Can Green Juice Help with Weight Loss?

While green juice isn’t a magical cure-all, the short answer is “yes”, especially when it’s part of a healthy lifestyle.

Green Juice Weightloss Studies

While experts agree that more substantive data is needed to definitely answer whether green juice for weight loss is effective, several studies have been performed that seem to link juicing (and a broader raw food diet) with weight loss.

For instance, a 2006 Raw Food Diet Study by Lenka Zajic surveyed more than 500 raw foodists from a range of age groups and nationalities who had followed a diet consisting of 80-90% raw foods for at least two years. Results suggested that an increase in fresh, living foods (like green juice) resulted in weight loss, less overeating, and less dieting. Other benefits included improved sleep quality, clearer skin, and increased energy, flexibility, and strength.

Encouragingly, 75% of the participants said that their healthier diet was a factor in helping them reach their ideal weight. And while some did regain weight after the initial drop, most regained only 25% or less.

Another study in 2017 had 20 healthy adults drink only vegetable and fruit juices for 3 days, and then return to their regular diet for 14 days. Overall, after three days of juicing, the participants showed a significant decrease in weight (around 2kgs) and body mass index.

Even after going off juicing, participants were able to maintain a weight loss of 1kg that lasted throughout the subsequent two weeks of observation along with an improved sense of well-being. Researchers also found that just three days of juicing was enough to positively affect the participants’ intestinal microbiota (the microorganisms living inside our gastrointestinal tract that affect nutrition, immunity, and other body processes). Amazingly, in just three days, juicing was able to decrease the proportion of bacteria linked to increased body weight (Firmicutes) and increased another kind of bacteria (Bacteroidetes) associated with low body weight. These proportions are a key difference between obese and lean individuals.

While these studies are encouraging, there is even more anecdotal evidence that links green juice with weight loss.

How does Green Juice Promote Weight Loss?

1. Offers a significant reduction in calories. 
   
   The tried-and-true principle of weight loss is consuming fewer calories than you burn. And while exercise is important in any lifestyle, it’s much easier to forego a cookie than to walk the 37 minutes it takes to burn off the calories from that same cookie. This is where green juice comes in. It’s a sustainable way to replace (and more importantly, reduce) the calories that might otherwise come from processed and fast foods with the nutrient-rich goodness from green juice.
   
   
2. Appetite suppression.
   
   As anyone who’s tried dieting knows, it’s often the between-meal snacking and midnight cravings that are most harmful. Because of their high dietary fiber content, fresh fruits and vegetables act as Nature’s appetite suppression, ensuring you have all the essential micronutrients your body needs, thereby giving it no reason to crave nutrients it’s missing as a result of a severely restricted diet. Also, because green juice is mostly water, it helps you feel full which can further curb cravings.
   
   
3. Flushing excess toxins.
   
   When people feel bad, many turn to food. Overeating and eating toxic foods (like fast or fried foods, or food with refined sugars and artificial ingredients) in turn causes the body’s organs to work harder than before, causing a perpetual cycle of eating because we feel bad and then feeling bad because of what we eat. Green juice replaces those high-calorie, toxin-heavy foods with loads of vitamins and minerals which in turn improves our feeling of well-being. When you feel good, you’re less likely to reach for a bag of chips or that extra slice of pizza. Drinking green juice also stimulates the body to remove extra waste which often results in weight loss.
   
   
4. Helps put your body into an alkaline state.
   
   Drinking green juice (along with eating foods like seeds, tofu, and legumes) helps promote a more alkaline environment (in contrast to a higher acid load which sends a message to the body to create fat cells to store the acid). Green juice is packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other plant compounds that are associated with better health and maintaining lean muscle mass.
   
   
5. Adds variety to your diet.
   
   Nature’s bounty is virtually limitless when it comes to fruits and vegetables, meaning you will likely never get bored with a green juice diet the way you can with a meal replacement system or otherwise restricted diet. Simply rotate the type of leafy vegetables and add other produce to the mix.

What is the Green Juice Diet?

Green juice fasting has become increasingly common in recent years as a way to quickly lose weight or to detox, typically by meeting the majority of your nutritional needs solely through juice. While there is some value to such a regimen, there may also be some unwanted side effects including slowing down your metabolism (making it harder to lose weight down the line), quickly regaining the weight you lost once you stop juicing, and perhaps even depriving your body of some of the nutrients it needs.

On the other hand, a green juice diet implies more of a long-term strategy to weight loss and overall good health by being just one spoke in the wheel of well-being, along with regular exercise, limiting processed foods, getting enough sleep, and making whole foods (along with lean cuts of meat and fish) at least 50% what you eat.

Replacing just one (or two) meals a day with green juice is seen by many as a more sustainable lifestyle choice, one that you’ll be able to stick to (and even find yourself enjoying!), which means you’ll also reap the health benefits which come from such a transition for the rest of your life. While diet products (including nutritional supplements, special foods like pre-prepared, reduced-calorie meals, prescription drugs, and exercise programs) are designed to help you lose weight, their goal isn’t necessarily to make you healthy. Green juice costs much less and will likely help you keep that weight off because it becomes part of your lifestyle rather than just being a quick fix.

Tips for a Green Juice Diet

1. Before careful what you add.
   
   Because calorie counting is more difficult with juice than solid foods, you could be consuming more calories by way of sugar than you might think. This is especially true if you top up your green juice with lots of fruit or store-bought juices (which contain added sugar or naturally occurring fructose, also known as fruit sugar). Studies have shown that sugar contributes even more than fat towards weight gain and high LDL cholesterol levels. Aim for a vegetables-to-fruit ratio of no more than 3:1.
   
   
2. Take it slow.
   
   Start by replacing just one meal a day with green juice. That way, you can still look forward to the other meals without feeling deprived or discouraged. Working your way up to drinking two or three glasses of green juice a day would be optimal, but starting with just one meal a day is an easy way to ease into a green juice diet.
   
   
3. Go organic.
   
   Because you’ll be consuming more fruits and vegetables than before, there’s a danger of increased pesticides, hormones, fertilizers, and other chemicals that come from commercial produce. If you have access to a farmer’s market or organic produce, it might be well worth the added cost and effort.
   
   
4. Shorter shelf life.
   
   Because the juice you make at home is completely fresh without any preservatives, experts agree that it should be consumed as soon as possible and certainly within 1-2 days. Most agree that 3 days is the very maximum you can leave fresh green juice before drinking. Keep your fridge stocked with fresh produce so that you can quickly make up a batch of green juice every couple of days.

Green Juice Recipe for Weight Loss

To lose belly fat, opt for more vegetables and less fruit. Vegetables with low sugar content include cucumbers, spinach, celery and kale (which can also revive your metabolism).

Here’s one of our best green juice recipes for weight loss using fresh ingredients.

• 2 cups spinach or kale (or fresh Moringa leaves if you can get them)
• 1 bunch parsley
• 2 apples (for sweetness)
• 3 celery stalks (good for fibre)
• 1 cucumber (helps with texture - and hey, it's green!)
• 1-inch piece of ginger root (ginger is awesome in so many ways)
• 1/2 lemon or lime

Wash everything well. Peel the cucumber and lime (or lemon). Juice the soft ingredients first, including the spinach and parsley, followed by the harder ingredients to ensure all the leftover leaves (and their nutrients) get pushed through the juicer. Enjoy!

THE BEST GREEN JUICE IN AUSTRALIA

As you can see by the well-researched information in this article, we just LOVE green juice! Traditional juicing is costly, time consuming, messy, hard to drink consistently long-term, and doesn't have as many nutrients as Moringafi Green Juice.

Moringafi Green Juice is a green juice superfood drink powder. Bascially, all you need to do is mix 2-3 teaspoons of Moringafi Green Juice powder with cold water and drink! It contains superfoods that you can't buy fresh a the shops, or any Boost Juice bar. Moringafi Green Juice is way better than other green juice powders on the market, because it contains no cheap 'fillers' that other brands use. The best part of Moringafi Green Juice is that it's supercharged with 33% pure-grade Moringa Oleifera leaf powder! If you love the idea of green juice on a daily basis, you'll love Moringafi Green Juice.