Juicing is HARD. Anyone whose ever done it knows the acute agony not being able to put anything solid into your mouth for a week, can cause (insert joke here).
But juice king Jason Vale (whose worked with Gemma Collins when she recently lost three stone and Caroline Flack, who wanted a little freshen up before the X Factor started in earnest) says there’s another way.
He’s now invented the 5:2 Juice Diet, which takes on the benefits of the 5:2 diet (two days of fasting, i.e. eating 500 cals for a woman a day – then five days ‘normal’ eating) and, he says, adds to them, by making those two days nutritious. Even better, Jason claims you can approach the diet with a 2:3:2 approach – two days juicing, three days healthy eating and two… well, having a weekend. As he explains.
Hi Jason! Explain your new plan to us.
It’s a maintenance plan after a full-juice reboot. It’s something that sustainable and for life. You make a decision that this is how you live, forever. There’s a four-week challenge in the book, so people can try and see if it’s something you get used to and go forward with it. The 5:2 concept is calorie restriction and intermittent fasting, which is two days at 25 per cent of your calorie intake, which for a woman is around 500 calories. The flaw is they say you can get your 500 calories from anything – there’s no nutritional guidelines, you can fill up on Diet Coke or whatever. Then you can have whatever you want for the other five days. That means nutrition hasn’t come into anything for seven days – I think it needs to be improved. The book has two options – two days of juicing and five days of whatever you want. The other one is to do the 2-3-2 system. Two days of juicing, three days of eating well and two days of ‘I’m human’. I strongly recommend you use the weekends for that – the ideas is we like dinner parties and friends and coffees and being human and that’s why I feel this is sustainable.
**So, is this the diet that lets us have a life? Like, can we have pizza and beer on our two days off? **
I used to play the perfection game and I was worse off for it, because for four and a half years I was a nutcase vegan, in the sense every time I went out I would question, ‘Where does everything grow? Does it have anything on it?’ I was boring myself, I had no friends, nobody was inviting me to a dinner party, I was a nightmare. I also didn’t appreciate, the body can deal with a certain amount of anything – I used to smoke 40 cigarettes a day, drink 10 pints of lager and spirits afterwards and I’m still alive. The body’s got a filtration system. Now, I do a juice challenge four times a year then I live by the 2:2 and a half :2 and a half, cos Friday night is Friday night after all.
So now you’ve made this plan, do you regret your other books, like the seven-day juice plan?
No, because even in my first book, I say in the final chapter – be flexible, let common sense prevail. I’ve always said don’t live like I do, because I was too over the top.
How do you address the criticisms thrown at juicing?
People say, ‘I don’t believe in juicing’. To which I say, ‘It’s not like Father Christmas – I can pour the juice over your head and show you it does exist’. It doesn’t make any rational sense, because if you have a plant and take the liquid from that plant that was biologically designed for every cell of the human body, there’s no scientific reason a doctor shouldn’t like it. They’ll argue there’s no fibre – that’s a lack of understanding. What they are, are vegetables juiced and it’s only the juice that feeds you anyway. The fibre would’ve come out your arse – I don’t wanna be crude, but fibre cannot feed you, it cannot penetrate through the intestinal wall. You lose no nutrition by juicing, all you lose is a little bit of insoluble fibre, but you have tonnes of soluble fibre. An apple juice in the carton has no fibre, it’s pure sugar and rubbish. But if you have live apple juice it has a low glycaemic index and it has soluble fibre. These arguments fall flat on their arse when it comes to freshly extracted juice.
**There are so many mixed messages these days. Do you sympathise with people not knowing what to do? **
Listen to your intuition, don’t even listen to me. I’d say this is a plant grown by nature, which is the best doctor on earth. You’ve got to remember up until two years ago everyone said fat is the root of all evil. You’ve got to listen to yourself. No-one will ever convince me, even when Atkins was around, that egg and bacon in a pan is better than an apple. I knew intuitively an apple was better. People say, ‘Why don’t I just eat it all?’ (the fruit and veg in a juice) and I say, ‘I don’t know, clearly you don’t, so we need to find another routine’. You don’t get this the other way around, with people asking what junk food to eat, don’t worry, you’re never going to find a Broccoli Juice Anonymous. Everyone knows intuitively what to eat – you’d have had to have been on the planet Zog not to know. The only confusion is blending vs juicing – blenders that palm themselves off as a juicer when they’re not and make out you keep the fibre. You’d never eat three carrots at once, so when you blend it, you will eat too much in soluble fibre. You shouldn’t blend more than what you’d eat in one setting.
Isn’t it expensive to juice?
It’s cheap. I grew up in Peckham, had no money, started to eat well and you can do because you can go down any market, get tonnes of fruit and veg. But it’s also about what you’re not having, replacing a meal with a juice, or you’re having four juices a day, you’re eating 30 per cent less food a week, so that will have an impact on your weight, but you’re not spending money on the food.
But you have to buy a juicer too…
The best juicer in the world is one you’ll use personally. I personally use a retro cold press juicer, that’s about £200-£300. I like any juicer you’ll keep on the work surface, if you can only afford a £50 juicer, buy one with a wide funnel you can put a whole apple in – make it easy.
Of your celeb clients, whose seen the best results?
Physically, because she spent the time juicing with us, is Gemma Collins, who lost 2.5stone. Carol Vorderman lost 2 stone, Katie Price lost two stone in three months after the birth of Junior. But recently Caroline Flack came out and she spent seven days out there. She just said she hadn’t felt like this… she didn’t understand how she could feel so good – she was on a juice high, she called it. I said to Caroline, ‘You look fantastic’. She said I come out here more for health and get my mind sharp for live finals on X Factor, but equally, there’s no woman on earth who wouldn’t want to lose a few pounds. She said I didn’t think I had weight to lose, but I feel better for it. But she looked great anyway.
What’s the longest you can just have juice for?
Depends on the person, theoretically, if you’re being overseen by someone who knows what they’re doing… I did it for three months, I’ve know people do it for 100 days, somebody did it for a whole year. Sanity-wise I’d never recommend it. 28 days, if you’ve got a lot of weight to use…
JASON VALE – the world’s number one name in juicing – brings you his final ever juice diet plan – the 5:2 Juice Diet.