Everything people ask us, answered
Over seventeen years in the juicing business, I have done countless three day cleanses, plenty of one day cleanses, and a few that ran past fourteen days. I have walked more people through three, five, and ten day cleanses than I could ever count. From 2012 to 2017, juice cleansing was a craze, and I was writing and giving interviews about it constantly. Fast forward to August 2026, and you might ask what more there could possibly be to say. The answer is simple: the truth, minus the hype. So here are the questions people actually ask when they walk into goodsugar, see a wall of juice, and feel overwhelmed.
WHICH JUICES AM I SUPPOSED TO DRINK?
Here is the most important thing on this page. The magic is not in the juice. The magic is in what you stop doing. A cleanse is a reductionist diet: you eliminate all the dietary mistakes at once. No processed food. No excess protein. No eating late at night. No eating all day long. No excess calories. No miscombined meals. Your body gets immediate relief, and the longer you go, the deeper it takes hold. What improvements? Everyone is different, and I do not know your chemistry, so I will not pretend to hand you a before and after diagnosis. Commonly, you will feel less bloated, lighter, and clearer.
IS THERE ANY ORDER TO THIS?
No. As a man who makes his living selling juice, I wish it were that complicated, like a Harry Potter incantation that only works at the right moment, in the right light, at the right location. It makes no difference whether you start with a deep green juice and follow it with pineapple, or the reverse. The flexibility is the point: drink the juices you like in the order you like.
One caution. A very green, no fruit cleanse is a very low calorie diet, and you will feel tired. If you have to work, think, exercise, or even walk, you need calories, and on a cleanse the only place to get them is fruits and starchy vegetables. Do not be afraid of them.
And a word about the all green, no fruit programs, like the candida cleanses. There is no solid science showing that starving your entire system of every form of sugar works. If anything, the logic runs the other way: deprive the body of the carbohydrates it needs and the healthy cells go weak and tired, while the troublemakers scavenge whatever is left. Why do so many books and juice bars get this wrong? Pseudoscience. The pharmaceutical world is not perfect, and neither is the juice bar guy. Buyer beware, in both directions.
WILL I LOSE WEIGHT?
Maybe a pound or two on a three day cleanse, but that is mostly water and a calorie deficit, and it does not necessarily stay off when you return to solid food. Weight loss should never be the goal of a short cleanse, because it is not an effective way to lose weight. If you want to drop a few pounds to fit into an outfit, a simple calorie deficit and hard workouts will serve you better. The real benefit is something else entirely: a pause from the addictive eating patterns you have been running for years. Not sitting down to your usual meals, not chewing, not chasing flavor explosions all day. It is a surprisingly profound psychological experience. Think of it as a meditation, a short retreat from eating habits that were not serving you.
WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT SUGAR?
Put that worry down for a few days. The sugar we are all trying to avoid is not the sugar in beets, apples, and pineapples. Not all sugar is the same, and not all sugar hits your chemistry the same way. Refined sugar is concentrated, stripped of every companion nutrient, and compacted into something far more potent. Eat a tablespoon of fresh cut apple and a tablespoon of white sugar and you cannot seriously believe your blood responds identically. So when you see a juice with fruit in it, think healthy carbohydrates, healthy calories, healthy fuel. Some of this is chemistry and some is metaphor. For the sake of this lighthearted flyer, take it as a useful generality rather than exact science.
WHERE WILL I GET MY PROTEIN?
There are amino acids in fruits and vegetables. You will not get much protein for three days, and here is the thing: you do not need much for three days. Your digestive system always has amino acids to work with, and the human machine is built to run primarily on carbohydrates. You have reserves. You will be fine.
WHAT ABOUT FIBER?
Look at the bottom of the bottle. The reason juice is not transparent, the reason something settles, is that trace fiber remains in every juice, enough to stimulate digestion and enough prebiotic material to feed your probiotics. Not a concern.
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM A WATER FAST?
Night and day. A water fast gives you no calories and almost no nutrients, which is why it is so much harder. A juice cleanse feeds you carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. You are fed, just differently.
HOW SHOULD I DO MY FIRST CLEANSE?
Start the first day with one of our smoothies and about four juices. Keep the day gentle. Skip the ninety minutes on the treadmill, try light yoga or a walk instead, and see how you feel. Skip the coffee too if you can. Cleanses are far less effective with stimulants poured on top.
And know this from the old days: we used to give people too much juice. Six sixteen ounce bottles was the standard prescription from Dr. Norman Walker, who invented one of the great cold press machines of his era and lived to ninety nine. My mentor Fred Bisci, ninety six as I write this, taught me the chemistry of all this without disappearing into abstraction. Less can be more here too.
A FEW HONEST CAUTIONS
If you are sick or uncertain in any way, talk to your health care provider. Do not rely on a flyer or a juice bar to tell you how to get well. If you take medication, three days of juicing should not change it, but never adjust or stop medication without your doctor, and on longer cleanses check in with them, because as the system cleans up, some things can feel stronger.
One more truth from someone who writes books about this: if you live with high anxiety, compulsive habits, or addictive patterns, stepping away from your ordinary diet will change how your nervous system feels. Sometimes that means a wave of anxiety, sometimes it means feeling wonderful. There are too many kinds of human being to tie this up in a bow. Go gently, and treat the cleanse as what it really is: a few days of rest for a body that rarely gets any.
goodsugar. Real food, real chemistry, no hype.