The 3-Day Cleanse: Drink Fresh Juice, Eat Real Food, and Get Back into Your Skinny Jeans Paperback – Bargain Price, March 25, 2010

I am not new to juicing, or to Blueprint Cleanse so I sort of knew what I was getting in ordering this book. However, a few aspects were quite disappointing to me. Dividing the book into roughly three sections:
The first third of the book (or so) is all good information, but highly repetitive and if you are health savvy enough to be attempting a juice cleanse, it is probably all repeat information to you. Really, an entire page on bisphenol-A?? Contaminants in drinking water? The importance of eating organic produce etc? Honestly, it felt like journalistic filler that could have been popped into any random magazine or newspaper article and unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, it's nothing new or proprietary to cleansing or juicing. A little background is fine but it is too big a chunk of the text to be relevant to the topic advertised.

The middle third of the book is probably the section that ended up being most useful to me. It gave an overview of cleansing, tools etc needed, detox symptoms, what is normal and what's not, benefits, methods, etc. There are a couple charts and quizzes to assess yourself in various areas.

The last third of the book is recipes. This was a major disappointment to me. Some of the dressings and salads are okay but not worth the price of this book as a raw vegan cookbook. The juice recipes, however, are TERRIBLE. They are almost entirely comprised of fruit and rice milk beverages. I call them beverages because that's not fresh juice- Drinking fruit and processed rice milk is NOT A JUICE CLEANSE. There are exactly three 'green' juice recipes and they ALL contain fruit. Juice cleansing is amazing, but a juice cleanse following these recipes will NOT be. I bought this book almost solely for the cashew milk recipe and, having had Blueprint Cleanse cashew milk, I knew it lacked the cinnamon and simply added it back in. I've done the actual Blueprint Cleanse and it in no way resembles the juice regimen outlined in this book. To be honest, most of the fruit juices looked gross to me and I would also say most contained rice milk. A real cleanse should consist mostly to nearly entirely of the green juice. I do have a Norwalk and I use it regularly, so it wasn't hard to figure out the 'real' recipes for a cleanse like this. my approximation of the green juice would be:

a third to one half a bunch of kale
one small head of (dark green!) romaine or half a large head
handful or two of spinach leaves
dense handful of parsley
one bunch of celery
two cucumbers
3 lemons, peeled
5 apples, fuji are great for juicing (fewer if you don't mind the taste of the green juice)
one piece of peeled fresh ginger (I don't add this because I'm not a fan)

This makes 2-3 mason jars or about 1.5-2 days' worth if you are cleansing, and occasionally drinking another juice or two. You'd probably want more if you are only drinking the green juice. NOTHING like this recipe appears in the book. I guess the purchase was worth it for the cashew milk recipe, which is very good (with added cinnamon). I have been drinking one quart jar of green juice daily, with small glasses of other fresh juices like apple-carrot-orange (also nothing like this in this book, more of a Gerson recipe with added orange) and pineapple-apple-mint, a Blueprint favorite of mine that is SO EASY to make but again does not appear in any form in this book. Perhaps because pineapple is hard to juice in a centrifugal juicer, I don't know. I plan to branch out a bit more into beet juices and other vegetable juices but again this book was no help in that regard. There were next to no vegetable juice recipes included, and those are the ones with the major health benefits. While there is no added sugar in the fruit juices, they DO contain a good amount of sugar and if that is all you are consuming, you are not reaping the same health benefits. Maybe at some point they will write a book with better quality of information but unless you have other sources for the recipes or you know how to make your own green juices, this book is minimally helpful in following through on a cleanse.

I can't give this book 5 stars because there are no alternative recipes to the nut milks for people like me who are allergic to cashews. I also think they should have gone more in depth with the side effects you will experience while detoxifying. I got a weird rash all over my arms from the toxins coming to the surface reacting with the sun. My doctor prescribed Betamethasone cream which worked, and I realized when I exercised my arms also felt better because the sweat was helping remove the toxins from my skin. I am Kenyan-American so I don't wear sun screen regularly but I've learned my lesson after that incident (lol) and now wear SPF 100 when it's very sunny outside. You might also want to take a sea salt bath while detoxing as I did to help draw out the toxins the juices dredge up, it really helped.

I originally wanted to do the actual 3-day Blue Print Cleanse which delivers the juices daily to your house but it would have cost $250, which seems too pricey for me, so I figured I could just buy the book and a juicer and do the cleanse myself. I bought a Factory-Reconditioned Breville XXJE95XL Two Speed Juice Fountain Plus (which I love)from Best Buy for $75 and began reading the book and experimenting with the juice recipes.

I think this book is great. I discovered juice cleanses through my best friend who had success with both of her cleanses, but this book gave me a lot more information. For instance, drinking water with lemon in the morning and then having a green juice is best to help clean out your system from the night before.

I've been drinking juices every other day as a replacement for breakfast and lunch for over a month and I have noticed a remarkable difference. I no longer crave a lot of junk food and when I did give in and have a chicken nuggets meal from McDonalds, the food tasted so gross to me. I've also noticed the flavored sodas I used to love (orange, grape, etc.) now have a chemically taste and I can only drink Pepsi and ginger soda. My tolerance for refined sugar has also decreased. When I decided to treat myself to a slushy I got the first sugar rush headache I've ever had in my life. I don't crave sweets anymore, and when I get a little craving for chocolate I only need one piece to be satisfied instead of the whole bar.

And I can fit into skinny jeans again!