The Blue Print Cleanse's Healthy Bridal Program

by Victoria Loustalot, Posted Feb 25th 2011 1:30PM

Courtesy of Blue Print Cleanse

Frankly, the notion that getting engaged means going on a diet makes us cringe. Of course you want to look your best on your wedding day, but it's much more important to be healthy than it is to be skinny. So we were skeptical when we first heard about Blue Print Cleanse (BPC), which offers different levels of juice cleanses for varying lengths of time, as well as a program designed specifically for brides.

Pilates for Beginners

But then we heard that the Blue Print cleanses WEREN'T about weight loss. In fact, when BPC founders, Zoe Sakoutis (a certified nutritional consultant) and Erica Huss (a serious foodie with a serious background in P.R.), created the juices, they paid a lot of attention to packing their recipes with vitamins and nutrients and not so much attention to calorie count -- on the Blue Print Cleanses you're consuming about 20 lbs. of freshly pressed vegetables and fruits a day, which is a lot more than can be said for any multivitamin you may be taking.

Set Specific Fitness Goals

So, we decided to try it for ourselves. The juices for the three-day cleanse we had selected were delivered to our home right on time (though they can also be delivered to your office). You get six juices a day, and each bottle is numbered, making it super-clear what order you're supposed to drink them in. So far so good. But how did they taste?

The green juice, which is a BPC staple no matter which cleanse you choose, is made of romaine, celery, cucumber, kale, parsley, green apple, spinach and lemon and tastes better than it sounds. There's also a pineapple-apple-mint juice, which tastes as good as it sounds, a sweet carrot-apple-beet juice with a pretty magenta hue, and a spicy lemonade, which gets its kick from cayenne. You also get dessert in the form of cashew milk, a frothy blend of cashews, agave, vanilla bean and cinnamon, which tastes a bit like a vanilla shake. We couldn't help but think the cashew milk would taste fantastic in our morning coffee or pored over a bowl of fresh berries. Unfortunately, coffee and berries are off limits on the cleanse -- not that that stopped us from daydreaming about them!

Bringing Sexy to Your Back

The cleanse was easier than we thought it'd be, and we were amazed how much energy we had. While we didn't notice any special post-cleanse glow, we did realize that we much preferred how we felt when we weren't eating junk (uh, imagine that!). And we were inspired to clean out our pantry and get to know the produce section of our grocery store a little better.

Yoga 101: Seven Basic Postures

All of which is pretty great, whether you're preparing to walk down the aisle or not. But for those of you who are, we like that the BPC bridal program includes not only the juice cleanses, but also regular consultations with a certified nutritionist and healthy recipes for the 99 percent of your life when you're not on a cleanse. Better still, the recipes sound delicious (not to mention easy to master). The banana-coconut cream parfait with mixed berries in particular caught our eye; it'd be a pretty, as well as tasty, addition to your bridal-shower spread, no?

Be sure to try BPC's homemade beauty treatment recipes, too.

And check out the Blue Print Cleanse Book, entitled The 3-Day Cleanse, which is jam-packed with recipes and straight-shooting advice from founders Zoe Sakoutis and Erica Huss, real women who care about their health almost as much as they love food and eating. Our kind of women.

Tags: blue print cleanse, bridal fitness, wedding diet