Juicing for weight loss is an easy, healthy way to lose weight naturally and keep it off. It allows you to take in large amounts of vital nutrients while saving your energy for other activities and keeping your body feeling light without that feeling of being “weighed down.”
Just adding a few glasses of fresh juice into your diet every day – before meals, preferably – is a natural way to keep your appetite in check, give your body more energy, and begin the gradual process of smarter eating and smaller portions that leads to permanent weight loss.
Want to know a little more about exactly how juicing can help you with weight loss? Let’s dive in.
Does Juicing Help You Lose Weight?
If I had a penny for every time I heard the question…
“Does juicing help you lose weight?”
…I’d have a pretty stocked piggy bank.
But instead of a full piggy bank, I’ve managed to amass a sizable list of answers as to exactly how juicing helps you lose weight. Let’s count the ways, shall we?
Juicing for Appetite Suppression
One of the biggest perks when juicing for weight loss is that when cleverly concocted, weight loss juice recipes help to curb cravings. And that’s great news since when trying to lose weight, one of your greatest pitfalls can be your own appetite. Everyone knows that the key to losing weight is to cut back on your calories and ramp up your exercise program.
But that can be hard to do especially when you’ve got a ravenous appetite. The good thing about juicing fresh foods is that certain fruits, veggies and herbs have natural appetite-suppressing qualities.
Take ginger, apples, sweet potatoes, and green leafy vegetables, for example – all these delicious foods act as appetite suppressants.
Ginger also boost digestive health. Apples are filled with delicious nutrients that keep your blood sugar – and appetite -steady throughout the day. And green leafy vegetables are full of fiber and nutrients such as iron and selenium that will keep your appetite in check.
Juicing Provides a Huge Load of Nutrients
It’s not a big secret, is it. Everyone knows that a glass of fresh juice full of fruits and veggies comes with a huge boost of nutrients. Your body needs abundant nutrients each day and when you are craving certain foods, it can actually mean that you are nutrient deficient. One great way to curb your cravings is to juice. Juicing allows you to get a powerhouse of vital nutrients with very little caloric value and relatively little effort.
In just one glass of juice, you may consume 1-5 pieces of fruit, 3-5 servings of veggies, and mixture of herbs and spices that all bring to the table their rich vitamin, mineral and phytonutrient content.
The more nutrients you have in your body, the less likely you will be deficient, and the less likely you will binge or give into your cravings.
Juicing Gives You a Huge Boost Energy
In today’s world, everyone is talking about ways to improve your energy efficiency and reduce your carbon footprint. When most people think about becoming energy efficient, they think about their cars and homes, but did you know your body could become energy efficient as well?
While an energy efficient body may not reduce your carbon footprint, it will help you lose weight. Juicing is the perfect way to get a large boost of essential nutrients without putting your body through the effort of digesting large amounts of fruits and veggies.
The phytonutrients are easily absorbed and your digestive tract gets to rest, meaning that all of this saved energy can then be used to fuel your active lifestyle and keep the pounds off.
Juicing Helps Shrink Your Stomach – Naturally
One of the best aesthetic benefits of juicing is that it can help gradually and naturally shrink your stomach by providing your body with replenishing nutrients – without the bulk.
Fresh juices are nutrient dense, delivering potent doses of vitamins and minerals to keep your cravings at bay while keeping you feeling light and energetic.
The large intake of nutrients without the bulk that expands your stomach gradually leads to a smaller stomach, naturally reduced portions, and a quicker feeling of satiety.
Plus, depending on the fruits and veggies you choose you can get an extra boost of belly shrinking power. For example, apples contain pectin which is packed with antioxidants and helps decrease visceral fat around your midline.
Cabbage is another example of a wonderful veggie that will detox your liver, which helps reduce your overall belly fat – one of the main functions of your liver is to metabolize fats and improved liver function through detox is a smart way to help your body metabolize fat into energy more efficiently.
3 Rules When Juicing for Weight Loss
As you can see, there are a lot of inherent ways in which juicing can help you lose weight. But the tricky thing about juicing for weight loss really depends not on whether you’re juicing or not juicing, but rather on how you’re juicing.
Juicing can either be your best friend on your weight loss journey or it could be a malicious frenemy. It really comes down to how you do it.
To help you stay on the right side of juicing for weight loss, here are a few juicing mistakes you should be aware of – as well as suggestions on how to avoid these weight loss traps.
Count Those Liquid Calories
This one is a very common deterrent to weight loss and not just when it comes to juicing.
For some reason, we have this strange tendency to dismiss the calories in the drinks we have on a day-to-day basis.
It could be anything – the sugar in and cream in your coffee, that “healthy” store-bought fruit juice, the energy drink that keeps you going, or even the salad dressing you choose for your salad.
Whatever it is – it’s easy to forget that the calories we drink are calories, too, even if you don’t have to chew them down!
Vegetables, on the whole, are very, very low in calories but fruits can be quite high. Stick to low-calorie fruits like melons and berries while you’re juicing for weight loss and keep track of how much fruit juice you’re drinking on a daily basis so you can make sure it doesn’t go over your calorie limit.
Fruit Juice for Weight Loss – Do or Don’t?
Fresh fruit is great for you – but even as a juicing fanatic, I will openly admit that fruit is better eaten whole or blended than juiced.
Whereas removing the fiber out of vegetables has the huge benefit of making it easy for your digestive system, the fiber in fruit serves a really important purpose of keeping sugar consumption and the resulting insulin spike to a minimum (crucial for weight loss).
That being said, fruit is not the devil and you can, of course, juice fruit even as you are juicing for weight loss purposes. Just be smart about it – include fruits in your juices only to use the parts of fruit that you normally wouldn’t eat (i.e. peels, rinds, and cores that you can juice!) and to add sweetness and flavor to the less-palatable vegetable juices.
Always opt for low-calorie fruits. Melons, like watermelon and cantaloupe are low in calories and provide lovely sweetness. Same for berries.
When you can, opt for sweeter veggies like bell peppers, sweet potatoes, sweet squash, carrots, tomatoes, and beets.
And seriously, if you’re juicing for weight loss – don’t drink purely fruit juices. Try to stick to the 80/20 rule: that’s 80% veggies in every juice and only 20% fruits.
Don’t Leave Out Vital Nutrients
Fresh juice is wonderful for your body. It provides a nutritiously dense glass loaded with vitamins, minerals, and living enzymes…but it does not contain all the nutrients your body needs.
That’s why we have a little list of the best superfoods to add into your juices and smoothies.
Specifically – fresh juice does not contain enough protein or healthy fats, which your body needs for optimal function. Not to mention how beneficial both protein and healthy fats are in any weight loss effort.
Make sure you’re getting enough protein from sources like lean meat, fish, legumes, nuts and seeds. If you’re juice fasting for weight loss or just don’t get enough protein in your diet, add soy milk or quinoa milk (both of which have as much protein as cow’s milk) or supplement with a good protein powder.
If not getting enough protein is a perpetual pattern, I strongly recommend you consider a protein powder. Optimum Nutrition’s whey protein powder is one of the best on the market. If you’re vegan/vegetarian, the best is Garden of Life’s raw, vegan, plant-based protein powder.
As for healthy fats, it’s a good idea to add a good, EPA and DHA-abundant fish oil supplement to your diet – especially if you’re doing a juice fast – to make sure you’re getting enough essential fatty acids (EFAs). Remember that your body cannot synthesize these but they are essential, so be sure to give your body enough.
Another option is to add in a good dose of healthy fats by supplementing your juices with a low-calories nut milk like almond milk, which is only around 40 calories per cup.
However you do it – just make sure you are supplementing your juices with plenty of protein and healthy fats.
5 Best Juicing Recipes for Weight Loss
You already know that juicing – when done right – is a fantastic addition to a weight loss plan. It allows you to provide your body with ample nutrition while curbing your appetite, aiding digestion, and even boosting your energy to get you moving!
But agin, the biggest risk that comes with juicing for weight loss is that it is really, really easy to overdo sugar consumption when juicing fruits. Whereas you probably wouldn’t sit down and eat 3 apples, it’s just too easy to juice 3 apples (and all the sugar that’s in them) and down that glass.
This is why if you’re juicing for weight loss, we highly recommend sticking mostly to vegetable juices and avoiding purely fruit juices.
But how will these juice recipes taste, you ask?
Absolutely delicious. If you don’t believe us, here are some low-calorie, low-sugar, HIGH-nutrient juices that taste delicious and are great for weight loss.
RUBY RED FAT FLUSH JUICE
This simple fat burning juice recipe is a low-calorie blend that helps promote weight loss. And it’s easy to make, to boot:
- 2 grapefruits (peeled)
- 1 large beetroot (beet greens can be left on)
- 2 cucumbers
Beets get their brilliant hues from a not-so-well-known, but powerful, antioxidant called betalains that help your body cleanse and detoxify itself by supporting a process known as phase 2 cleansing.
During this cleansing process, small nutrient groups chemically combine with toxic substances in our body. The combination helps to neutralize the toxins and makes them water-soluble so they can be flushed out of our system through urination.
Grapefruits are also wonderful natural cleansers and cucumbers serve as a refreshing base to this power-packed juice recipe. Drink before meals to promote weight loss!
GREEN GENIE GENTLE DETOX
Here’s a super simple, low calorie green juice recipe that’s perfect for beginners and advanced juicers alike:
- 1 stalk celery
- 3 cucumbers
- 4 large kale leaves
- optional: 1/2 apple
Cucumbers are pretty much green water (about 90%) so they serve as a great diluting base for stronger greens, such as kale. The same can be said of celery, which is also mostly water.
These watery vegetables are obviously incredibly low in calories and high in nutrients (Vitamin A, Pantothenic Acid, Magnesium, etc.) and rich in chlorophyll. This is the ideal juice to supply your body with all the goodness of green juice without loading up on calories!
THE GREATEST V8 JUICE RECIPE
However you feel about the taste of V8 juice – one thing is undeniable: it definitely could be healthier. Sure, it contains nutrients from the veggies and fruits but a lot of the goodness is stripped away during the pasteurization process. Not to mention that it’s very high sodium.
The best way to get all the goodness from something like V8 juice is to simple make it yourself – that way you ensure you get fresh, raw nutrients and living enzymes into your body…without the sodium.
Here’s a low calorie V8 juice recipe that’s delicious and nourishing:
- 2 sticks celery
- 1 carrot
- 1 cup Romaine lettuce
- 1 cup spinach
- 3 tomatoes
- small handful of parsley
The best thing about this juice recipe is that although it contains all the nutrient goodness of a bunch of low calorie vegetables and fruits, it’s also very nourishing and quite filling.
FRESH AS A DAISY
This is a simple and delicious recipe that will keep you hydrated, provide an energy boost, and give you a heap of nutrients all in one go:
- 1 cup spinach
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 apple
- 1/2 fennel bulb
- 1/2 lemon (peeled)
This energizing recipe is high in nutrients and low in sugar and calories. It’s also a great way to give yourself a big digestive boost, thanks to the fennel and lemon.
Oh, and did we mention that it’s delicious?
