The BPC Cleanse is amazing!
I am a big fan of the blue print cleanse (BPC), the first time I had done their 3 days cleanse I couldn’t believe not only how great it makes you feel, but also how delicious the juices are, though while you are on a cleanse the only thing you are waiting for is the next juices, the bpc juices are something to wait for even when not on a cleanse.
But I can’t afford it on a regular base so…
So I was looking of doing a 5 days cleanse this time, but to be honest this stuff get a bit too pricey even for me. a simple math would give you that the $65 dollar a day for 5 days would end up coasting me $325, and going with the Master Cleanse program seems to be way to hardcore and not very yummy way to cleanse for me. so after thinking about it for a bit I decided to try to create my own home made BPC cleanse.
Do I have the time to cleanse?
Juicin’ is quite easy specially if you have the right equipment, though like any other type of cooking, it would be much easier if you are organized and willing to put the right time and effort into it. a friend who stayed at my house asked me while watching me prep a 3 days cleanse, ‘wow this is a lot of work, it takes you more than 2 hours…’ and its true it does take me more than 2 hours to juice a 3 or 4 days cleanse, but think how long it would have taken me to cook food for 3 days, or even to eat outside for 3 days. much more than 2 hours. so if you ask yourself do I have the time to do all of this, I would say you don’t have the time not to!
What would you need to make your own cleanse?
The first step in making a home made cleanse seems to be getting s juicer, knowing that I would like to repeat the cleanse a few times and the original price I was compering it to, I knew I had enough budget for a nice new kitchen appliances – the Breville Juice Fountain Elite a quick visit research got me to this $299 deal at Sur La Table for the best home juicer. with its 1000-watt engine from inside and the beauty of its stainless steal from outside I knew that I got the right juicer for me, one that would stay around for many many years (you can read more of how I choose my juicer in my ‘how to buy a juicer‘ post, which include a full video demo of the juicer).
it isn’t necessary if you have the juicer already, though some people find it easier to deal with citrus fruits using a citrus press if you are one of them, I would strongly recommend checking out another great product from breville – the 800CPXL Die-Cast Stainless-Steel Motorized Citrus Press. with this and the juicer you are 100% ready for juicin’
Ok now lets change something because I like to do things a bit different.
The next step on my plan was to get the right recipes for the juices I wanted to make, and setting up the right budget for a 3-5 days cleanse. since I already done the blue print cleanse before and was very impressed with their flavors, I decided to try to analyze and replicate their recipes, with the edition of substituting the 2nd lemonade serving with my Parsnips Pears & Celery, something which I actually wont repeat on my future cleanses, for a few reasons:
- I like the lemonade and would love to drink it more often!
- this would add an unnecessary cost to your cleanse, since the ingredients do not mix with any of the other juices.
- I have not done the nutrition calculation, though it might shift the 1200 daily calories count.
- its not a great juice (unless you are a huge parsnips fan, which I am not)
The Recipes:
so here are the recipes I have found out, of course that you can shift things around and add more of the ingredients that you like, for example I love the pineapple juice, though the pineapple I got was too sweet, so I add more apples to the recipe to balance it. so feel free to explore and develop your own recipes based on these:
- Green Apple – the most green juice in the cleanse, really great in the morning.
- Pineapple Apple Mint – I love this juice, would drink it any day, again feel free to play around with the pineapple-apples ratio.
- Spicy Lemonade – made with freshly squeezed lemons, you dont really need a juicer for that one.
- Carrot Apple Beet Ginger Lemon – just the color of this juice would make you cleaner.
- Parsnips Pears & Celery - again I am picking a different one for the next cleanse, but here it is for you parsnips lovers.
- Cashew Nut Milk – absolutely my favorite juice, this is like a dessert almost. I would drink it any day. also you do not need a juicer for this recipe, a simple blender would do the job.
Ease in – Ease Out!
Okay, so here are a few more things you would need to know about how to program your cleanse, you should have 6 475ml of juice (one every 2 hours) and an equal amount of liquid (water, decaff tea…) in between the juices. (this would result also with many #1 visits to the bathroom, so get the right hand moisturizer to keep your hands in a good shape after all this hand washing!). another thing which you would want to pay some attention for is how to ease in – ease out from the cleanse and the during the cleanse information, funny how it sound but you would regret eating a lamb sandwich right before the cleanse.
What are you juicin’ for?
You should also pre-define what you would like to achieve from the cleanse, if you are looking to loose weight or just to clean your system, in general the higher you go with the greener juices and less fruit type and sweet juices the less calories you consume, keeping it under the 1200 cal a day range with the combination of 25-40min a day of aerobics exercise could really help you shave more than a few pounds in a very short amount of time, the trick is how you should maintain it once you are off the cleanse, and this is why I recommend you to get your own home juicer, whether its the Breville Juice Fountain Elite, the Omega 100 juicer or the Champion Juicer whatever works for you and would help you stay on a daily juicing routine, something like the BPC juice till dinner program but with the ability to maintain its budget for under $20 a day, rather than the $85 its listed for.
The Shopping list
Finely here is the shopping list for a 1, 3 and 5 days recipes, as you can see the different between 1 to 3 days is very minor, a rough calculation, using the freshdirect cart got me to around the $110 budget for the 3 days and $140 for the 5 days, though going to the grocery store next to my house cut this to a $120 for the 5 days ingredients (with the help of having some things like vanilla bean at home already)
Shopping list – 1 day:
- 1 cucumber
- 4 carrots
- 2 beets
- 2 celery
- 2 parsnips
- 4 Granny smith apples
- 1 Fuji apple
- 1 Pineapple
- 5 lemons
- 1 lime
- 4 pears
- Ginger
- 1 Romaine
- kale
- Mint
- spinach
- parsley
- 4.5 oz raw Cashews
- Cayenne Pepper
- Agave Nectar
- Vanilla bean
- Cinnamon
Shopping list – 3 day:
- 3 cucumber
- 12 carrots
- 6 beets
- 5 celery
- 6 parsnips
- 12 Granny smith apples
- 4 Fuji apple
- 1 Pineapple
- 15 lemons
- 3 lime
- 12 pears
- Ginger
- 1 Romaine
- kale
- Mint
- spinach
- parsley
- 14 oz raw Cashews
- Cayenne Pepper
- Agave Nectar
- Vanilla bean
- Cinnamon
Shopping list – 5 day:
- 5 cucumber
- 20 carrots
- 10 beets
- 8 celery
- 10 parsnips
- 20 Granny smith apples
- 5 Fuji apple
- 2 Pineapple
- 25 lemons
- 5 lime
- 20 pears
- Ginger
- 2 Romaine
- kale
- Mint
- spinach
- parsley
- 24 oz raw Cashews
- Cayenne Pepper
- Agave Nectar
- Vanilla bean
- Cinnamon
The labels.
That’s it, if you think that you are ready, give it a try! also since I already made these, here is a pdf with bottle labels for all the recipes, cut and tape to your favorite juice bottle!
Next Steps
So after all of this, I came across a much easier way around it, the 999 diet apparently they offer a 3 days kickstart package for the price of a day on BPC, I was really impress with their recipes and approach, definitely feels fresh.
Comments
FIY, so after going through this experience and writing this blog post, I got an email that the blue print cleanse had published their 3 days cleanse book which I immediately went and ordered, I find the book to be really a great source of information about juicing and cleanse and I encourage anyone who want to know more about juicing as a away of living to go ahead and read them, however, I do find the juices in the blue print cleanse to be slightly different from the recipes I found in the book (which do not include whole the recipes from the cleanse, such as the cashew nut milk and the spicy lemonade and the green apple), not that I am challenging them to publish their secrets, but I do find the recipes which I estimated based on their nutrition facts to be more accurate and flavorful in my mind. but I live it up to you to make the call and it is a really great book about this subject, so yes if you are serious about juicing you should read it.
Can I make juice in the morning at take it to work? Some sites say the frith will kill the nutritional value, but if it’s only 4 hours?
yes it will keep for at least 12 hours, if you want to be sure add some lemon – lime to your juice, it will give you more time before it oxidize.
I made the green apple juice for my first time and I followed the recipe. However, it’s not as green as BPC’s green juice. BPC’s juice is a very dark green. Did I do something wrong? Do I need more of a certain vegetable? Thanks!
Does it matter what order I drink the juices in?
I am confused by the entry vs. the comments. You juiced the entire 3 day allocation but you also told one of the commenters that the juice only lasts 12 hours. I was going to pre-juice all 3 days. Do they last? How did you store them?
Thank you so much for taking the time to post the recipes for the Blue Print Cleanse!! We just got a Hurom juicer and it is beyond amazing-blows a Breville out of the water in terms of how much juice it extracts and it does leafy greens amazingly! So we just needed to cut back on the amount of produce that you listed since we got more juice out of each raw produce item-saving major bucks on the grocery bill
Thanks again for sharing all your expertise!!
[...] called starvation). A friend of mine sent me the link to a mock Blue Print-style Cleanse (here) you could do at home with a juicer, and I decided to try it [...]