Watching calories is the most important thing to weight loss.  Sure, juice sounds healthy, and our mothers and grandmothers have brainwashed us into thinking that juice is a healthy alternative to soda or other sweetened drinks.  The thing you need to understand is that calories need to be limited, you absolutely need to make them count so that you get the nutrients you need.  Empty calories make it hard to get the nutrients you need to function appropriately no matter if they come from a natural source such as fruit or manufactured in soda.  

Weight Loss Tip – Avoid the Juice

Fresh Organic Green Smoothie

Pressing and blending fruits and vegetables into juices may sound like a healthy choice and many health fanatics are turning to juicing as a way to add more fruits and veggies to their diet, but this method is a huge dietary mistake for multiple reasons which I will spell out in the paragraphs below:  

1. “Green” smoothies and juices can be high in calories.   Juices and smoothies sound fresh, healthy, and a convenient way to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet, but the process of juicing removes many of the important parts of the foods such as fiber.  Also, the bottled versions of these drinks aren’t only vegetable juice.  The bottled “green” drinks often have flavors and sugar added to improve the taste and make them last longer.  These additives can boost not only the flavor but also the caloric content.  Some of the bottled juices have more than 300-400 calories or more in 16oz.  Raw vegetables have much fewer calories, and you get the fiber you need to maintain colon health and regularity.  To get 350 calories from fresh carrots, you could eat nearly 7 cups of raw carrots.  
2. All fruit juice contains a high concentration of sugar.  Even though the juice may be freshly squeezed from fruit, the effects the concentrated juice has on the body are quite different from what happens when consuming a piece of whole fruit. The juicing removed the pulp, fiber, and skin which slow the absorption of the sugar.  Juice does not fill you up nearly as much as the whole fruit would.  A whole medium-sized orange only has about 60 calories, and it takes 4 or more oranges to make a 12oz of orange juice which has 240 calories.  You probably wouldn’t eat four oranges in a sitting. 

The bottom line:  Fruit juice and juicing is a mistake if it is a daily part of your diet because is loaded with calories and limited in nutrients.  Get more vegetables and fruit by sticking to the whole foods rather than the juice.