Test Kitchen Tuesday

At the risk of becoming “The Cleanse Lady,” in addition to my already established role as the “Ninja Blender Lady,” I wanted to share my thoughts with you guys about the Dr. Oz 48-Hour Weekend Cleanse.

Suggested to me by reader JoAnn, this cleanse is simple enough in theory, as you only need two days! You can do anything for two days, right?

Right.

So, when 2Chili headed out of town for a few days, I took the opportunity to give it a shot without impacting his life in the process.

Overall Structure

This cleanse is exactly the same on both days:

• Breakfast: Quinoa dish (I made enough on day one for both days, and then some because I like quinoa)
• Snacks: Either a fruit juice requiring a juicer or high-speed blender, a non-blended fruit juice, or, fresh veggies
• Lunch: Fruit smoothie
• Dinner: Cabbage-based vegetable soup with a side of sauerkraut and apples (I am so not kidding you)

Cost

The cleanse comes with a shopping list for easy shopping, however, now that I have done this, I strongly caution against buying strictly from the list. You see, there are some things you won’t need depending on how you structure your snacks. If you go with the fresh veggie only option, you won’t need A LOT of things. So, read through the meal plan, decide how you are going to tackle it, then review the shopping list and mark off things you don’t need.

Before I went shopping, I marked off things I had on hand, but didn’t take into consideration how I was going to approach the snack component. Also, I am not huge into sauerkraut, so I think I would have just skipped that altogether if I had pre-read to understand how it was going to be used.

That said, I spent about $60 on the ingredients I needed – and they were all organic. You could definitely go cheaper, but it seems when you are doing a cleanse you would want to put the best things in to get the best results out, so, for me organic was the route. Of course, there was plenty left over and I was able to use the ingredients in other meals. Some of the items required may be hard to find at a traditional grocery store, so I headed to Whole Foods as the most efficient acquisition method – and let’s be real, I don’t need a very big excuse to go to Whole Foods.  2Chili was funny the day he thought he coined the term “Whole Paycheck,” but I had to let him down easy and say that was not something he invented – it is commonly accepted as its name!

Feasibility

Okay, this is the thing most people want to know – how hard is it to survive two days of this? Honestly, I found it easier than the Jay Robb Fruit Flush because you eat real food the whole time. Each meal gets progressively less in calories, but, you can eat as many snacks and detox drinks from the approved list that you want. The question is just how many of those you would actually want. I had one veggie snack and one juice snack each day, and that was ample.

And, I have to say, Dr. Oz’s detox drink (the one that requires juicing) was surprisingly delicious. I don’t have a juicer, so I made it my Ninja Professional Blender and strained out the pulp. (As a side note, I added 72 oz of water to the pulp and later poured it on my outdoor plants. May as well not let it go to waste!)

However, the downer to me was I really, really didn’t want the cabbage soup on the second night. It was surprisingly tasty, but it’s where the detox falls apart for me. It tastes good but looks terrible! Also, cabbage soup with a side of sauerkraut is somewhat strange. I did heat up the sauerkraut with the allotted apple – it is not suggested you do this, I just thought it would be better than separate sauerkraut and apples — and they were surprisingly good together, but I certainly wouldn’t eat that meal combination on a daily basis.

Effectiveness

I was doing this with no objective in mind, aside from seeing what it was like so I could report back to you guys, but I did lose two pounds of water weight in two days. I seriously doubt that will stick, but it was nice to see regardless. Also, I can honestly say I wasn’t hungry during the two day period – mostly because I could have a detox juice or fresh veggies anytime. Did you know that eating radishes is a calorie negative experience? They are pretty much void of calories but fill you up!

If you follow the plan, you will be under 1200 calories for the day, so it is definitely not something you should do for more than two days at a time – your body needs ample calories to thrive.

One suggestion I have when doing a two-day or three-day detox is to do it during a time period when you are relatively busy so that you aren’t sitting around waiting to eat. I had a lot going on during these two days – gardening, cleaning the house, errands around town – so the time sort of flew by. If you were just sitting around the house doing this over a relaxing weekend, I could see things falling apart a bit.

Bottom Line: If you want to hit the reset button and get yourself moving in a healthy direction, this 2-day detox would be a good start. By taking the sugar, processed food, and other toxins out of your diet, your body has a chance to recharge and you will be able to hit the ground running with your healthy lifestyle!