Employee review: The PRESS soup cleanse

 

When you work at a health and wellness company like PRESS, it’s only right that we practise what we preach & give an unbiased (biased) review of one of our Cleanses.

 

To give you some context, I’m an extremely fussy customer when it comes to food & drinks – that person that you really don’t want at your dinner party. I drink water & herbal tea (& the occasional Berry Boost) – yep, a rare breed that doesn’t need coffee to function or alcohol to have fun. At PRESS I look after social media, brand partnerships & edit The Squeeze. I’m over-opinionated, sarcastic & #NoFilter… am sure the team are waiting in anticipation (& fear) for this article!

I was keen to try one of the new Soup Cleanses because people often ask me if I’ve done one and if they should do one.. & well, who am I to preach if I’ve never done one myself? After studying the different Cleanse options, I opted for the 3 day ‘Nourish’ Soup Cleanse. 

The ‘Nourish’ Cleanse consists of the following: Charcoal Lemonade, Greenhouse 3, Skinny Veg Broth, Tomato, Basil & Cashew, Garden 2, Minted Pea & Vanilla Leche, which I’ll fully dissect in a min. I documented my weight & how I felt before, during & after the Cleanse, so here goes:

Day 1:

Woke up pretty uninspired about starting. I’m a boiled egg on rye for brekkie kinda gal & the thought of drinking charcoal black, Charcoal Lemonade was possibly the opposite of my ideal. To be fair, it wasn’t as bad as I expected – it was actually ok. It tastes like still lemonade but isn’t too lemon-y. I wondered if my teeth were going to turn black? They didn’t but my first thought was that I definitely needed a straw, if nothing less than to suppress the anxiety of those thoughts. Note to team: NEED straws!

The Cleanse comes with a guide of what order to do everything, the benefits of each product that you’re consuming and what time to have them. Second on the menu was the Greenhouse 3 aka Lean Green - pretty much all veg & a squeeze of citrus. If health was a drink, this is it. Again, it was drinkable (albeit took a while). I was however, unsure if I could handle 3 days of this.

Next: Skinny Veg Broth. It looks like pond water but they say not to judge a book by its cover. It’s basically the vegan version of bone broth but even trendier because it’s plant based. I wasn’t hungry but forced myself & was pleasantly surprised. Happy to have something warm, the broth went down well but it is essentially vegetable water. Here’s to not judging books!

I won’t lie, I crashed in the afternoon. Whether it was due to going out the night before or the lack of solid food causing the fatigue, who knows. For fear of running hours behind schedule I ate(?) the Tomato, Basil & Cashew soup – YES! So good! I’ve had this one before & am a big fan. The cashew nuts make all the difference & turns it from your standard tomato & basil to a creamier, far more wholesome version. I felt like I had had a meal after this, absolute winner!

Heading well into the afternoon, Clean Beet – a beetroot, apple, lemon & ginger concoction, just the pick-me-up I needed. It’s cool on the tongue & hot at the back of the throat. Usually, beetroot based drinks are really earthy but not this one. The other ingredients ensure that it’s all zing, however, at this point, I did have to make a straw (a DIY job using an old biro – works a treat), that I subsequently used for the rest of the cleanse.

Dinner presented me with a Minted Pea soup, which is great. It tastes like peas & mint (duh!). Cracked a lil black pepper on top & hey presto! Alternating between hot & cold liquids is really quite pleasant.

To finish off the day, a Vanilla Leche! ABSOLUTE HEAVEN! This drink could literally be a drug (not that I would know, obvs, my nights out consist of tap water & ice!) but if I did, I think it would feel how a Vanilla Leche tastes? It’s no wonder it’s constantly sold out! Honestly, can’t fault this product, I didn’t want the experience to end.

Day 2:

Woke up with much more energy than I had had the previous day. Thank god. I was ready for the day & really looking forward to it. Weirdly, (because I rated the products out of 10 for taste on my phone), the Charcoal Lemonade, Greenhouse 3 & Skinny Veg Broth went up a notch (the others already had top marks). Although anti-social in terms of brunching (lol) with friends, I carried on with my weekend as normal – I just had to carry the goods in my bag for the hours I was out & about. No biggie.

Day 3:

A Monday. Back to work – feeling fab! Again, the 3 products I was initially sceptical about tasted even better, so much so that I would now buy the Charcoal Lemonade & Skinny Veg Broth – the Greenhouse 3 though is still probably TOO healthy for me on a normal day.

I weighed myself the morning I started & again the morning after Day 3 & in total lost 5lbs. Throughout the cleanse, I was not hungry at all – PRESS is very generous with what they give you. Although I wasn’t able to exercise properly, I did some light workouts & it was nice to not have to feel guilty for not training hard for a few days. That being said, the ‘Energise’ Soup Cleanse has a higher calorie content so I probably would have been inclined to try a gym class on that.

Would I cleanse again? Yep, 100%! Now that I can officially preach about it, it’s definitely worth it for the ‘reset’. I’d do it before a holiday to feel beach body ready &/or after a holiday to kick-start being healthy again (anyone that controls themselves on holiday is a robot).