I often get questions about the different types of diets and exercises I do to maintain my health.  But my approach to health and fitness is actually quite simple; try to move everyday, eat everything in moderation, avoid foods that come in cans, and try to eat greens with every meal.  And although I am not a big fan of fad diets and fitness trends, I am definitely on the juicing wagon.  Although I have not gone on a pure juicing cleanse, I have juiced sporadically to supplement my weight cuts.  In this article, I will attempt to summarize all that a beginner needs to start juicing.

Benefits of Juicing

Juicing offers loads of benefits to the human body.  And although the marketing of juicing makes it sound like godsend, the benefits of juicing are much more grounded.  The actual and real benefits of juicing include:

Sustainable Juicing Weight Loss Plan

Any juicing weight loss plan is going to have to fit in with the longstanding weight loss paradigm: expend more calories than you take in.  Marketing campaigns pitch a juice cleanse where you completely cut food out of your diet and replace it with juice for a certain amount of time.  Now here's the thing about going 100% juice (and no solid foods) to lose weight it's not sustainable.  Any weight shredded will be regained once you start eating again.

Any sustainable juicing weight loss plan mixes juicing with eating actual food.  Yes.  Food.  This way you can still get your vital nutrients from fruits and vegetables and still get the rest of the nutrients your body needs from grains and meat.

Here's how you lose weight juicing, and keep it off for good.  If you eat three meals a day, replace one meal with juice.  If you eat two meals a day, juice either before your first meal or in-between meals.  With this schedule of eating at least twice a day, you can sustain your weight loss and sustain juicing as a permanent lifestyle.  If you you go on an extended juicing cleanse and do not eat, you do not have enough caloric reserves to be active and do not give your body all the nutrients it needs.  And although eating while juicing slows down your weight loss compared to pure juicing, you are ensuring that you going to keep the weight off and won't lose any muscles mass due to inactivity.

Using juicing to supplement or replace your meals allow you to cut down your calories but not any of the vital nutrients.  The fact is, a lot of the calories we eat on a daily basis serves no nutritional value.

Here are some delicious, healthy, and easy juice recipes in order for you to get started with a sustainable weight loss plan:

Recipe #1 (28-32 oz)


Recipe #2 (28-32 oz)


Recipe #3  (18-20 oz)


Recipe #4 (10-12 oz)


For some more recipes, go to JuiceRecipes.com.

Try to experiment with your juices.  As long as you have your greens in there and you should be fine.  Also, be sure to not have too much sugar in your juice by combining too many sweet fruits in the same concoction.  Common fruits with high sugar content include grapes, bananas, mangos, sweet cherries, apples, pineapples, pears and kiwi.  Low sugar fruits include avacados, blackberries, raspberries, oranges, papaya, tomatoes, and guavas.

Make Juicing More Affordable

By far the number one complaint of juicing is how expensive it is.  And yes, it can get pretty expensive.  But there are several cost-cutting techniques you can use to make juicing more affordable.  Here are some ways you can make juicing more cost-friendly:

Here are some more juicing recipes that are affordable. The recipe are for per  8-10 oz of juice.

Recipe 1-4 source

Cheap Juice Recipe #1:


Cheap Juicing Recipe #2:


Cheap Juice Recipe 3:


Cheap Juice Recipe 4:


Best Juicer for a Beginner

If cheap is what you are going for, then get the Hamilton Beach Juice Extractor.  It's what I got for my brother a couple of years back.  It is cheap and it gets the job done.  However, there are two things I do not like about it.  It's bulky so makes cleaning up a bit bothersome.  It's also a bit loud.

If you really want to get the most juice out of your produce or need something a little more compact, the Breville JE98XL is perfect for you.  It's the best-seller in the juicing department right now on Amazon, and for good reason.  It creates an 8 ounce cup of juice in just 5 seconds with its 850-watt dual-speed motor and stainless-steel cutting disc.  The 5 seconds is a lot faster than the Hamilton Beach juicer.  The juice output of this one is also going to be higher than the Hamilton Beach juicer, therefore it is going to cost you less to juice.

Although the Breville is initially more expensive than the Hamilton Beach Juice Extractor, it is a much better juicer. The extra juice you get out of the Breville juicer will more than make up for the upfront cost after a couple of months of usage.

Juicing Vs. Blending: What's the Difference?

There's a difference between juicing and blending, although you may hear some people use it interchangeably.  Blending is a process in which whole fruits and vegetables are blended into a smoothie.  Juicing is a process in which the nutrition are extracted from the fruit or vegetable.

Blending is more filling, but it is also includes more calories, sometimes twice as many calories.  But on a calorie per nutrient basis, juicing will pack more nutrients per calorie; on a per 8 oz basis, you will get more nutrients out of juicing than you will with blending..  Whereas when you are blending your produce, you are getting some of the nutrients but you are also getting content which has no nutritional value but has calories.  So while both juicing and blending are viable and healthy options, those who want to avoid the extra calories may want to juice instead of blend.  But the impact of the extra stuff in blending goes beyond than just calories.  If you body has certain inflammatory responses to certain produces, juicing will either negate or lessen the inflammatory impact because your juice will not include much of the extra stuff.  Lastly, the blending process breaks the fruit and vegetable fibers apart, which makes it easier to digest.  But at the same time, it also means a slower release of nutrients when compared to juicing.

Good Foods for Juicing

There is really no "bad" produce to juice with, just good and better.  Here are a list of produce that are good for juicing, with the less expensive produce on top and the more expensive produce at the bottom:

Remember, the body absorbs nutrients from juices very well and thus sugar is absorbed much faster into the bloodstream than ingesting food.  Therefore, be sure that your juice isn't loaded with sugars.  You can do this by not putting two fruits with high sugar content in the same juice.

Caveats of Juicing

While we have talked a lot about the pros of juicing, there are a few things you should be aware of before juicing.  Here are some of the potential drawbacks of juicing:

Save Clean Up Time and Effort Juicing

The most annoying part of juicing is the clean up and the effort of actually cutting up supplies for the juice.  But this can be circumvented by preparing your supplies in bulk.  Reddit user ben174 uses a standard 1 gallon ziplock bag and prepares his supplies in advance.  As you can see from his picture below, he prepares the supplies for 6 juices, which will last 2-3 days depending on how often you juice.  This is a great time-saver as you only need to cut and clean up once, instead of six times.  This takes a big hassle out of juicing.  Be sure to reuse the zip lock bags after you are done with them.


Some people claim that once you start cutting and storing fruits and vegetables, they start to lose some of its nutrients .  The belief is that whenever produce is cut, the cells are wounded and they then trigger injury-based responses.  And the longer fruits and vegetables are stored without eating, the longer the injury responses arethus less nutritious the produce is.  However, we must remember that when we chew on fruits and vegetables, we are also inducing an injury-based response.  So although the belief may be somewhat true, the amount of nutritional decay is trivial and negligible at best and if you are going to eat it within a few days.  Additionally, avoid cutting into smaller pieces or with a dull knife can avoid further nutrition loss.

Is Juicing for Me?

Now is juicing for everyone?  I'm going to say yes.  Everyone can benefit from juicing no matter your fitness level or level of health.

While juicing can certainly be expensive, it doesn't have to be.  If you stick to your basic greens and juice 1-2 times a day, your total cost for juicing will be around $50-80 a month.  So if the price was what scared you from juicing, don't be scared.  Instead of spending $100 a month on meals that are loaded with meat, spend half of it buying produce instead.

As for cleansing with juice.  Going on a 100% juice cleanse for a few days is okay.  Juicing once a day to supplement your regular meals is better.  But relying on juicing as your only source of calories in the long-term is not ideal because you are missing out on a lot of necessary nutrients the body needs.  Remember, juicing is not a magical cure-all.  It is something to adopt for a more healthy lifestyle.  I know this is probably not what you want to hear but I want to stay away from the marketing hype on this site because I don't want to disseminate the wrong information.