When you feel bloated, tired, and filled to the brim with delicious holiday food and drink you pretty much want to un-feel that way.
Especially because it's kind of impossible to ignore all the messages that are around us in the new year that it's time to lose weight and start your diet. So, when you see the way juice cleanses are marketed — that they can rid you of those "toxins" you ingested and maybe help you drop some weight — they can seem like a great idea.
To learn more about the physical and emotional effects of cleanses, we talked to Dr. Holly Lofton, director of the Medical Weight Management Program at NYU Langone Medical Center; registered dietitian Brian St. Pierre, director of performance nutrition at Precision Nutrition; and Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. Keep in mind that there's no real universal definition of a cleanse — some are a couple days of fruit or vegetable juice, others are longer and include hot water with lemon and cayenne pepper, and still others are soups only. In this post we're talking about fruit and/or vegetable juice cleanses, generally.