Juice from the Raw Whenever Cleanse

There’s usually a few days after a race when I feel like garbage. I end up needing to recover not only from my race but from the post-race celebrations. Enter the cleanse. I’d read about juice cleanses everywhere and was eager to test the waters. After some quick research, I stumbled upon Juice from the Raw and found a “beginner” 3 day juice cleanse called the Whenever Cleanse with Cashew Coffee Milk. This cleanse comes with six juices allotted per day.

So how does this whole process work? After the juices are pressed, they are frozen using an instant freezing process (to keep the nutrients from deteriorating) and then they’re packed into a special cooling liner to stay cold and fresh. The bottles arrived frozen and I kept them in the freezer until I was ready to start the cleanse. They took about 5 hours to defrost and then I tossed them back in the fridge until I was ready to drink each one.

Juice #1: Cashew Coffee: I got to start off the day with caffeine! Juice #1 is a really delicious blend of cashew milk and coffee that I would honestly order from a Starbucks if they offered it.

Juice #2: Pine Apple Mint: The second juice was surprisingly tasty as well. It’s a mixture of pineapple, apple, and mint. Refreshing.

Juice #3: Sweet Greens: I’m not a big kale fan (ok, I hate kale) so I wasn’t excited to drink the third juice. However, it was pretty frickin’ good. It’s a mix of green vegetables with hints of lemon, apple, and ginger. It tastes healthy but good healthy.

Juice #4: Spicy Lemonade: This juice was one of my favorites. It’s refreshing, light with just a hint of spice. I was starting to crave food when it was time to drink this one (about 3 pm) but after drinking it, I felt content.

Juice #5: Root Veggies: This juice wasn’t one of my favorites, but it also wasn’t horrible. I drank this one around 5:30 pm – at this point I wasn’t that hungry, just feeling a bit tired.

Juice #6: Detox Greens: The last juice of the day I drank around 7:30 pm. To be honest, I didn’t even feel like drinking it. The juice tasted fine, but nothing appealed. I was happy to be done for the day.

The best thing about this cleanse is that I never found myself overly hungry. Not as I had anticipated. I made a conscious effort to drink lots of water and didn’t do any sort of rigorous exercise. I must admit these juices taste really good. I’ve only tried one other juice cleanse, but it was pretty horrible. These juices are (believe it or not) enjoyable. If I did it again, I’d do a better job of “preparing” for the cleanse. We did quite a bit of celebrating the weekend prior and I was pretty tired from both the race (HAT 50K) and post-race festivities. Next time I’ll wait an extra day or two after a race before starting.

Overall, the cleanse was great. I woke up the next morning feeling really good and rejuvenated. I wanted to ease my way into the whole cleanse-thing, so I decided to only do one day, but next time I’ll probably do all three. I will definitely try these again.

Big thanks to the friendly people at Juice from the Raw for providing the juices! If you’d like to give them a try (you should!) you can learn more at juicefromtheraw.com.