Juicing or including elements of a juice diet in your weight loss program is a great way to get on the road to fulfilling your vital daily fruit and vegetable intake. It’s also a fantastic way to hydrate you and makes an excellent replacement for tea and coffee. There’s lots of healthy juice recipes that make enough for two, but you may find that you like them so much that you drink most of it yourself!

Alternatively you can freeze the second part straight away, as this preserves the nutrient content, or cover immediately and place in the fridge to enjoy later in the day. Or you can put it into a thermos flask and take it to work to enjoy as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon energizer. Many healthy juice diet recipes have natural stimulants in them, so you could find that juicing will soon replace your tea or coffee habit.

To get the most from most juice recipes you do need to invest in a good juicer machine. This is one product where you do get what you pay for. But when choosing your juicer you may also want to think about ease of cleaning and size - both these factors can affect your enjoyment of juicing. We have become such juicing fans that we have a dedicated juicing corner in our kitchen which makes it easy to juice at any time of the day.

Here’s one of my favorite juice diet drinks for getting off to a healthy start in the morning:

Sunshine Starter

This great-tasting juice is a wonderful introduction to the combination of fruit and vegetables. One of the most glorious things about this juice is the color. It really is sunshine in a glass - a gorgeous warm yellowy orange, enough to bring a smile to anyone’s face first thing in the morning.

Serves 2 (large glasses)

• 3 carrots
• 1cm (1/2 inch) ginger root, peeled
• 2 apples
• 2 oranges
• 1 1/2 yellow peppers

Chop all the vegetables and fruit into manageable sizes. Juice the carrots first and then the ginger, before juicing the rest of the ingredients.

• Calories: 174
• Fat: 0.94g
• Protein: 2.47g
• Carbs: 43.21g

If you decide you don’t want to go the whole hog and follow an all juice diet, having a healthy juice drink or smoothie for breakfast will do your weight loss diet a world of good, and help naturally detox your body at the same time.