Juice Cleanse – Impressed By Branding Brilliance, Otherwise As Expected

Finally.

After years of watching the juice cleanse craze come and go, reading dozens of articles on it, scrolling through Instagram gawking at aesthetic bottles of magical green elixirs, I had the chance to try it myself.

While performing, it wasn’t really an option.

First, I didn’t want to risk messing up my energy levels throughout the day. Working an office job or being a student is one thing, but swinging around a couple meters in the air takes a little more caution surrounding daily routine.

Second, juice cleanses aren’t really a bit thing in Asian or European countries (maybe they realized the preposterousness of drinking 5 bottles of green juice as your entire sustenance for the day?)

Third, to blatantly state what I alluded to above, there is nothing strikingly healthy or beneficial about a juice cleanse. Although marketed as a health-concept for body-conscious, hip individuals, nothing mentions the reality that a juice cleanse is nothing but a few colorful bottles of straight sugars and possibly some micronutrients.

Still, I had to try it.

One Sunny afternoon, I surprisingly found myself without homework or obligation, so I took a stroll over to the Stanford Shopping Center near Stanford’s campus.

From down the street, you could see the line that extended out and across the sidewalk.

Pressed Juicery, a storefront designed for social media fame, was so well-branded that it was almost inspiring. The creamy, off-white walls accented the sleek bottles and the curvy lowercase font used in their logo. Even the customers who waited eagerly in line matched the vibe of the store, each a different shade of faded pastel and overly-chique suburban style.

A promotion: six bottles for $29 dollars closed the deal. Juice cleanses can often run upwards of a couple hundred dollars, another opportunity to pay for style.

Based on Pressed Juicery’s pre-orderable packages, I designed my own program: A two-day cleanse, six bottles a day. Three green juices, one citrus, one roots, and an almond drink to finish the day.

Packing the cute bottles into the mini fridge in my dorm room, I was ready.

Day 1 started off well.

I was sold on the idea and still enchanted by the experience that the juice cleanse was selling. I had bought completely into the whole concept, whether because of build-up or pure desire to want to be the kind of person who can actually do a juice cleanse.

The morning was relatively easy, and I had spaced out the juices so that I would have them in two-or-three-hour increments throughout the day. I tried to refill the bottle with water and finish that between each juice.

I had never gone to the bathroom so many times in a day. (Is this the ‘cleanse’ part?)

As a person with a pretty regular eating schedule, I was hungry by late afternoon. It was easy to forget about food throughout a day of classes and meetings, but as soon as my schedule opened up I could tell I wasn’t getting enough calories.

There was no energy dip like I expected… actually the opposite. As the day went on, I began to feel really energetic and almost jittery. I felt very wired, attentive and reactive, but in a buzzed way.

 

Day 2 was a little harder.

I tried to distract myself by reading in the beautiful weather (California is a nice place to be).

The juices tasted great, but at some point I got sick of drinking so much liquid and went for hours without having anything at all. This meant that in the afternoon I had a few juices to catch up on.

On a positive note, the bottles were great for photos on Snapchat and Instagram.

I really felt the difference when I went to frisbee practice that evening. It was hard to focus, and a few times I felt like I really should not be exercising. It was clear to me that juice cleanses are not a great choice for people who plan to be running around for an extended period of time.

Conclusion

I’m grateful that I had the chance to finally try the famous ‘juice cleanse’ that covered the blogs and magazines for so many months.

I experienced no significant changes to my body and my mind, other than frenzied energy levels and lots of hunger during the two days.

Now I can finally say that I’ve done a juice cleanse, it was fine, and I likely won’t do another one. However, I will definitely grab a pretty juice when opportunity arises, and I still want to open a juice shop someday.

Have you tried a juice cleanse? What kind of experience did you have? Comment below 🙂