‘7-day juice diet to detoxify your gut!’ ‘Do this 7-day juice diet plan and watch the fat melt away!’ ‘Belly fat-burning 7-day juice diet for weight loss!’
These are just a few of the many headlines that flood our social media pages with promises of weight loss, fat burning, and gut detoxification. With such eye-catching headlines, it’s no wonder that many people are researching a 7-day juice diet.
Juicing has become increasingly popular as many people see it as a quick fix that promises dramatic weight loss in a relatively short time frame, in addition to health benefits such as ‘detoxing’ the liver and gut, clearer skin, and an improved mood.
However, despite how well these eating plans have been promoted all over social media, some skepticism has arisen with many wondering if these so-called juice cleanses work. In this article, we’re going to find out the truth. Does the 7-day juice diet for weight loss truly work? Is juicing good for you or does it have more disadvantages than advantages? What do science and experts say about a 7-day juice diet?
A 7-day juice diet is one of the many variations of juicing or a juice diet. Other variations include a 3-day juice diet or a 10-day juice cleanse. But what exactly is it?
Also known as a juice fast, cleanse, or detox, this is a weight loss plan that involves extracting and consuming the extracts from vegetables and fruits in an attempt to lose weight quickly and detoxify the body (1).
The drinks that are consumed during this cleanse are usually either homemade or store-bought. Some of them may have pulp in them, but most often, they do not have any pulp in them.
There’s no one standardized way to do a 7-day juice diet. However, some of the most common ways to do it include:
As you can see, regardless of whichever variation of this plan you choose, you’ll end up consuming very few calories and missing important nutrients, which is ultimately not good for your health or well-being.
Check out our article on the benefits of a juice cleanse to learn what such a diet could potentially do for you and your health.
Yes, you can, although this is generally not the norm. If you were to search for juice diet recipes, you would note that many of them have both fruit and vegetables in their ingredient lists – this is how a juicing diet is normally done.
However, green juices, or even those made from a mixture of both vegetables and fruit sometimes don’t taste very good and some people prefer to simply stick to fruit juices. However, even as you choose to switch to fruit juices, there are some risks you should be aware of
Here are some downsides that may come with a fruit-juice cleanse:
This largely pertains to store-bought juices rather than to homemade versions. There is no denying that fruit juices are sweeter than vegetable juices thanks to the fact that fruits are naturally sweet.
The sugar that is naturally found in fruits isn’t bad for you, but many companies choose to add extra sugar to their drinks to make them more appealing and appetizing to the general public.
Studies have shown that added sugars aren’t good for you. They have been linked to several health issues, including obesity, increased cardiovascular risk, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, cognitive decline, and some cancers (3).
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Drinking primarily fruit juice, or even fruit and vegetable juice, isn’t a balanced diet. It’s most likely too low in calories and certain vital nutrients for your body to function properly. These juices tend to lack protein, healthy fat, fiber, and certain vitamins and minerals.
This is one of the biggest downsides of any juicing diet, whether you’re juicing using fruit or vegetables. Unlike actual whole fruit, fruit drinks lack dietary fiber, especially if the drink has no pulp in it.
Dietary fiber is important in your diet as it helps keep you fuller for longer, thereby preventing weight gain. It also significantly lowers your risk of developing coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and certain gastrointestinal diseases (5).
Read more: The Best Homemade 3-Day Juice Cleanse Recipe Guide (2025)
To avoid the above-listed problems, here are some things you can do:
The best 7-day juice cleanse is one that you take the time to prep for as healthily and as cleanly as possible. It may be a little time-consuming, but ultimately, you know exactly what’s going into your drink. This will help you avoid the risk of extra sugar that’s bad for your health and your waistline.
Yes, we know the diet is called juicing and the juice looks very aesthetically pleasing, but the act of juicing, as mentioned above, takes out all the fibrous pulp from your end result. Fiber is a great tool to promote satiety and keep you from feeling hungry and snacking, which often ruins your diet goals.
Invest in a powerful blender that can blend down fruits and/or vegetables to where the pulp has the same texture as that of a smoothie. This will help the drink go down better and increase your daily fiber intake
As seen in the ‘how to do a 7-day juice diet’ section above, many of these eating plans require you to avoid food for the duration of the cleanse and if they allow food, it’s in very small amounts.
This is not good for you. Research has shown that dieting and restrictive eating can lead to malnutrition and a weakened immune system, in addition to psychological distress, irregular periods in women, disordered eating, and other negative physical impacts (5).
If you’ve been researching 7-day juice diet recipes as you’d like to use them for weight loss, we suggest having these juices as a part of a healthy calorie deficit diet. If you want to cleanse or detox your body, simply replace any unhealthy drinks you have (e.g. sugary sodas, alcohol, etc.) with these juices and eat more healthily.
No, you should not. Also known as the lemon detox, lemonade diet, or the master cleanse, it is another variation of a juice cleanse. It involves replacing your meals with a drink made of a mixture of 2 tbsp lemon juice, cayenne pepper, 2 tbsp maple syrup, and water.
As with all other juice cleanses, it is touted to help you lose weight and remove toxins from your body. However, despite these promises, it’s not advisable to try the 7-day lemon juice diet for the following reasons. This eating plan:
If you don’t want to consume the same drink for a whole week, here are some 5-day juice cleanse recipes to try. Please note that as stated above, while juicing your fruits and vegetables is often the norm, we suggest blending them so you can retain the fiber that’s often removed when you use a juicer.
Ingredients: 1 green apple, 1 medium celery stalk (approximately 8 inches long), juice from half a lemon, 1 inch peeled ginger, 1 medium-sized cucumber
Ingredients: 1 medium-sized apple, 3 large carrots, 20 g peeled ginger root, juice of a quarter lemon
Ingredients: half cup chopped hearts of romaine, 2 tbsp chopped chives, 1 large tomato, half a small deseeded jalapeño pepper, 1/2 large red bell pepper, 1 large celery stalk, 1 small carrot
Ingredients: 1/4 small pineapple, 1 large banana, 1 cup kale leaves
Ingredients: 2 medium-sized red beets, 1 large cucumber, 1 inch peeled ginger root, 1 small lemon.
The method to prep all these juices is pretty straightforward.
Check out our article on the best juices for weight loss for more delicious recipes.
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No, it isn’t. The only benefit of doing a 7-day juice diet is the fact that it lets you consume more fruits and vegetables and even then, juicing takes away fiber from these foods so you’re not getting all the benefits from them.
If you’re tempted to go ahead and start any juicing diet, remember that the very real risks outweigh any purported and scientifically unproven benefits. If you want to lose weight, a calorie deficit, increased physical activity, and getting enough sleep are the main things that can help with this goal.
And even then, you can only lose 1 to 2 pounds a week for healthy and sustainable weight loss (7). Any diet that promises otherwise is a fad that will have you starving yourself and not losing any fat.
If you’re looking to detox, simply eat a healthy balanced diet and drink more water and less sugary drinks and alcohol. Your body already has a detox system that works 24/7 to clean out your system of any impurities. You don’t need a diet to help it do this.
As stated above, this diet is a terrible option that will only do you more harm than good, so we don’t suggest trying it. However, if you want some healthy snacks to replace any unhealthy ones you may be currently consuming, here are some options:
Yes, but not in the way you might hope.
Not only will the 7-day juice diet results be short-term, but any weight that is lost during this 7-day juice diet is either from muscle loss or water weight, which isn’t sustainable. Research has shown that with juicing and other detoxification diets, once you quit the diet and resume a normal diet, all the lost weight will come back (8).
Read more: 10 Vegetable Juice Benefits That’ll Get You Juicing Right Away
There’s no way to determine how much weight an individual can lose on this 7-day juicing diet or any other weight loss program.
Losing weight doesn’t depend on diet alone and also involves other factors such as the amount of physical activity, muscle mass, sleep, age, sex, genetics, and much more (9, 10).
All we can say is that healthy weight loss means losing 1 to 2 pounds a week. If this is how much weight you’re losing per week, then you’re on the right track.
You can, but you’ll probably gain it all right back when you start eating again. Studies have suggested that short-term juicing or detox diets can produce weight loss due to their extremely low-calorie nature, but that they also tend to lead to weight gain once normal food intake is resumed(8, 11). Ultimately, it doesn’t. As mentioned above, juicing and detoxing diets don’t cause much fat loss and any weight loss is likely from the loss of water weight. This weight will most likely be regained once the diet is over. If you’ll only be consuming juice and nothing else for these 2 weeks, then absolutely not. However, if you plan on adding healthy fruit and/or vegetable juices to a normal healthy diet for 2 weeks, then it’s fine and safe to do so. Learn more about orange juice benefits. This is a rule or ratio that recommends that when you make these juices, you should mix vegetables or low-sugar fruits with fruit or high-sugar vegetables using an 80%:20% ratio.Frequently Asked Questions
Can you lose weight by only drinking juice?
Does a 7-day detox make you lose weight?
Is it safe to drink juice for 14 days?
What is the 80/20 rule for juicing?
Ultimately, the 7-day juice diet isn’t worth it. You’ll put yourself through an extreme eating plan that will lead to the loss of water weight or muscle and not fat like you desire.
If you’re looking to start juicing, don’t use it as a weight loss hack but use it as a way to get more fruit and vegetables into your healthy and balanced diet. Also, make sure you don’t use a juicer for this but a high-powered blender instead, and don’t sieve the mixture to keep the fiber in your juice.
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