but I’m barely leaving my kitchen at this rate.

The green tea is nice, but doesn’t quite hit the spot.  I desperately hunger for a huge, unhealthy cup of sweet coffee and a huge, unhealthy knob of cheese- a poisonous concoction I used to have every day before school, even though it gives me hideous stomach cramps. I think I crave it because it’s an exact mix of everything I’m explicitly forbidden to have: sugar, caffeine, dairy, and solids. But I’m digressing into a solid food fantasy spiral that I’m not allowed to have.

Second Green Juice @ 4pm

(the same hideous mixture as before)

Having tasted this a mere few hours beforehand, I approach my second green juice of the day gloomily. Yes, it is just as vile as the first. Nausea now accompanies the vague and ominous hunger that follows me no matter how many cups of tea I have.

Spicy lemonade @ 6pm

(16oz water, 4 lemons, pinch of cayenne pepper and 1tbsp. honey)

Spicy lemon juice has a status of its own in the mythical world of weight-loss, and so I’m excited to try it. This excitement was also mixed with caution, in that lemon juice and cayenne pepper sounds like a blisteringly spicy concoction for a woman who is already too weak to eat a whole curry at Dishoom without an emergency litre of cucumber yoghurt on hand. At first, I am pleasantly surprised by the mildness of the taste- then I feel an increasingly sore throat and stingy lips that advance with each sip. I swiftly abandon it for more green tea. No human is meant to eat more than four lemons at once.

C.A.R @ 8pm

(1 apple, 1 beetroot, 2 carrots, 1tbsp. ginger and 1 lemon)

By now my hunger pangs are truly ramping up in the anticipation of dinner. But I dutifully wait for my C.A.R smoothie at 8pm. The beetroot makes for a gorgeous colour and the taste is not even that bad. However, over the past day I’ve become extremely bloated, and something within me has become physically repulsed by the idea of any more smoothies, so I have a really hard time getting this down without feeling sick. I abandon most of it.

Almond Milk @ 10pm

Right now, I’m meant to have a cup of unsweetened almond milk to send me off to bed. Instead, I brush the crumbs from my 8:05pm grilled cheese sandwich off my lap, and get up in search of chocolate. The cleanse is over.

Conclusions

Did I feel hungry? Not at first, but then maddeningly so by dinner.

Do I feel healthier? I felt really nauseous from lack of food and liquid retention.

Do I feel thinner? Feeling hella bloated from so much juice.

Long term solution? Couldn’t finish 24 hours of it, so no, it is not.

To give the juice cleanse it’s due, I didn’t actually feel too hungry up until the evening. This was a bit strange for me, a woman who can eat a whole chicken pie at midday and declare that she’s “wasting away” by dinner time. But as well as feeling a bit sick, my mental hunger for solid food had not abated in the slightest. By halfway through my P.A.M at 2pm, there was a BBQ scene in the Netflix series I was watching, and I literally dribbled into my lap. Every cup of coffee, slice of cake, or bowl of soup that appeared in the media I consumed throughout the day only pushed me closer and closer to breaking point. Even though I didn’t feel like I physically needed real food, my mind was crying out for it, which made the whole experience far too miserable to be sustained longer than a day. I would certainly not have been able to get to sleep without my grilled cheese.

To conclude, I didn’t feel physically that bad (this is probably due to my new low-energy lockdown lifestyle of accomplishing exactly zero daily tasks and not going anywhere). I didn’t have the sugar-induced headaches from eating cake batter, or the stomach cramps from eating one kilogram of cheese, which I usually have by this time of day. The moral superiority I assumed over the entire family for juicing today is also kind of nice. 

Nevertheless, you can’t spread moral superiority over a mouth-watering slice of toast and eat it, can you?

If anything, I can say that this cleanse has put me off any further attempts at dieting hacks or shortcuts. I don’t feel happier, thinner, or more affectionate towards vegetables. Aside from a distinct feeling of nausea, I generally feel new enthusiasm towards the slower (and more nutritious) means of keeping healthy. I’m inclined to the notion that if I just control my portion size and eat vaguely balanced meals, I can still eat potatoes and bread and not feel terrible. 

Lizzy Laycock is a fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying English Literature and History. She is a regular author at Ensemble Magazine, and you can find more of her writing here.