The Blurb:
Radiance offer three or five-day progammes of freshly-pressed vegetable juices delivered direct to your door. Fasts are individualised to the client and adapted to the level of cleansing most suited to lifestyle and medical history.
Unlike many juice fasts, Radiance primarily uses alkalizing vegetable-based juices and avoid the high sugar content of fruit-based fasts. This counteracts the acidic nature of meat, sugar and dairy, all known to cause acne, fatigue, and migraines. Juices are combined with supplements to accelerate the detoxification process. The more fructose sugar-based Signature Cleanse is preferable for someone less familiar with fasting or detoxing, as the detox reaction can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. Naively, I shared my long history of detoxing with Radiance before agreeing to the harsher Greens Cleanse.
The Process:
After a brief chat with Clare at Radiance I was prescribed the vegetable-based cleanse. As someone who has detoxed, (and re-toxed) numerous times I was a fair candidate for the more intense fast.
Alongside daily supplements, I was instructed to drink the Lemon Aid first thing (ideally 7am), a combination of mineral water, lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. Mid-morning I was to drink the Power Green Plus, a combination of pear, celery, cucumber, lemon, wheatgrass, and spinach.
The cashew-based Protein Power is lunch. The combination of protein, slow-release glucose and electrolytes is intended to keep you going until late afternoon.
Then, Lean and Green is an apple and veg-based stop-gap until evening, when the Squeaky Green Plus juice is taken. A final top-up of apple, lime, spinach and cucumber is the pre-bedtime quencher.
I’ve never found juice fasts easy, and by evening I had a migraine over both temples.
The Result:
By day two I had all the predictable detox reactions; I felt shaky, nauseous, achy and weak. While I know detox reactions generally correlate to the depth of cleansing, at the time it wasn’t enjoyable.
By the third day I was exhausted, dizzy and nauseous. After completing the fast I still felt delicate, but it made me far more aware of my body and lifestyle. It’s easy to feel indestructible when you’re partying 24/7. The fact I feel terrible when I try and detox can only be an indication of its impending necessity.
On that note, I’d recommend carefully considering your habitual toxin intake before committing to the stronger Greens Cleanse fast. By day five I ventured out but my party tolerance had plummeted; I felt terrible after a couple of drinks.
Ultimately, all this tells me is that my body really needed to detox. However, I did lose a couple of pounds, and when I returned to eating normally on the fourth day my skin was visibly glowing.
