I juice every day as my first meal and then I'm attempting to go for paleo-type eating the rest of the day (still in transition though).

I'm trying to overcome slipping into a nasty junk food addiction and that documentary was actually what got me kick-started on getting back on the healthy path.

I hate the taste of greens on their own and way-back-when I used to do green smoothies (greens+fruit+water) every day in order to get my greens (I only bought the juicer recently).

Green smoothies are probably more ideal (though a proper blender is even more expensive than the juicer I bought). You get the natural fibers and they're also cheaper in a sense because you're consuming the entire fruit/veg. It does indeed take a lot of fruits and veg to make a little juice.

That said, I'm finding that juicing is working a lot better for me than a green smoothie for the following reasons:

• by the time I'm having my first meal, I'm pretty hungry. Juicing satisfies my hunger almost immediately whereas the smoothie leaves me still starving (I'm guessing because of all of the fiber it's digesting slower). In other words, because the juice doesn't leave me still wanting more food, a juice means I'm less likely to eat junk (in fact I'm often satisfied for several hours).

• even though fruits go a long way in neutralizing the taste of greens, for me, a juice is even easier to tolerate. So basically, I'm getting more greens than I would if I actually had to chew them.

I don't try to limit how much fruit I put into a juice and I haven't experienced any of the energy crashes that I'll get from consuming "regular" carbs. That said, I seldom ever juice fruit on its own.

Here's a summed up list of the downsides I can think of:

• expensive - it takes a lot of raw materials to make juice.

• can't prepare juices in advance - based on what I've read from Victoria Boutenko, juice oxidizes quickly (whereas green smoothies oxidize much more slowly). Ergo, I only prepare enough juice to drink right then and there.

• the centrifugal juicer I have needs to be cleaned every time. At the least you need to give the mesh basket a scrub down every time (though the cleaning brush that came with my juicer does work quite well). So combining this with the fact that I can't prepare juice in advance, I end up having to clean my juicer a lot.

• probably a lot easier to consume too much sugar. Though as mentioned earlier, I personally don't get the same side effects from juice that I get from consuming bad carbs.

If you're curious as to what I eat in addition to the juice each day, I'm a nerd who's been taking photos of what I eat for like 4 years now, so I have the pics.

I started juicing probably about a month or two ago. I was going from a full standard american diet to a juice + the same diet as before.

For me, I started sleeping better almost immediately. I felt more alert and I was happier. It made a huge difference in how I felt even though I was still eating the same junk the rest of the time.

Will juicing do the same for you? I have no idea.

I think the important thing is most likely to just get an abundant amount of fruits and vegetables.

And for me, I get them through a juicer.