This post is sponsored by Skinny Limits, but all views are my own. I was offered one of their cleanses in exchange for an honest review. I was not given any additional compensation and this is my honest account of that experience.

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I did a juice cleanse. I’m not much of a health nut, and even though I do work out a fair bit, it’s not something that I talk about because it’s an awkward subject for me. But the lovely people at Skinny Limits reached out to me and asked if I would like to do a juice cleanse, and now here we are.

The year after I graduated from college I lost a lot of weight — around 40 lbs. It was slow going at first, in large part because I kept trying to make dietary changes stick and it was only when I realized that I loved food too much but didn’t hate the gym that I found a routine that worked for me. At my peak I was going to the gym 5–6 times a week for two hours. I still ate a lot of shit, but in addition to all the working out, the gym time carved some not-eating time out of my day.

I gained almost half of it back when I went to Paris. I lived to close to school to need to do that much walking, and by the time I took up the Couch to 5K routine, I’d already gained most of the weight. I ran enough to keep from gaining much more, but that was about it. Because carbs. And sugar. And I wasn’t all that bothered by it, either. It was annoying because I only had certain clothing, but eating my way through Paris was more important to me than my jean size.

Working out has always been more gratifying to me than dieting because it’s measurable in a more immediate way. I also never cared that much about my weight. I’m not saying that I’m oblivious to societal pressures and don’t have a mental version of what my “ideal” would look like, but somewhere around the time that I realized dieting wasn’t going to work, I realized that the problem was that I simply didn’t care enough about weight loss to make a priority out of not eating chocolate.

Back to measurable stuff. Regardless of what it is, there’s always some sort of quantifiable, “I can do more than I could before,” element to workout routines and that progress tends to be more immediately noticeable than weight loss. For me, it’s also a lot more gratifying. It’s why I’ve liked using weights more often. I can tell that I’m actually stronger and that’s awesome.

This weird competitiveness with myself is part of what prompted my own interest in doing a juice cleanse. It was a, “Just to prove I can,” thing. I had been googling ways to do it myself just a few days before I got the email from Skinny Limits, so I was pretty jazzed.

How it works: Skinny Limits is a Texas-based company that ships nationwide. I got a total of 18 juices, 6 per day. I deliberately started the cleanse a day later than originally planned because we went out to a steakhouse on Tuesday night and I knew I had eaten too much that day to transition into a juice cleanse on Wednesday. That said, you have to start within 24 hours of receiving the juice because it’s all freshly juiced right before it leaves Texas. I got mine at around 11 on Wednesday, in a box containing a fancy foil freezer bag.

I chose the Variety Juice Cleanse and I’m not going to say that I’m about to replace my regular diet with juice, but I was pleasantly surprised. As someone who isn’t an avid health food consumer, the green juices spooked me and I hadn’t expected them to be so drinkable. The only one that I really struggled with was #4, Scorpion Lemonade (lemon, agave nectar, cayenne pepper). I love lemonade and spicy foods, but this was the one part of the day where I really had to pep talk myself through it. “JUST A FEW MORE SWIGS, GIRL! YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!”

On the other hand, juice #6 (the last of the day) Crescent Moon (cashews, vanilla bean, agave nectar, cinnamon, coconut oil, sea salt) was delicious and I would like to actually drink that on the regular. Many bottles of Crescent Moon, please.

The numbering system was helpful, too. I chose Variety in large part because I figured having all these different kinds of juices would help me through it. It made it a little more interesting. Plus, something in my brain kept helpfully allowing me to forget that Scorpion Lemonade was coming.

The first day was rough. I cheated and had a banana and a pack of Mott’s fruit snacks, because I just couldn’t hang. I also threw away some cheesecake because nobody else was around to eat it for the entire three days I did this cleanse. I knew I could not make it through with cheesecake in the fridge. Know your limits, friends. Cheesecake was definitely beyond mine.

Day two wasn’t quite as bad. I still deeply missed solid foods, but I found that the juice (and all the water, because I drink a lot of water anyway) was surprisingly filling. It was a strange feeling because it was’t so much that some solid food wouldn’t have been AMAZING as the sheer amount of liquid in my stomach at any given moment in the day was enough that I wasn’t too terribly hungry.

It all went awry in the evening when I decided that because I was doing so well, I could probably work out. And then I started to feel lightheaded and didn’t immediately stop. I might have been fine if I had just sat down the second I felt off, but because I wasn’t listening to my body, I suffered a bit later. I was pretty miserable the rest of the night until I decided to go to bed.

Day three was a super lazy day. I just felt very lethargic and low on energy all-around. I wasn’t feeling as hungry as I was on the first day, but I definitely had less energy. It was a Saturday, though, so laying around watching movies was a perfectly acceptable life choice.

On the whole, I’m glad I did it. It’s probably something that I would like to try again, maybe to see if I could get through it without the cheating but also because I actually do feel detoxed after it. I woke up the next couple days without immediately going for the coffee which is a major shift for me. I HAVEN’T HAD COFFEE IN A WEEK. This is huge. I’ve also been a lot more cognizant of what I’ve been eating in the last couple days, which is another delightful outcome, given that I had resigned myself to never being a healthy eater.

Many thanks to Skinny Limits for hooking me up with all that fresh juice!

Check out one of their cleanses for yourself if you’re interested.