Final Review of Dr. Oz 3 Day Detox Cleanse

Hello everyone! Happy New Year!

So I stuffed my face a lot over the holidays and I ended up gaining about 10 lbs. Not a huge deal, I'm still a healthy weight. But I ate a lot of sugar, and junk that just makes you feel crummy. I wanted something to kickstart me back into clean eating so I decided on the Dr. Oz 3 Day Detox Cleanse.
Dr. Oz 3 Day Detox Cleanse
I should preface this by saying that I'm a pretty healthy eater. I exercise fairly regularly and am generally very healthy. I love smoothies and drink them often, so I really felt like this wouldn't be that hard for me to do... other than the whole not snacking part. I'm the worst snacker!

It comes with a nice spreadsheet that includes all the items you need to shop for:

I got all my ingredients and I'm ready to go!

DAY 1:

The green tea was good. A little too sweet for me, which really says something because I like my drinks sweet. About one hour later is when my headache started. I'm a huge coffee drinker, so to go cold turkey was kind of hard on me.

The breakfast drink was yummy! A little more tart than I like my smoothies, but still pretty good. I'm starting this cleanse thinking, 'Ok, this is going to be easy if they all taste this good!'
Sorry for the red cup, you can't really see the drink but it's a nice berry/light red color.

Then behold, the lunch drink. YUCK. First of all the recipe makes wayyyyy more than one glass full of smoothie. It is SO pulpy no matter how long I blend it (which felt like forever). It's also very bitter and basically tastes like grass. But still, I got it down. Now that I've read some reviews I think I will cut the ingredients a bit.

For my snack drink I obviously decided on the breakfast smoothie. Honestly, I wasn't even hungry for a snack drink. I was feeling very full, but I had the snack drink anyway.
The dinner drink isn't horrible, but I'm not a fan of the cayenne pepper. I like spicy - but just in my food. It was kind of freaking me out to be drinking a cold smoothie with a hot pepper taste. It was hard to get down. And I forgot to get a picture of it, but it's like a light blueish color. I realized that the drinks all pretty much match the colors on the Dr. Oz printable sheet.

 END OF DAY 1!

The detox bath was nice, but I do those quite often anyway. At the end of the day I was feeling VERY bloated, and the detox bath did seem to help with some of that bloated feeling. I was not tired though; had plenty of energy. I was feeling pretty good!

DAY 2:

I decided to weigh myself just to see if there's any progress in that department, and I was happy to see that I'm down 2 lbs! In just one day that's pretty amazing, but I do realize a lot of it is just water weight.
I had my green tea again, but this time I cut back on the stevia. I have a headache again and I'm not as energized as I was yesterday. Surprisingly, I'm not hungry at all. I think I miss the idea of eating though, and that feeling of crunching something.
The breakfast drink is by far my favorite, so I enjoy drinking that one.
After the breakfast drink I get in my workout: 30 Day Shread with Jillian Michaels. I've done it a lot from level 1 to 3 over the past year, but I hadn't done it since about September. I'm trying to get back into working out again. I started with level 1 today. I had enough energy to go through it fine, but again I'm feeling more tired today than yesterday. I think that's also due to the fact that I stayed up late watching Downton Abbey. Ooops.
This time for the lunch drink I put in only 2 stalks of celery and went a little lighter on the kale (I didn't pack it so tight into one cup). I also chopped both those up as much as possible. This helped with the pulpiness and bitterness a lot. Since I didn't use as much stevia in the morning for my tea, I used some in this lunch drink and that also helped with the taste. All together with the slight changes, it was much better. Still not my favorite.
Starting to feel a little bloated again, but not as bad as yesterday. My headache is wicked though so I had to take some Ibuprofen. I'm starting to get a little hungry now, but nothing too bad.
I had the breakfast drink again for snack drink. I'm feeling better; not so tired or hungry.
Time for the dinner drink, which I am not looking forward to. I just put the cayenne pepper in a little amount of the drink and drink that fast, that way I can enjoy the rest. It's still not great, but much more doable now.

END OF DAY 2!

Time to detox. I'm feeling pretty good, but still a little tired. I still had bloating today but not as bad as day 1. Hmmmm, I think I can do this! I think I can make it!

LAST DAY, DAY 3:

I wake up feeling great! I got plenty of sleep which obviously helps. I decide to weigh myself again and I'm down another 2 lbs, so 4 lbs total. Pretty exciting!
First I have the green tea again which I'm really starting to like.
I have the breakfast drink which I really look forward to now. It's so yummy and I have to lick the almond butter off the spoon after I've put it in the blender. Mmmm almond butter. My body feels a lot better; I can tell the detox is working its magic.
After the breakfast drink I do my 30 Day Shred level 1 workout. I'm really sore from yesterday's workout, which just proves to me that's it been too long since I've worked out. I'm glad to get back into it!
I made the lunch drink the same as yesterday but this time I also added ice and it was MUCH better. For some reason the colder drinks just taste better.
Feeling tired again and bloated. 
I had my snack drink later in the day, so it was hard for me to finish my dinner drink when it was time.
Time to detox!
And I'm DONE!!!

FINAL RESULTS ON DAY 4:

Final results on the scale: Lost 4.8 lbs, so I'll go ahead and round up and say 5 :) hehe. I honestly think it might be more once my bloating is down some more... I'm still feeling pretty bloated.
On day 4 I made the breakfast drink again because I enjoy it so much. I'm going to eat real food today but still stick to healthy things to ease my body back into food. I'll probably make a spinach salad for lunch and some turkey chili for dinner.

Big notes and tips I took away from this:

• I was not as hungry as I thought I'd be. These drinks are very filling. Even on Day 3 I wasn't hungry.
• I feel like the lunch drink needed alterations, so with the cut back of celery and more blending it was doable. If you only use 2 stalks of celery in the drink then you can eat one or two celery sticks, which I found helps with the wanting to crunch something feeling.
• The cayenne pepper was rough for me. I had to "shoot" it in a small amount of drink, so that I was able to enjoy the majority of the drink without it.
• The ingredient list doesn't account for your snack drink. I had to go back to the store to get more bananas. I had enough of everything else, because I had a lot of that stuff at home prior to this detox anyway.
• I had a lot of bloating which was uncomfortable, so I drank a ton of water in between the detox drinks which seemed to help.
• The drinks (especially the lunch one) take up a lot of prep time. So I suggest doing it ahead of time so that you're not too hungry when it's time to drink one. I had my lunch one at about 1:00, so I'd start prepping for it at 12:30.
• The drinks taste much better cold... I threw in about 5 or so ice cubes to each one.

A few pros and cons: 

PROS:

• It's only 3 days long, which is pretty doable.
• The drinks are filling; you're not very hungry.
• It feels like the detox does what it states, which is detox your system.
• An added bonus is you lose weight (at least I did).
• You really feel so much better in the end. Even my skin looked better!

CONS:

• The lunch and the dinner drink aren't that good (personal opinion).
• There is no food for 3 days, which can be difficult - but then again this is a JUICE cleanse.
• I experienced a lot of bloating which was very uncomfortable.
• Very tired for the first couple of days and low on energy.

 FINAL THOUGHTS:

Overall I would definitely recommend this cleanse if you're looking for something to detox your system. It wasn't too hard to do, and the results were satisfying. I feel much better, have more energy, and am down 5 lbs which actually makes a big difference in how I feel. I would definitely do it again when I feel like I need another detox!

I will post an update in a couple weeks to say if the 5 lbs has stayed off or not. I always like to see if others were able to keep it off. 

Hopefully this might be helpful to those of you that might consider this cleanse. Let me know in the comments if you try it and what your results are like!!

**UPDATE from Day 5**

I'm down another 1.5 lbs! Most if not all of my bloating is gone, so that must be what it was. I also ate really healthy on day 5 with another breakfast smoothie, spinach salad, almonds for snack, small grilled chicken dinner. So total loss so far is about 6.5 lbs! :)