ONCE Christmas has come and gone with its overload of sweets, treats and booze, the scramble for a good diet or detox will be vicious.

Picking a diet or detox and sticking with it can be tricky but luckily the guys at Saints and Sinners in Petts Wood Road have a juice diet which means you don't need to bother swotting up on the dietician's knowledge, buying all the kit or wasting time on preparing and cleaning.

It makes getting trim and feeling good as easy as pie. Pie you won’t be eating for a long time.

Vibe’s Jim Palmer, and his colleague Carly Paget, gave it ago...

LUNCH time on day three - my eyes are sagging and I am pallid and gaunt.

Two or three spots have clustered on my chin and I have just chugged my second juice of the day –containing celery, spirulina and wheatgrass among others – as though it was a dirty pint.

This is the low point. Because tomorrow I will wake up, five pounds lighter, back on the solids and feeling fresher than a daisy on the first day of spring.

But for now, I’m reaching for the third juice – the tasty, fruity afternoon treat – which I planned to save for another three hours because I am so fuzzy headed and vacant that I believe I cannot live without it.

After a season of over-indulging, I was keen to give the juice diet a go, eating and drinking nothing but four freshly-pressed juices and water for three days.

Not particularly because I had the weight to lose, but more because I felt listless and bloated and I was told a brief detoxing diet of juice would boost my energy and leave me with glowing skin, shiny hair, brighter eyes and feeling less stressed.

It did all of those things, but only after a difficult couple of days.

At 8am on day one I was at Saints and Sinners in Petts Wood Road watching the staff mush up all of the fruit, veg and algae into four juices which I took away excitedly.

The excitement soon turned to foreboding when I tasted the first one, named The Kick Starter. With apple, pineapple, lime, cucumber, avocado, celery, spirulina and wheatgrass it certainly had plenty of goodness to keep me going. But boy did it taste vile.

In defence of its taste, I would not say I am picky when it comes to food but I am no fan of cucumber, celery, ginger or goat’s cheese – they all came up frequently in the juice diet, bar the goat’s cheese (thank god).

On average, at least two a day tasted ‘healthy’, one was fruity and delicious and the other was tolerable.

At no stage did I feel hungry and most of the time I actually felt good – I felt cleaner, less bloated, less at the mercy of sugar and less stressed.

But, by gum, was I vacant and fuzzy headed. As my body tried to adapt, I spent long periods simply staring at my computer screen unable to read what was written on it.

Tough as it was, nothing could compare to the warm, smug feeling I had in my empty little body as I looked around the office and watched my colleagues stuffing their gluttonous faces with processed solids full of saturated fats. Suckers.

Saints and Sinners’ juice diet comes in three day, five day or seven day options, and costs between £49 and £99. That may seem steep but when you think that it is every meal and snack you would have eaten then as well as all of the expertise for a diet it suddenly feels like better value.

 

E-mail contact@saintsandsinnerspettswood.com or call 01689 827003.