Juicing with Fresh Pressery

I have followed the fresh-pressed juicing trend for some time now. In turn, intrigued, in parts repelled by all the green juices that have floated around in my Instagram feed, I knew that I just had to give this trend a go sometime.

I started small last year, just replacing a meal with homemade juice once or twice a week. But I had never dared to do an all-day detox until last weekend when I took the plunge and ordered the 1-day Fresh Pressery detox from Junglee. I ordered a batch of six juices I am supposed to drink throughout the day as meal replacements.

Here are some insights about how I fared and some things you might want to consider if you ever try a detox.

Before you start

I’d recommend doing a couple of meal replacements with juices before you embark on a full-day fast if you have never done something like this before. If you are used to fasting (religious or otherwise), you can start with a one-day detox. In addition, you may want to consider a detox supplement to help support your body’s detoxification and digestion process. 

Have a good meal (a nice combo of carbs and proteins) the night before you start the detox. This way, you don’t wake up very hungry. I had eaten pasta the night before, so I didn’t wake up ravenously like I usually do when I have just chappatis.

Do the detox on a day when you have nothing much going on. I did this detox on Sunday when I didn’t have any social obligations and had not planned any physical exercise. While a gentle walk or yoga is ok, I don’t think I would have had the energy for a full-on run or game of badminton.

And again, unless you are used to fasting, it’s a good idea not to try this on a working day.

My Detox Diary

This detox was a no-brainer because Fresh Pressery lays out all the details on the bottle out for you. You can buy these juices as part of a detox package, and each bottle comes labeled with a recommended time to drink.

So basically, my first juice of the day was the Green Flush juice that I was recommended to try at 9:00 am. Since I woke up early, by the time it turned 9, I was raring to try this juice. The ingredients didn’t look very promising; doodhi (a very healthy vegetable called bottle gourd in English) is very good for health, but it’s also rather tasteless, and combining that with spinach didn’t seem like a good idea. However, the healthy doses of ginger, cucumber, and lemon overrode the doodhi/spinach flavor, and I enjoyed this juice quite a bit.

The second juice was the Red Purifier consisting of beetroot, tomato, red apple, ginger, cucumber, and lemon. Again, not bad, although not as good as the first one. I had this juice at the recommended time of 11:30.

The third juice was the real killer. The Super Green consists of kale, celery, apple, bell pepper, parsley, lettuce, ginger, and lemon. And this was genuinely gag-inducing. I struggled to get this down and swigged it bit by bit for more than half an hour. At this point, my energy and enthusiasm levels for this detox also started to dip. It was only 2:00 pm! How was I going to get through the rest of the day?

The solution for this turned out to be simple. I put down Piglet for a quick nap, assigned some Maths practice for Snubnose, and huddled up under the blankets for a rest. This turned out to be brilliant. I was feeling very low-energy, tired, and pretty bored with the juices, so it helped that I got a couple of hours of zzz to kill time. Now you understand why I recommended doing this detox on a lazy, do-nothing day?

I napped through my next juice time, so I ended up feeling very hungry and gulped down my fourth juice almost an hour past the recommended time of 4:30. This is called the Purple Saver, which again contained hefty doses of beetroot, along with carrot, celery, spinach, lemon, and ginger. This was not bad, and I might have enjoyed it a lot more if, by now, I wasn’t just tired of the juicing already.

By 7:30, I was hungry again and ready for the next juice, which had always seemed to me the most promising of the lot. The Yellow Hydration looked and smelt yummy, with pineapple (one of my favorite fruits) acting as the base and coconut water, amla, chia seeds, and aloe. Unfortunately, it was not as tasty as I had hoped, with the amla overtaking the sweetness of the pineapple, and overall I thought it was somewhat mixed taste-wise.

The last juice of the day was supposed to be the Almond Milk mixed in with honey, sea salt, and vanilla. Unfortunately, it had turned completely bad. I had suspicions about the bottle when I received it from the courier, and I should have returned it to the company. The courier had carried all the bottles around in his bike all day long without any refrigeration whatsoever, and even when I received it, it was pretty evident that the milk had curdled.

So, I ended up doing the juice fast one juice short. Ordinarily, I would have overlooked something like this, but the almond milk was the drink that had all the protein that was lacking in the other juices, so I ended up doing a pretty lopsided detox. And anyway, which company delivers food like that in a plastic bag on a hot day? I was somewhat dissatisfied with the way the stuff came to me, and if I had not already pre-paid for the product and weren’t so excited to get started, I would have refused to accept a drink that was going bad.

Overall Feelings on the Detox

I started this detox with great trepidation. While I am not a snacker, I like my three meals a day, and the thought of skipping all three meals and replacing them with juice every 2-3 hours was a significant change. Surprisingly though, I didn’t feel too bad. One reason I did the detox on a quiet day was I was afraid of those embarrassing hunger growls in public, but honestly, I didn’t feel hungry.

I felt a little tired and light-headed toward the evening, and I am not sure whether it was psychological. However, I am glad I didn’t plan many outdoor activities or social gatherings because I didn’t feel up for it.

So will I do this again?

I might do this off and on. The day after the detox, I woke up feeling lighter and less bloated than usual. I also felt that my skin and hair looked better, which could be psychological. I tend to have heavy dinners (not a good thing, I know), so waking up post-detox was delightful.

What I do know is that I am terrible at eating fresh produce and always tend to fall short on the five servings a day of fruit and veggies, so a day of detox is an excellent way to catch up on my weekly quota while at the same time cutting down the carbs and fat.

So, I will try out these juices more often, occasionally replacing a meal with juice and maybe the occasional all-day detoxes. I still don’t have the nerve to go all out for the longer 3-day or more detox fasts. I would need some strong motivation to stick the course to anything longer than a day.

So have you tried juice fasts before? What was your experience?