As I posted a few days ago, I decided to give this juicing trend a try to see first what the cost would be to the average person to follow each of the major plans; and second to see how my body reacted to the change.
The first thing you have to realize going into it is that this is going to be an expensive proposition. I got a great deal on a high quality juicer through an advertiser, but you can expect to spend more than $250 for a quality juicer able to chew through everything you will be throwing at it. Add to that the fact that for some reason eating healthy is far more expensive than eating the convenience processed crap that has become the majority of the American diet and you are looking at a hefty price tag. I used the recipes and shopping list from here to complete the three day BluePrint Renovation cleanse, and the cost for organic produce was $60.23. The only change I made was to buy already made organic cashew milk instead of following the instructions to make my own from raw cashews with the juicer.
I chose the BluePrint cleanse because it is the most written about and most user friendly juice cleanse on the market. Food & Wine Magazine called it "The cleanse for foodies", and it has also been featured everywhere from Oprah Magazine to Good Morning America. The pre-made juices are available off the shelf at Whole Foods stores nation wide, and the company has even launched their own retail stores to further distribution of their brand. Of course that meant that people everywhere would break down their recipes and publish the closest they could get for free on the internet! After a Pinterest and Google search the most linked site for recipes was the one I linked above, Making it with Danielle.
The variety in flavors made it fairly easy to stick to the plan, as in the six daily juices I was getting five different juice blends. One thing you find early though is that between prepping the fruit and vegetables, juicing them, cleaning the juicer, and actually drinking the juice every hour and a half to two hours there isn't much time to do anything else. I suppose you could do them ahead of time for the day, but to prevent mixing flavors you wouldn't really want to mix (kale would ruin the flavor of the mid-morning Pineapple-Apple-Mint for instance) you would still spend a lot of time juicing and cleaning every night to prep for the next day.
The other advantage to the BluePrint plan was the company provides a free application for the iPhone to help you track your cleanse, remind you when it is time to drink the next juice, and provide tips for ways to get past potential problems. You can adjust the times for the alerts, schedule cleanses in the future (say to repeat a three day cleanse monthly if desired), and get more information from the company about their products all from inside the application. I found the reminders a helpful point in making this first one easier.
Aside from a headache that I am sure was due to caffeine withdrawal, I felt pretty good the first two days. I didn't feel increased energy but I didn't feel run down either. The problem for me came after my third juice of day three. My GI tract rebelled, and it was not pleasant at all. I will spare you the details except to note that after spending most of three hours close to the restroom at all times I decided I was glad this was only a three day experiment.