I know, I know, I’ve heard it before. Juice cleanses help you to lose weight, detoxify and they have many benefits. But that’s only if you can last through the cleanse. I cannot. In fact, I’ve tried a few times with my daughter, and we both failed each time. At least we went down together. 

What’s the expression? Fool me once… We’ve fallen for the juice cleanse thing a few times. Truth be told, it wasn’t really my fault. The juice cleanse blame lies fully on my daughter. Yup, right under the bus she goes.

It all started early on a beautiful Saturday morning when we passed the sign out front. “It won’t be hard and it’s sooo good for us!”, my offspring promised. And after talking to the beautiful, skinny, glowing woman who sold the cleanse out of her adorable little store, I was a believer and I didn’t just think, I KNEW, we could do it! And that in 3 short days we too would be beautiful and skinny and glowing!! So, I shelled out the cash for a 3-day cleanse for me and for my daughter, (1 juice free since I was buying for two people) and we were on our way to a better us!

Except, on our way took more than a little effort. I had to run and get the car and bring it up front because juice for 2 people for 3 days is a LOT of heavy liquid to carry. 

We gleefully made several trips past my son and their father into the kitchen carrying our juice and rearranging everything to make it fit, dismissing their comments about how ludicrous this was. We clinked our first juice bottles together and cheers-ed to how brilliant we were, and how great this endeavor was going to be. We were so happy and filled with positivity, ready for our life changing experience to begin.

By noon we were hangry (aka hungry and angry at the same time)! By 3 we were starting to make excuses. By 4:30 we decided that sharing an apple would be okay because one of the juices had apple as an ingredient in it anyway. 

By dinnertime we decided one real meal would be okay – why do we have to follow their rules exactly? It’s not like they know everything!  And over dinner we cracked completely, and decided this was not for us. We then spent the entire meal explaining to each other just how awful this juice cleanse idea was and how it was the most ridiculous thing we ever heard of. 

But how to get rid of the evidence without admitting to my son and their father that they were right?! So, we secretly threw the juices away in groups of 4 until all the evidence was gone.

I think it was a year later that we fell for it again, sure that the problem last time was that we weren’t in the right mindset at the time. Wrong. Failed again.

And about a year after that came the soup cleanse, which was surely going to be better than the juice one. After all, there were like 5 beans in one of the soups! Surely that would be filling! It wasn’t.

And then we swore off the cleanse thing. And we decided we should just buy a juicer for home and make our own whenever we felt like it. That didn’t work for us either. 

But now, years later, I dug out that juicer and I have finally figured out how to actually get use out of it.

Are my daughter and I the only juice cleanse failures out there? Advice on how to make it through? Send help :)