Healthy Challenge: Juicing

Cleansing, juicing, healthy eating, paleo, clean eating…there’s lots of “healthy” terms being thrown around right now, but do you know what they mean? Today we’re going to look specifically at juicing.

About a year ago I set out to try out juices just to see what the fuss was about. Originally I saw them from The Pantry and was intrigued. I’m not going to lie, I looked at the red, green and orange in those bottles and thought what in the world is that going to taste like? It smells like grass…so it can’t taste much better.

Initially, it did take a little bit of will power on my part to drink these juices. I thought they were ok, and I struggled to drink the whole thing, so I decided to start doing a little research. One of the reasons I thought it might be good to juice was to get more fruits and vegetables than I was already intaking. As I researched I found out that there are many varying opinions on juicing, the best way to juice, when is the best time to drink your juice and more.

At the end of the day, I decided to keep juicing (at The Pantry, making my own, or picking a juice up at Whole Foods) especially on the days I knew I would have a hard time getting in enough vegetables. Now I am hooked, my instagram followers know I LOVE juicing and have even branched out to make my own. I like it so much now that even just smelling juice makes me want it. It’s so amazing how we can train our bodies to love something so healthy and good for us.

Juicing can become expensive quickly if you let it, so here’s a few recommendations on how to cut the cost of juicing.

Best Tips for Cutting the Cost of Juicing:

• Make your own! When you make your own juice, you cut out the extra cost of man power and packaging. A juicer can be an expensive purchase so keep your eyes peeled for sales, discounts, or maybe even scour Craig’s List. Here’s the #1 Best Seller juicer on Amazon currently if you want to purchase one. (affiliate link)
• Go in with some friends. Juicing on your own is a lot of trouble. It’s messy, there’s lots of prep work (to clean and skin the produce), and lots of clean up afterwards. When you go in with 1-2 other friends, you can split up the cost of the produce and chat (and maybe even sip some wine! What? It’s grape juice, right?!) making the time go by faster.
• Price check. When you go to Whole Foods, Fresh Market, Earthfare or anywhere else look to see if they have any juices on sale or if there are any coupons available online from the juicing brands.
• Whole Foods. I have been VERY impressed with Whole Foods fresh juice bar. They usually make 2-3 kinds of juice per day that you can get in their cafe area. It’s usually cheaper than the bottled kinds and they told me they usually grab organic fruits/veggies when available. There is NO way you could buy all that produce (especially if it’s organic!) for less than $5 which is around what they charge for their juices.

My recommendation would be to try it out at least 3-4 times to see if you become more aware of how your body feels when you juice. It’s a great way to supplement your diet, but still try to get in as many fruits and veggies as you can in their natural state. SO….now you guessed it! Your challenge of the day is to try a juice! Whether it be making it yourself, grabbing one at the store, or begging a friend to bring you one, take me up on this challenge. You won’t regret it!

Ease yourself into juicing by picking a juice with fruits in it at first to get used to the flavors and sweeten it slightly. You might want to try my favorite Green Juice recipe! If you’ve juiced before, what’s your favorite kind of juice?

OK, ok, enough juicing talk, how’s your 10 Day Challenge coming along? Are you sticking with it? Please keep checking in with me on Instagram and Facebook with the #HealthyEatingChallenge tag.