I woke up the morning of Day 1 with a slight headache from the few glasses of red wine I had the night before (dumb idea, I know).

At least I took some initiative of what I ate and drank pre-cleanse. I did some research that recommended cutting back on coffee, chocolate, and avoiding grains in order to prep your body for the juice cleanse. I drank a smaller cup of coffee than usual on Friday, and didn’t have an coffee on Saturday. Saturday I ate healthily – a smoothie, eggs for dinner, etc.

The BluePrint cleanse I’m following consists of 6 juices a day that you drink about every two hours.

• Green Juice
• P.A.M.
• Green Juice
• Spicy Lemonade
• C.A.B.
• Nut Milk

I’ll outline the recipes for all of juices as the days progress!

I’m so glad I got to do the first day on a weekend day (Sunday) because I totally would not have survived through work

Even though I was excited to start the juice cleanse, I really wanted some FOOD. But once I drank my first Green Juice, my stomach did feel full.

Here’s what’s in the Green Juice:

Since I was jacking the ingredients from BluePrint, I didn’t have the exact recipe, but the juice I ended up with was pretty good! Those measurements are:

• 1/2 cucumber
• 2-4 celery stalks
• 1/2 lemon
• 1 handful parsley
• 1-2 small heads of romaine
• 1-2 small heads of spinach
• 6 large kale leaves
• top off with filtered water

That makes approximately 16 oz. of juice, which is suggested amount for each of the juices in the cleanse. It’s perfect – regular sized mason jars are exactly 16 ounces!

I found it helpful to drink the juices slowwwwly [think 30-40 minutes], which made me feel less deprived and kept my stomach feeling okay. I also drank A LOT of herbal tea – about 1 in between each of the juices. After drinking so many cold juices, all I wanted was something warm!

By far, the worst thing about Day 1 was the bad headache I had all day. I’m pretty sure this was due to caffeine withdrawal, but I’m not positive. There was a lot of massaging my temples going on. I even refrained from watching Real Housewives because I absolutely could not deal with any raised voices or yelling. #juicecleanseproblems

In addition to the headache, I felt tired, had low energy, and kept sweating. It almost felt like I was sick! I was pretty miserable, but wasn’t hungry – even though I missed eating…and chewing.

Despite all of this, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t feel dizzy and did not feel the need to eat any solid food add-ins. I’ve been carrying around an avocado, banana, and some pecans just in case of emergency.

I literally googled: “What to do if lightheaded during juice cleanse?” before I started, because I was anemic in high school and fear fainting. THIS article warned me, “Light headedness to the point of fainting puts you at serious risk for injury.” Point taken. I’m taking a slow-releasing iron pill and am doing just fine so far.

Plus, during the juice cleanse, I’ve been listening to my body like whoa. I’m hyper-aware of everything I’m feeling because I want to make sure I stay safe!

As the afternoon continued, I started to feel a lot of doubt, wondering if this was the right thing to put my body through. I was poking around my bookshelf, and saw I had a book on juicing that I’ve never even looked at! It came at just the right time, because it helped me validate why I’m doing this.

I fell asleep thinking of pizza and Mexican food (legit images of the cheesy goodness in my head) and crossing my fingers that Day 2 would be easier.