I write about many businesses around town; even if they don’t provide services or products that aren’t up my alley, such as coffee. One locally owned business I’ve been to before a couple of times is 86 Cold Press. They are a juice bar located in downtown Wichita at 600 E. Douglas Avenue. They are an all-organic juice shop offering cold-pressed juices, yogurt, healthy eats and cleanses.
Probably their biggest draw is their juices. I’m not a huge juice person unless it involves liquor mixed in but figured why not try one of their juice cleanses? If anything, I’m able to pour some money to support a local business and it gives me something to blog about.
I’m no doctor and am not here to preach about the benefits of a juice cleanse. Most people probably have their thoughts made on whether they believe in them or not, I’m just here to do random things for the sake of content to write about.
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The Cleanse Process
Before I even get into my experience with the juice cleanse, let’s cover what is a juice cleanse? According to 86 Cold Press’ website, here’s what they said:
The purpose of a juice cleanse is to detoxify and provide the body with vitamin and nutrient dense juice that decreases inflammation thats caused by processed foods in our modern diet. Our cleanse consist of six juices within a day, for any duration of your choice. Cleanse pickup days are Monday & Thursday. Orders should be placed two days in advance. Each juice is specifically chosen and scheduled accordingly to provide a balance of nutrients for your day.
At 86 Cold Press, it cost $140 + tax for a 3-day juice cleanse which includes 18 bottles. So common core math tells us that’s six 12oz. bottles per day. And in case anybody is wondering, this blog wasn’t comped, discounted or anything. I paid the full price for this experience. Technically, we paid the full price twice because Megan did it with me.
Before we ordered anything, we were able to come in and try all the juices before and speak with the owner to have any questions answered which was helpful.
Pre-Cleanse Process
To prepare for the cleanse, we were told it was important to drink lots of water, reduce and/or eliminate caffeine, alcohol and sugars, increase consumption of fruits and vegetables, and decrease consumption of meats and dairy.
Juice cleanse pickups took place on Monday and Wednesday, so I arrived on Monday and we kicked everything on Tuesday.
Day One of the Juice Cleanse
To be completely honest, starting on Tuesday was the worst idea. I kept thinking about eating tacos all day. Instead, I drank juices.
The six juices we had each day were as follows along with their descriptions:
- Renew: Start your day off on a good start. Renew is our sweet green with Kale, Spinach, Apple & Pineapple. The Renew gives you the encouragement to take on the day of juices, yet never too intense to start the day but packed of nutrients and a brightness that will launch your day on a good start.
- Doctor’s Orders: Second juice of the day, loaded with natural electrolytes from citrus & especially ginger to give your morning a little boost. Cayenne pepper helps start your metabolism. Doctor’s Orders is a great immunity booster, fighting a cold or have the sniffles?..This one will sure help!
- Greener: Packing that body full of nutrients. This is our pure power greens, there is nothing sweet about this juice but it’ll get your ph levels in a high rank! If you aren’t a huge fan of greens..honestly, it isn’t going to be your fav (suck it up buttercup!). This juice is SO SO healthy for you its crazy, definitely anti-cancer fighting agent. The Greener is a juice that promotes healing from within.
- Root Down: Increase that blood flow, decrease inflammation, and get more antioxidants! This juice is amazing for a lot of things. Just google the ingredients: Turmeric, ginger, carrot, apple, lemon, celery. Root Down is a fighter thats for sure, and great for any chronic illness, joint pain, & anything that is inflamed.
- Feel the Beet: You’ll feel how awesome these magical roots will make you feel..GOOD! This juice is placed towards the end on the cleanse specifically because beets have added benefits for cleaning up (not out) the digestive tract throughout the night which is why we place it towards the end of the day. Beets have minerals that help aid digestion so we want to slow down the process as much as we can in order to have plenty of time within our system. Beets can do wonders!
- Activated Lemon: The last juice for the day, Activated Lemon is light and great for detoxing. Better choice for being the closest to bedtime. If you are truly wanting a detox, this bevie helps grab the nitty gritty unwanted toxins from the body.
Megan and I each had our favorites of the juices. Oddly enough, we were completely different on which ones we liked most. She was a fan of Activated Lemon and Doctor’s Orders while I was a fan of Root Down and Feel the Beet. We both struggled with Greener though. It was a very veggie-tasting drink that definitely didn’t resonate with our taste buds.
The first day was a little rough. We texted each other through most of the day talking about how hungry we were. Hydrating was important and Megan did a great job of supplementing with water during the day while I struggled with everything….just like anything in my life.
If you ever get hungry, we were told it was OK to also eat very small bites like unsalted almonds, vegetables or vegetable broth.
Day Two of the Juice Cleanse
Tuesday was worse than Monday.
The hunger cravings definitely came on strong. I was so hungry even Taco Bell sounded good to me. We managed to get through all the bottles, but we did have some cucumber and vegetable broth during the day. Seriously, vegetable broth never tasted so good.
We spoke all day long whether we would be able to make it to the third day. No lie, there was lots of talk about quitting.
The only thing that kept our mind off food was the constant peeing.
Day Three of the Juice Cleanse
The third day was probably the easiest of the days. We both talked about how we weren’t all that hungry. I even managed to knock out a round of golf with my surprising amount of energy. Sidenote: a juice cleanse does NOT help your golf game.
We found ourselves not drinking our juices until later in the day, but did put down lots of water. The day went by quickly without much thought of food. I think it also helped we saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
On this day, we did supplement the day with some edamame and vegetable broth. Did I mention how awesome vegetable broth was?
I told Megan, I was going to Denny’s right at midnight to eat, but she said that’d be cheating so I didn’t.
Post-Cleanse Thoughts
We did some roughly 4-7 pounds during the cleanse for those wondering. As someone who blogs about food, it was pretty hard for me mentally. It didn’t help my social feeds were filled with beautiful pictures of food.
The cleanse was like a roller coaster for us. Day one was peaking towards a struggle. Day two was the peak of the struggle and the final day was trending downward.
Before the cleanse, we both were feeling bloated mostly due to eating out, and much of that went away by the end of the cleanse.
Would we do it again?
What’s funny is the first time I did a 3-day juice cleanse, I said I would never do it again.
Fast-forward years later, and here I am doing it again. So, I can’t say with certainty that I wouldn’t. If I did do it again, it’d be years later again. Health benefits aside, we are glad we did it. If anything, it gave us the motivation to keep us off the greasy foods for a few days.
Also, 86 Cold Press was super helpful before and during the cleanse process. They were there every step of the way; very nice folks over there on East Douglas.
If you’re interested, you can learn more on their webpage of Facebook.
Have an event you would like for us to come cover? Email us with the details of the event. We are always open to suggestions on fun things to do in Wichita!
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