I Tried a Soup Cleanse, and Here’s What Happened

Photo: Soupure

Juice cleanses get all the attention, with their neon juices and ascetic vibes. But while they rock a pretty shiny health halo, health experts agree that they’re generally not that great for you.

Consuming only juice for a few days can spike your blood sugar, make you loopy, and do a number on your metabolism if you’re not careful. And sure, downing six bottles a day of pressed fruits and veggies can flood your body with vitamins and minerals, but has anyone ever felt truly nourished as they quaff bottle after bottle of cold, sugary juice? (Answer: Nope.)

But sticking to a strict, temporary liquid diet doesn’t have to be so negative — done correctly, a cleanse can be downright nourishing. That’s the idea behind Soupure, a soup-cleanse company based in L.A. It’s one of a new crop of small businesses that sell soups in one- to three-day bundles, meant to help you get back on nutritional track without deprivation. A day of Soupure, for example, includes a thick almond-based drink, two vegetable-heavy soups, a bone broth and vegetable broth, a light banana smoothie, and two fruit-infused waters. The idea is to introduce a plethora of vitamins and minerals into your system while cutting out the foods that can cause inflammation (such as wheat and dairy, among others).

Soup isn’t groundbreaking, but packaging it as a cleanse is starting to catch on, for a few reasons. It’s incredibly convenient — just grab the bottles and go, heating them up if you can. And the Soupure soups are nutritionist-crafted, designed to provide energy and nutrients from whole, fresh foods in the right portion sizes. And unlike pressed juices, soups contain all the original fiber from the fruits, veggies, and nuts. It’s also important to note that soup cleanses, like juice cleanses, are temporary. Consuming only soup for an extended period of time would not be a good idea.

Two weeks into our Body-Peace Resolution month, I was looking for a way to reset after the holidays without doing a number on my body — or my body confidence. So I decided to give Soupure’s three-day cleanse a try. I didn’t have any real goals in mind (though the founders say their customers experience everything from weight loss to clearer skin to less body odor), but I was curious to see what it would be like to stick to a 72-hour blended diet. Armed with a few dozen glass bottles of soups, broths, infused waters, and smoothies, I set off to soup.

So, full disclosure: I didn’t time it well. I started my cleanse on the same day as an unexpected round of antibiotics, which left me feeling a little green as I walked to work that first morning. I will not hurl, I told myself as I gulped mouthful after mouthful of the thick almond/super-seed milk that I’d otherwise be all over. The (snappy and flavorful) asparagus soup I heated up for lunch turned my stomach, and I couldn’t make it through a whole bottle of the spicy vegetable broth that had sounded amazing the day before. By the time I got to dinner, it was all I could do to get the sweet-potato soup into my mouth before I fell asleep. I added a spoonful of peanut butter as I took my meds, like a dog, and promised myself a croissant — the only food that sounded appetizing at the time — the next morning. The flour would settle my stomach, I told myself, and isn’t the point of doing a nourishing cleanse to listen to your body?

Related: Skip the Juice Cleanse (and Consider One of These 3 Programs Instead)

So when I woke up the next morning, a croissant was the first thing on my mind — until I got out of bed. I felt springy, as if I’d had a caffeine IV drip running overnight. My face was no longer off-color, my stomach felt tight as I pulled on a pair of jeans, and the softness that can settle in under my chin was MIA. I looked good, and I felt good, too. So good that I danced my way over to the fridge and pulled out the strawberry-cashew smoothie that would kick off my second day, croissant forgotten.

I’ve heard people describe the second day of a juice cleanse as bringing a new sense of clarity, and that’s how I felt, too. But it wasn’t the rush of too-bright energy that comes from not having eaten enough — rather, it was as if my body was using the food I had given it.

Using my newfound mental clarity to reflect on the cleanse, I attributed this to two things. One: The soups cut out a lot of the junk that I know makes me feel gross (hello, added processed sugar and yeast!), affirming my nagging belief that if I ate like Gwyneth, I too could run an empire. But it was more than just what the soups cut out. Unlike a juice cleanse, the six soups I had every day were packed with fiber, protein, and fat — the good kind of fat. I consumed liquefied nuts and seeds, coconut milk, and omega-3-rich oils, all of which added up to about 45 grams of fat, which seriously boosts your body’s ability to absorb nutrients and keeps your brain running smoothly. Plus, the good-fat-heavy soups and drinks are seriously satiating, so I never felt out-of-my-mind hungry while I was cleansing.

Days two and three went by fairly easily. The soups were varied, and if I got hungry or bored with a flavor, I’d just try a different one. (There’s a schedule and an order, and I’m sure I would’ve benefited from following it, but I didn’t. Rebelling against something, even in the lamest way possible, kept me from ditching the whole thing.) I was never starving or overwhelmingly sick of any of the options, and I found by day two that tossing back my inconvenient antibiotics after, not before, my morning smoothie and nightly soup was the key to a happy stomach. As boring as it sounds, it really wasn’t that hard.

That said, after three days of soup, I was ready to get back to nonliquid foods. The blends were satiating and diverse, but I missed the crunch of a salad (I know) and the taste of chocolate. But as I downed the last soup, I realized that I faced a bit of a #BodyPeaceResolution dilemma. Over the last few days, I’d gone from thinking it was cool that I finally had defined abs to loving it. I wore tight shirts, and danced back and forth in my tiny apartment. I tapped my hands against my tight stomach like a drum and tried to think of ways to wear a bikini in January. I was feeling the body love, hard. But what would happen the next day, when I inevitably started eating my favorite not-so-great foods? I’m generally pretty thrilled with my body and how it looks — would my confidence take a nose-dive once my stomach wasn’t quite so taut? I wondered, as I spooned up the last bit of my sweet-potato soup, whether doing any sort of cleanse, nourishing or otherwise, was setting me up for a body-peace failure.

I’m happy to report that my fears didn’t come true. My jeans aren’t as loose as they were for those few days, but I don’t really care all that much. I don’t have any great secret why, other than to say I fall pretty squarely into the body neutrality camp.

I do worry that if I were on the body-negative side of the spectrum, I would’ve gotten attached to those results and chased them through cleanse after diet after cleanse. That’s something that’s always bothered me about juice cleanses — they can fuel disordered eating and food paranoia while seeming like a healthy move. But for me, the cleanse had a different set of lasting results. After I resumed a normal diet, I started to pay better attention to how foods made me feel. I knew that eating bread made me feel a little puffy for the rest of the day, but I still ate sandwiches. Now, two weeks out from the cleanse, it still doesn’t seem worth it. I choose the food I eat based on what sounds good, but also on what will feel good. The idea that doing a cleanse can be like hitting a reset button rang true in this case.

Related: 5 Vegetable Soup Recipes for the New Year

And while I was jazzed to get back to chewing my food, I’m a bigger soup fan than ever before. I’ve pulled my second-hand Vitamix out of the cabinet, where it sits during the winter, and started making hot blended drinks to start my day. (Almond milk, coconut oil, matcha powder: Try it!) I’ve been making so many slapdash soups that I’ve used up all my sad, wilted odds and ends and moved on to fresh produce. And when I went out for brunch this weekend, I found myself ordering a soup — and loving it. I’m fully on board the blended train, and I have no plans to hop back off.

Want to give it a shot yourself? Soupure delivers its one-day cleanse nationally, and longer cleanses are available in the L.A. area. Splendid Spoon is New York-based and ships nationally. Alternatively, you can make the soups yourself — just be sure to include enough fat and protein in your blends so you stay satiated and can absorb all the nutrients you’re consuming.

Body-Peace Resolution is Yahoo Health’s January initiative to motivate you to pursue wellness goals that are not vanity-driven, but that strive for more meaningful outcomes. We’re talking strength, mental fitness, self-acceptance — true and total body peace. Our big hope: This month of resolutions will inspire a body-peace revolution. Want to join us? Start by sharing your own body-positive moments on social media using the hashtag #bodypeaceresolution.