• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Joy the Baker
Joy the Baker
  • Cookies
  • Bread
  • Cakes
  • Pies
  • Recipes
    • All Recipes
    • Cookies
    • Birthday Cake Recipes
    • Biscuits
    • Muffins
    • Cupcakes
    • Drinks
    • Breakfast
    • Lunch
    • Dinner
    • Fruit
    • Nuts
    • Buttermilk
    • Chocolate
    • Vanilla
    • Holiday
    • Healthy
    • Gluten-Free
    • Vegan
  • Blog
    • Baking 101
    • Tips
    • Beyond the Kitchen
    • Let It Be Sunday!
    • New Orleans
  • Shop

Blue Print Cleanse

February 23, 2011 by Joy the Baker 1,847 Comments

juice collage

Friends.  Hi.

You might know that I just finished working on my first cookbook.  It’s a baking book…. duh.  I spent months knee deep in butter and sugar and flour and cream.  It was delicious.  It was overwhelming.  It made my waist bigger.  It made my pants tighter.  How could it not!?  I think I was absorbing butter and sugar through my pores.  Wait.  Can you gain weight through your pores?  Call a scientist.

After I turned in my manuscript, I decided to clear out my system with a cleanse.  Before you tune out… listen.  I’m not a cleanse girl.  I’m not particularly fancy.  I really really really like to eat food.  I just thought this might be a good thing to do for my body to regulate my sugar cravings and try to get myself back in control.  I don’t own a scale.  I wasn’t trying to lose weight.  I just thought a few days of wholesome juices might be a good way to counteract the constant stream of butter I had allowed into my system.

I embarked on a three day juice cleanse with Blue Print Cleanse.  The word ’embark’ makes this process sound far more daunting that it actually was.  This post is more words that I ever write on my blog.  I just wanted to tell you what happens when a girl that is totally into food only drinks juice for three days.

IMG_0927

In the days before my juice cleanse I tried to revamp my diet.  I stayed away from meat.  I ate salads.  I drank tea.  And I don’t want to talk about how many french fries I ate…. the number is more than 10.  Whatever.

Day One:  Alright belly.  Food is so… yesterday.  I start off strong with the juices.  Juice. Water. Tea. Water. Juice.  Everything is going along just swimmingly.  And (miracle of all miracles)  I’m totally not hungry. Well well well.  Imagine that!  I have a pep in my step, I go for a long bike ride, and I’m stoked on the day.  Unfortunately, it all came to a screeching halt when I went for my first colonic.  See… the BPC website highly suggests you go for a colonic during your cleanse.  I wanted to get the full cleanse experience.  Um… I’m sure this procedure works for some people.  It’s just not for me.    (If you’re feeling faint at the mere mention of a colonic, feel free to skip the next paragraph.)

…If you don’t know what a colonic is… google it.  It’s a hot mess.  I hated every single second of it.  Sweet Lord.  Not ok.  The lady tried to convince me that I had major problems going on inside my body.  Um… guess what super ancient colonic lady?  I totally don’t believe you.  I’m pretty sure I’m young and healthy, and I take care of my body, and the major problem with my body right now is the hose you have shoved where the sun don’t shine.  Kindly remove that hose, your hands, the giant massager you insist I put on my belly.  Get everything off me exactly right now so I can run screaming from this place.  The classical music isn’t helping.  What are you doing on your iPad, colonic lady!?  You’re like… 80.  Are you playing solitaire?  Cause that’s annoying.  Oh Lord.  Help.  Stop saying I have high cholesterol.  Did you know there’s a legit test for that?  Yea.  Check your iPad.  There’s nothing wrong with me…. except for the fact that all  I want to do now is sit in the fetal position and eat cheeseburgers.   See what you’ve done?  Thanks for that.

Day One (the saga continues)… I don’t eat cheeseburgers.  Ooooh heavens.  I really want to.  It’s not that I’m hungry, it’s just that I want fat in my face after such a traumatic experience.  I push through, drink more juice and handle my business.  The first day was much easier that I thought it would be.  I thought I’d suffer without cookies and kale and rice and bacon…. the things I normally eat.  There’s was no suffering!  I even struggled to finish all of my juices because I felt so full.

bike beach

Day Two:  Whoa!  I woke up from the craziest dreams.  Not scary-clown crazy… but vivid and topical and totally appropriate for where my brain is.  I was dreaming about issues that I’ve shoved to the back of my brain in an effort to avoid.  … But after one day of no food, they all can rushing forward.  It felt good.  I felt like I could settle some things and get some clarity.  Now… I know this sounds totally hippy-dippy… and this is totally not my style.  But!!  I felt like I had some amazing mental clarity.  My brain felt unclogged and I didn’t even know it was stopped up.  I took some time to sit and be quiet in prayer.  Supreme.

coffee and cake

What’s up lunchtime?  It’s not that I’m hungry… It’s just that I want a giant sandwich for my face.  I had meetings on my second day of the cleanse.  That means that I had to be out in the world, interacting with people… normal people who eat delicious food for lunch.  I had juice.  I didn’t make a bit deal out of it.  I didn’t feel superior.  I didn’t feel fancy.  I just drank my pineapple juice thingy and enjoyed it.

I went to a spin class on Day Two of the cleanse.  I was feeling particularly badass.  I had enough energy to sweat buckets for 45 minutes.  Um… where did all this energy come from?  Amazing.  The only slight downside was that after the mega work out, all I could think about was dinner… and beet juice didn’t really fill the dinner void.  To fill the void, I heated up a mug of low sodium vegetable broth cut with hot water.  I know.  This sounds totally crazy.  I just wanted something savory and warm and dinnery feeling and the vegetable broth solved the dinner problem.

IMG_0428

Day Three:  Alright.  Another day, another six juices.  By now I feel like I’m an old pro at this.  I even get in the kitchen and start making this soup.  It’s totally weird cooking food that you can’t really eat.  It smelled really good.  That’s a problem.  I took pictures of the soup.  I took five small tastes of the soup.  I put the soup in a container in the fridge and forgot about it… until dinner time.

Dinnertime: when I naturally want to shovel food into my mouth.  In a moment of weakness, I texted my friend for a dinner date.  Dinner date!  Since this friend had ribbed me through my whole cleanse… I thought he’d surely be happy to help me break my fast and cheat a bit.  His response “I secretly hoped you wouldn’t break your cleanse”.  And with that, my confidence was restored and I stuck to the juices.

food again

After the Cleanse:  Food.  Food.  Food.  Food!  It’s a day for foooooood!  The one ironic bit about the first day back at food; I’m not really hungry.  Like… at all.  This is practically unheard of in my life.  I started slow with a banana, warmed up to a small salad and had lots of tea.  Amazing, my craving for sugar did not rule my life.  I know in my brain that that bag of Cheetos is delicious, but for some reason I don’t need to pour it into my face.

Overall, I feel great!  My wine consumption is in check, my sugar cravings have toned waaaaay down, and the jeans that were once a little tight at the waist, now fit like a dream.  I can’t tell you whether or not I lost weight, since I don’t have a scale, but I can tell you that I feel great from the inside out, my skin is bright and happy and my clothes fit better… and!!! I crave whole, healthy foods now more than junk.  I’m stoked.

I wouldn’t suggest this cleanse as a weight loss, ‘I need to go on a crash diet’ tool.  I don’t think you should ever go on a crash diet… so there.  While it seems that I did lose a few pounds on this system, I fully expect to gain some weight back… you know… since I’m eating real food again.  This juice cleanse was very effective in helping me reset my food choices and I think that will benefit my waistline in the long run.  Also… the juice is delicious.  Deeeeelicious!

Please also note:  I’ll happily chow down on some fries next week and I won’t even feel a little bit guilty.

Previous PostNext Post

Filed Under: Beyond the Kitchen

Previous Post: « Vegan Cream of Mushroom Soup with not so vegan herb bread
Next Post: Lemon Cornmeal Breakfast Cake »

Reader Interactions

All Comments
I Made This
Questions
  1. diet shots

    June 16, 2013 at 5:54 am

    Thanks for finally writing about >Joy the Baker – Blue Print Cleanse <Liked it!

    Reply
  2. iris

    August 2, 2011 at 6:31 am

    Apparently “colonics” aren’t particularly healthy for you. It might be worth researching this before doing it again, or recommending it to others: https://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/01/colon-cleansing-not-so-healthy-analysis-says/

    Reply
  3. Mary Ann

    March 5, 2011 at 9:48 am

    This sounds very interesting. I do the Master Cleanse (Lemons, Grade B Maple Syrup, Water and Cayenne Pepper) periodically. The last time was 21 days and I didn’t feel hungry at all. The desire for food was there, just the thought of crunching something was overwhelming at times, but I was not hungry. I don’t own a scale either and don’t know what I lost but I know that most of my clothes either didn’t fit at all (too loose to wear) or those I hadn’t been able to fasten before had to be belted! The mental clarity was the most amazing thing. I am nearly 70 so struggle with the energy/mental clarity thing all the time. During the cleanse I suffered from neither.

    Reply
« Older Comments

Trackbacks

  1. Joy the Baker – On Juicing says:
    January 17, 2013 at 11:35 pm

    […] obnoxious and healthful.  This post isn’t about juice cleansing.  I’ve done that enough times (1) to know that I enjoy lunch, dinner, and late-night handfuls of chocolate chips straight from […]

    Reply
  2. Spring Cleansing: Juicing says:
    May 9, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    […] whole juicing trend intrigued me, and seemed to be winning over fellow food bloggers by the masses. Joy the Baker loves cheeseburgers just like me, and she did it. Tracy Shutterbean broke it down for me and it […]

    Reply
  3. Three Day Juice Detox Done (kind of) | says:
    January 5, 2012 at 4:38 am

    […] enough. I had hoped that after reading other people’s juice-detox experiences, such as Joy the Baker’s, that the ‘hunger pangs disappearing and a renewed sense and source of energy’ would […]

    Reply
  4. Important. Life. Decisions. « Samantics says:
    November 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    […] authordom and I didn’t even know it. The truth of the matter is this: literally all of the blogs I read on the regular are in the process of writing their books. Sure, most of them are […]

    Reply
  5. So, I did a cleanse… | Eating Grass says:
    October 29, 2011 at 11:50 am

    […] the same time (but from afar) so we could support each other.  Our favorite-bloggers-turned-bffs Joy and Tracy had done the BPC and liked it a lot.  I value their opinions and took this as a good […]

    Reply
  6. Fruit Juice Never Looked So Good | GoodVeg says:
    October 13, 2011 at 9:32 am

    […] Find BluePrint at Whole Foods (of course) and other select retailers. For a full-blown report on the full-fledged BluePrint Cleanse experience, head on over to Joy the Baker’s blog. […]

    Reply
  7. Savings for You! — Joy the Baker says:
    October 4, 2011 at 8:26 pm

    […] remember Blue Print Cleanse.  I did their juice cleanse a few months back and totally loved it!  BPC provided their book for all of the retreat attendees.  And listen up! […]

    Reply
  8. #14. Do a cleanse=DONE! › shutterbean says:
    August 17, 2011 at 10:44 pm

    […] vegetables and white miso soup for your work day? Who can do that in the morning? When I saw Joy's review of her cleansing experience, I decided to give the BluePrintCleanse a try. It's a 3 day juice-only […]

    Reply
  9. Life After Cleanse | OliePants says:
    April 7, 2011 at 8:26 am

    […] you read Joy The Baker’s blog, you know that she did the Blue Print Cleanse and after, she made a vegan cream of mushroom […]

    Reply
  10. This is a Post About the Things I have Done in the Last Month While Not Blogging | punctuation marks says:
    March 17, 2011 at 6:08 am

    […] blog stalking, I read about Joy’s recent juice cleanse. A juice cleanse: now that’s a genius idea, I thought. So I performed an at-home, poor-man’s […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS IN Beyond the Kitchen

New Year, New Orleans

If you can spend a holiday away from home, do it. Christmas on a beach with a cocktail? Yes, please. Santa can bring his swim trunks! This year I decided to ring in the new year in New Orleans, my favorite place outside of Chicago, with my girlfriend Breyon. A bae-cation, if you will. We…

Read More

An Update from Joy

Hi friends! Thanks for letting me pop into your Saturday. What are you up to this weekend? If I were to guess the goodness of your life, I’d say you’re putting an elf on a shelf, drying oranges slices into ornaments, and going for an epic no-budget Trader Joe’s run. Since I have a habit…

Read More

My 12 Best Christmas Cookie Recipes

We want to make sure your holiday cookie tin is the best because you are the best. This is not a competition, but obviously, if we were to momentarily think of this as a competition –  you have to win. We’re giving you only the best 12 holiday cookie recipes ensuring instant victory at any…

Read More

Primary Sidebar

Fresh baked emails, delivered to your inbox

Receive recipes from Joy the Baker and updates on events at The Bakehouse.

HI! I’M JOY!

Welcome! This has been my little corner of the internet since 2008!

I’m a baker, photographer, cookbook author and teacher.  I live laugh love in New Orleans. 

MORE ABOUT JOY AND THE TEAM

BOOKS + Magazines

JOY THE BAKER 2022 SUMMER MAGAZINE

JOY THE BAKER 2021 HOLIDAY MAGAZINE

JOY THE BAKER 2020 HOLIDAY MAGAZINE

HOMEMADE DECADENCE

OVER EASY: SWEET AND SAVORY RECIPES FOR LEISURELY DAYS COOKBOOK

JOY THE BAKER COOKBOOK

joy the baker on facebook joy the baker on twitter pinterest-social instagram-socialbloglovin-social

JOY @ WILLIAMS SONOMA

SHOP THE CAKE LINE OF CAKE MIXES!

DRAKE ON CAKE

Passionate from miles away since 2015.

Check it out on Instagram

Drake on cake instagram.

 

BREADS YOU’LL LOVE

inside of warm cinnamon roll on plate

How To Make The Best Single Serve Cinnamon Roll

Orange roll on a plate with a fork.

Christmas Morning Orange Rolls

Baked pull apart garlic bread baked in a loaf pan.

Erin’s Roasted Garlic Herb Pull-Apart Bread

LET’S MAKE COOKIES!

cowboy cookies close up showing texture.

Cowboy Cookies with salted cereal brittle

Raspberry linzer cookie recipe stacked on baking sheet.

Raspberry Lemon Linzer Cookies

Iced Oatmeal Cookies layered on a cooling rack.

Eggnog Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Footer

Instagram

joythebaker

📚Baker and author of books and magazines
🎂Creator @drakeoncake
💁🏻‍♀️Classes with me @thebakehousenola
🍰 Products with @williamssonoma

joythebaker
My prayer is that we are fortified, flexible, and My prayer is that we are fortified, flexible, and well fed this year.
Homemade Hamburger Helper with Sneaky Veggies. ⁣ Homemade Hamburger Helper with Sneaky Veggies. ⁣
⁣
The thing is, you think you’re making enough for leftovers but somehow it’s all gone in one sitting. It’s that good. Recipe linked in the bio. Xo
I made these Almost Almond Croissant with a sheet I made these Almost Almond Croissant with a sheet of puff pastry and half a log of almond paste. Consider this a max volume weekend treat. ⁣
⁣
You’ll need:⁣
- A thawed sheet of puff pastry, fridge cold⁣
- 3.5 ounces or half a log of almond paste cut into 12 even-ish pieces⁣
- An egg beaten for egg wash, with a splash of heavy cream and a glug of vanilla bean paste for extra luxury⁣
- Sliced almonds⁣
- Powdered sugar ⁣
⁣
Lightly roll a sheet of puff pastry and slice into six rectangles. ⁣
Brush each rectangle with egg wash. Arrange each with two slices almond paste. Pull two corners of the puff pastry up and over the paste, pressing lightly to seal. Brush lightly with egg wash. ⁣
⁣
Transfer to a small, parchment lined baking pan and allow to rest in the freezer while the oven preheats to 425 degrees f. ⁣
⁣
Bake from chilled for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and again lightly brush with egg wash. Top with almond slices and bake for 6-8 minutes more. Keep an eye as to not burn the almonds. ⁣
⁣
Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before dusting with powdered sugar and enjoying warm.
No hesitation. Marshmallows in every cookie. ⁣
⁣
Peanut Butter Fluffernutter Cookie recipe linked in the profile. 💋
🙋‍♀️ if you buy bananas just so they can 🙋‍♀️ if you buy bananas just so they can languish on the counter long enough to be baked. ⁣
⁣
These Almond Flour Banana Bread cookies are stacked with walnuts and chocolate and one of the best way I know how to celebrate a speckled banana. Find the recipe linked in the profile! xo #bananabread #glutenfreerecipes #joythebaker #cookies #bakingrecipes
Just tryna get the most cheese on my most simple s Just tryna get the most cheese on my most simple small-batch bagel recipe. Get in on this with me: ⁣
⁣
2 Easy No Yeast Bagels⁣
1/2 cup self-rising flour⁣
4 tablespoons greek yogurt (plus a teaspoon or two more if needed)
1 large egg, beaten for egg wash⁣
1/3 - 1/2 cup grated gouda or gruyere⁣
Everything bagel seasoning⁣
3 tablespoons baking soda with 2 cups of boiling water. ⁣
⁣
Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray the paper lightly with nonstick spray. ⁣
⁣
In a small bowl, use a firm spatula to work together the flour and yogurt. Add a few teaspoons of yogurt if it feels dry and knead into a cohesive ball for 5 minutes or so. Sprinkle with a bit more flour if it gets overly sticky. Cover with a damp paper towel and gather your toppings. ⁣
⁣
Divide dough in two and roll each piece into a roughly 8-inch rope. Bring the ends around and pinch into a circle. ⁣
⁣
Sprinkle the bottom of the prepared pan with grated cheese in two spots.  Pour boiling water over the baking soda and float each bagel in the water for 20 or so seconds.  Use a slotted spot or spatula to transfer the bagels on top of the cheese.  Brush lightly with egg. Sprinkle with more cheese and everything bagel seasoning. ⁣
⁣
Bake for 20 - 22 minutes until deeply golden and bubbling.  Allow to cool for 10 minutes before slicing and smearing with cream cheese.
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Copyright © 2023 · Joy the Baker
All rights reserved. Violators will be whupped and sent to bed with no dessert · Privacy Policy

Scroll Up