Your Tea’s ‘Tiny Tea’ Teatox

Hi Everyone,

That title’s a bit of a mouthful, but I wanted to show you guys my new venture which is part of the healthy body=healthy mind mantra I’m trying to adopt. Drinking tea is a relatively new thing for me. When I was in my teens I really disliked the taste, and quite frankly the concept of tea; it seemed to me to be a very ‘old person’ thing to do, and why drink tea when you could drink Lilt? Unexpectedly, I became a twenty-something who thoroughly enjoys a nice cup of tea morning, noon or night. It all of a sudden became a very soothing, wholesome thing to do that gives me a satisfied centering for a brief five minutes. Since becoming a tea drinker I’ve tried quite a number, from your bog standard English breakfast tea to green teas, to delightful fruity summer berry teas, but the world of tea is vast and I have only just dipped my toe into the infinite possibili-teas (ho-ho). With this in mind, whilst I was flipping through various blogs and beauty and health websites I came across Your Tea.

Your Tea

Your Tea is pretty much a self explanatory company. They offer a tea delivery service, which you can have a look at here. The website claims that they are, inherently, tea lovers. They offer a large variety of teas that are derived from Traditional Chinese Medicinal principles, that claim to have various effects. These range from Hangover Tea, Sleep Tea, Breast Tea (for breastfeeding mothers, in case you were wondering), Tiny Tea (which I chose) and a whole host in between.

What on Earth is Tiny Tea?

Essentially, it’s a herbal tea. The Tiny Tea product is delivered as a “teatox” for either 14 or 28 days. According to Your Tea, it is an organic tea blend that will nourish and gently cleanse your digestive system. It also claims to reduce bloating, remove toxins, improve energy levels and “nudge” away any surplus weight. So, I know what you’re thinking.. this must be made from unicorn tears. But no, herbs. Lovely, herby goodness.

My experience so far

After reading everything about this teatox, and also reading some reviews from various chuffed customers, I decided to go for the 28 day teatox. My reasoning behind this was that I figured, if you ordered the 28 day one, then you could split the teas in two and do two 14 day teatoxes if you wanted to, or stick with one 28 day teatox. Also, that way, it would be cheaper than ordering two separate 14 day teatoxes.

For your reference, the 14 day teatox is £20 and the 28 day is £31 (they also offer a gluten free version, which is the same price – as an aside to this, who knew there was gluten in herbs?!) I was pleased as punch at checkout to see that shipping was free, and they also deliver worldwide.

Shipping was absurdly fast; I ordered this on the 18th May and it had been delivered by the 20th. Excellent service!

When it arrived I couldn’t get over the amazing packaging of this product. It comes like this:

 

Such a lovely box 🙂

 

Lid text

 

Brochure on all the other available teas

About Tiny Tea

Little pink gems

As you can see from the brochure image about Tiny Tea, the idea is that you drink one tea half an hour before eating, three times a day. It couldn’t be any simpler! But, the most important question, how does it taste? I was concerned about the taste, because when I opened the box there was such a fragrant smell that came out of it, and I was starting to get worried that I’d ordered 84 of the world’s worst perfume tea. Fortunately, it’s really quite tasty. It’s not a strong taste at all, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t compare it to anything else to give you a sense of the taste. But it’s very light, very easy to drink, and even just a touch of sweetness to it as well. Really enjoyable, especially if you like herbal teas anyway.

I think I’ll do an update on this teatox in a couple of weeks and let you know how it’s working etc. So do let me know if you’d be interested in that. Also I’d love to hear if you’ve tried this teatox, or anything like it, so be sure to leave your comments below 🙂

Thanks so much for reading, and pop back again soon!

Becky x

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My First Juice Detox with JuiceToU

Hi Everyone,

I’ve just begun my first ever juice cleanse, and I thought I’d give you guys a little review of it in case you were thinking of doing one. I’m going to write this in stages so that I can give you my true first impressions at each point.

So, I chose to do the JuiceToU 3 day juice detox (which you can check out on their website: http://www.juicetou.com). One of the biggest reasons why I chose to do this one was price. The 3 day cleanse is £79 with £12 p+p, which although is quite a large payout, in comparison to some other juice cleanses on the market, it’s actually surprisingly good value. As an example, the Radiance cleanse starts at £214 and the Raw Fairies is a whopping £249!

I ordered my juices on a Sunday evening about 9.30pm and they had arrived by the Wednesday evening. They only deliver once a week; usually if you order before 10pm on Sunday it will be delivered by Tuesday so you can begin on the Wednesday (mine was only delivered on a Wednesday because I ordered them over a bank holiday). The packaging was great, and they even included a couple of lemons for my water, nice little touch. In your box you get four juices for each day. The bottles tell you everything you need to know; they have the ingredients on the side and give you a time at which you’re supposed to drink them and an expiry on the bottom. In the three day cleanse you get a ‘Clean Green’ for 9am, ‘Let’s Glow’ for 12pm, another ‘Clean Green’ at 3pm and finally a ‘Berry Good’ at 6pm.

Day 1, 9am – I have just finished my first 9am ‘Clean Green’. I’d read quite a number of reviews beforehand and most people said that they did not like this one at all. But! I was pleasantly surprised. I’d built myself up for it to taste horrendous but I found it to be quite refreshing. The ingredients in this one are spinach, cucumber, celery, lime and apples. To be honest the overwhelming taste was cucumber with a celery type aftertaste, but it’s not too bad at all. Which I’m relieved about since you have to drink this one twice a day! Not feeling particularly hungry yet, which is my main concern when doing this..  so fingers crossed my tummy doesn’t start grumbling at any point.

Day 1, 12pm – Just had the ‘Let’s Glow’.. and it was unfortunately not as tasty as I would have hoped! The taste is quite earthy, which is confusing to me since the ingredients are; Oranges, Apples, Kiwi, Grapes and Strawberries. I’ve had these in the fridge for a few days so I wonder if this is maybe not as fresh as it would have been if I’d started the cleanse immediately upon receiving them, although the juices are all still well within their expiry. After drinking this however I do not feel hungry at all, which is a relief since I was feeling the pangs!

Day 1, 3pm – My second ‘Clean Green’ and again, not too bad at all. I really wasn’t hungry when I drank this one but wanted to stick to the schedule. I’d had some water with lemon before this as well. So far so good.

Day 1, 6pm – Time for ‘Berry Good’ which has pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, apples and raspberries and this one is delish! I’m so relieved that I love this one, it feels like such a treat at the end of the day! I also had a fruit tea (no green tea allowed) which was nice and a sweet way to end the juices for the first day. Still a tad hungry though…

Day 2, overview – I really struggled with hunger today. I’ve been very good and stuck religiously to the programme since I want to get the best results I can. I drank a lot of water (some with lemon, some without) and when that wasn’t stopping my tummy growling I went for a fruit tea, which helped a lot. I suspected that the second day would be the most difficult since it doesn’t have the novelty of the first day or the relief of the third, and it was without a doubt harder than yesterday. I definitely felt some serious envy watching my colleagues tuck into their lunches, and this was perhaps the worst day ever to choose the menu for our staff event! But, I’m proud for sticking to it today, and only one day left. I cannot say at this point that I feel any kind of ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘invigoration’ as they suggest on the website, in fact at several points today I felt a little tired and even very occasionally a bit spaced out. So, we’ll see about tomorrow.

Day 3, overview – I have just finished my final juice and am relieved to say that today was significantly easier than day 2. Don’t get me wrong, I was still hungry here and there, but once again I didn’t stray at all. I did the same as the previous days and had just water and fruit teas in addition to the juices. With regards to any kind of revitalised feeling I have to say that after feeling fairly grim all day yesterday, about 9pm I, all of sudden, didn’t feel so bad anymore. Perhaps I was getting used to it, but my head cleared and the haze-like feeling I’d been experiencing a little dispersed, and I had much more clarity. But, I cannot safely say that I felt any more ‘clarity’ than on a non-detox day.. I almost certainly did not have more energy, nor did I feel lethargic.. just, sorta.. normal. My stomach is without a doubt much less bloated so that’s a massive bonus to this detox. In addition, I feel as though my skin has improved a little; I don’t suffer from particularly bad skin but I had been having a few blemishes that are now clearing up nicely. Could be due to the detox, could be due to my cleanser, could be both! I’ll wait until the morning to have a final weigh in and see what the results are there.

Weigh in – For any of you who are wanting to do this detox to kick start weight loss, I just weighed myself and I lost 7lbs (just over 3kg) over the three days. That is sort of incredible.. I am stunned.

Final thoughts – I think overall this juice detox gives good results in some areas but in others I didn’t notice any improvement at all. If you are preparing for an event or holiday or perhaps just want to kick start a healthy eating programme, then I think this is for you. It gives good weight loss results, in a shockingly short time frame. I am a bit concerned about the follow up to this, since where the body is essentially ‘starved’ for the 3 days, my worry is that anything remotely fattening/sugary/carb loaded will immediately be stored in my body as fat and I’ll have gained double what I lost before the week is out! JuiceToU do send you a follow-up programme with meal suggestions if you request one – I actually got mine via twitter (@juicetou). I personally am planning on continuing for the next week or two with minimal to no carbs and generally keeping it low refined sugar etc. just to try and prevent any kind of ‘shock fat storage’ situation.

If you’re looking to improve your skin via this detox, again I think this is for you. I did notice a difference in how my skin looked and I can only assume that was aided by all the goodness in these juices. However, if what you’re after is a clean, rejuvenated, energetic, glowy feeling inside and out… do not go for this. I personally did not experience that in the least, but please let me know if you did, I’d be so interested to hear your experiences.

Lastly, I wonder whether you might get these same effects by just eating the fruit/vegetables these juices use, exclusively for three days. Or, alternatively blitzing your own. However, you are paying for the convenience of having them pre-prepared and packaged for you, so you’re just good to go. If you were not wanting to spend money on a branded juice cleanse, my main suggestion would be to make sure you prepare all of your juices in advance, since you will probably not be feeling pumped to blend them once the detox has begun. Convenience is the key, otherwise it would be SO easy to stray.

I found this detox a real challenge. I’m proud of myself for sticking to it, since I thought I had no will-power whatsoever, so this is news to me! Would I do it again? I’d need to think about that… maybe in a few months when I’ve forgotten the hunger pains!!

Thanks for reading and I hope you pop by again soon,

Becky x

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