We’re always reading about celebs ditching the festive flab by endlessly sipping on juice, so when Jason Vale asked people around the world to try his Big January Juice Challenge we figured we’d give it a go.
We’re also always reading that it makes you feel incredible and you’ll never feel hungry – and we’re pretty sceptical. So here’s our honest account of what living off juice for five days is really like…
What is it?
Jason Vale (or The Juice Master as he’s known online and, probably, to his mates) has cornered the celebrity and books markets with his juice plans ranging from three-day juice cleanse to a 28 day plan. He claims living off juice not only helps you lose weight, but can cure a whole host of diseases – because it did so for him. He’s even made a feature-length film, Super Juice Me about taking a group of people with health problems to one of his two juice retreats in Portugal.
Jason has worked with a whole host of celebs including Gemma Collins (who lost three stone last year at his retreat), Caroline Flack, Alesha Dixon, Katie Price to name a few.
Four times a year, Jason holds a Juice Challenge, where he offers his recipes and training videos up for free to anyone who fancies it. We jumped on board and opted to try the five-day challenge from Monday January 11 to Friday 15.
You can either make Jason’s juices at home or get them delivered to you frozen to drink throughout the diet.
In the interests of honesty and not looking like we’re trying to flog you something, we’re letting you know right here, right now that we were lucky enough to get our juices delivered for free.
What do you eat every day?
Well, nothing, if you mean eating like chewing.
We started the day with a ginger shot which is, honestly, GRIM unless you’re a mega ginger lover. But it did give us a buzz and has a whole host of health benefits.
Then you get four juices to space throughout the day – normally at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm. The 10am and 7pm juices are the same and a bit thicker, often including a bit of avocado or nuts or a banana. The middle two are also the same and a little thinner.
There are no snacks allowed, but if you are really struggling there are some SOS raw bars, or you can try half an avocado.
There’s also no caffeine, no fizzy drinks, no squash – you are on water and herbal teas only. And yes, you are peeing constantly.
Can I just buy some cartons of orange juice and give it a go?
Ok, we know no-one was probably asking this, but the juices in the diet are specifically balanced to give you loads of nutrients, some fibre at key points and also fats when necessary.
They also, we think, are nicely balanced to ease you in and get a bit more veggy and experimental as the week goes on. And (to our juice-addled brains) seemed quite cleverly balanced psychologically to get you through. For instance, on Wednesday, day three, we got some seeds in our juice that gave us the blissful experience of actually being able to chew something. It comes at a time when you’ve juiced for two whole days and you still have three ahead of you, so gives you a boost at just the right time.
Sadly, there’s also a lot more veg than you’d probably prefer if you were picking a juice for a treat.
So, we wouldn’t suggest just going and buying some healthy looking juice from a shop and just necking it – a plan will help you get through.
Did you feel hungry?
Yes, honestly, we did. Obviously there’s a lot of promo out there telling you that you won’t feel hungry on a juice diet, but obviously, OBVIOUSLY we did! You’re not eating for five days, really.
However, not to be a total cliché (and again, not because we got them for free) but it honestly was not at all as bad as we thought it would be.
There were only a couple of real physical hunger pangs – and has anyone honestly, truly been on any kind of diet (all of which claim you won’t feel hungry) without once getting a bit peckish?
More than anything, you do miss eating. Before the juicing, we hadn’t really considered that ‘wanting to eat’ and ‘being hungry’ were two different things if we’re honest. Hence we guess, the 3,573 Quality Street we ate at our mum’s house at Christmas.
As someone who’s never read anything coming close to a self-help or diet book, one thing we did take away from Jason’s book was that if you feel hungry, to stop and think about whether there’s any actual pain anywhere. If there’s not – if your tummy isn’t actually rumbling (which it did a couple of times) – then maybe it’s more the habit of eating that you’re missing? Don’t get us wrong, sometimes we were freaking hungry. But it’s something we’ll try to take away post-juice.
Did you like all the juices?
On the whole, yes. We didn’t skip any juices because they were too gross (we were ready for them to be honest by the time it was time to drink them!). It’s all about personal taste though – anything with excessive ginger or beetroot gave us a bit of a flinch, for instance. And if you’re making your own juices you can tweak a little, Jason says.
Did you get a juice high?
Jason claims that around day three, or at least by the end of the diet, you should get a ‘juice high’. We’re not sure about that… We certainly didn’t feel rank the whole time and (combined with the second week of dry January) we did sleep easier, wake easier and have much smaller eye bags. The real highs came from jumping on the scales (sorry, we couldn’t resist) and feeling nice and virtuous. And sometimes, feeling a bit smug is all you really need to get through.
Can you exercise? Can you get through a day at work?
Yes to both. You’re supposed to exercise twice a day but we didn’t manage that – more due to timing than weakness. But a sassy dance class on the third day wasn’t a struggle at all. Neither was a morning yoga class. Smug levels were though the roof.
Undoubtedly the diet is probably easier at a nice retreat in Portugal, but work was actually a welcome distraction and we don’t think it affected our performance during the day – though our boss might say otherwise.
High points?
Losing 8lbs in total was the big pay-off. And waking up with pretty much open eyes instead of bags practically filled with prosecco (like they were for the whole of December) felt good. Sometimes we only pressed snooze once, which was pretty nice. Generally, realising you can do it is actually quite pat-yourself-on-the-back-y.
Low points?
Watching the Hateful Eight on the evening of the first day was pretty tough. It had seemed like a good idea to distract the brain, but actually it just made the whole 57947832642 hour film seem pretty painful. Even Channing Tatum didn’t cheer us up. And everyone was eating loads of popcorn and it smelt divine. On a different note, we can recommend The Revenant – you feel silly feeling peckish when Leonard DiCaprio is scoffing Bison’s liver to survive tbh.
Thursday afternoon proved psychologically quite tough to be honest. Once we’d made it over the hump of Wednesday, the promise of food seemed close, which actually made it harder for some reason.
Friday night we weren’t even hungry, but felt like a kid before Christmas with the promise of food on the other side, so found it pretty tough to sleep.
Top tip?
Pick a week which works for you. Don’t pick a week where you have to be at your friend’s birthday, or a family do with endless sandwiches. Don’t make things harder than they have to be, or feel like you’re being punished. Just pick a quiet week and bunker down a bit.
Did you feel cleansed?
The juice diet isn’t just about losing weight – we did feel pretty good. And there’s no way that many vegetables would’ve gone inside us otherwise. It was also a good way to really put an end to the festive eating and get back on track, or just into normal eating patterns where you don’t have chocolate for breakfast.
Would you do it again?
The ultimate test, really – was it too hellish to contemplate again? No, definitely not. In fact, we’re giving Jason’s 5:2 diet a go this week (where you follow the popular plan of having two 600 calorie fast days, but do it with juice instead of food) to see if helps us continue to lose weight.
Did you eat your breakfast and put all the weight back on again?
This was the big fear. Would we just look at our breakfast and put any weight we’d lost back on?
Not quite, but we do have to say that after a weekend of a party buffet, a cinema outing and a three-course pub lunch, we’re not the same weight we were the day after the cleanse. But if you’d lost weight on any diet and then had a bit of a splurge for fun, it’d probably be the same. If we hadn’t been on any diet, they just would’ve been plus pounds.
And it did make us think a lot more about what we were chucking back in to our cleaner system. We didn’t even eat most of the sweets that were shoved in our direction on Sunday, or scoff all of the Saturday morning breakfast we’d been dreaming of.
In no way was it a waste – it was tough, but we are lighter on the whole and ready to get back on track with a slightly smaller tummy to fill.
Jason's 5:2 Juice Diet book is out now!