By Nadia Kotsos
The Shred wasn't really my idea. Not at first.
It started with Sue. Suzanne Galluzzo. We met years ago, back when she was just starting to ask deeper questions about food and how it was making her feel. We'd talk for hours. I'd share what I was learning from my work with juices and herbs, and over time, those conversations turned into something more. Sue eventually went to school for holistic nutrition. She built a transformational program called Best of You, where she helps people lose weight through a clean, healthy diet and proper intermittent fasting.
And the one principle I taught her, the one she still comes back to with every client, is this: nutrients are king.
If somebody is sick, you flood the body with vitamins and minerals. If somebody is stuck, you flood the body with vitamins and minerals. If somebody hits a plateau and the scale won't budge, you do the same thing. Not deprivation. Not punishment. Real, dense, cellular fuel.
When Sue's clients started getting stuck on plateaus, she came to me. We sat down together and built The Shred. A cleanse made specifically for the people on her program, and for anyone who wants a way to give their body a deeper reset without losing momentum.
Every bottle in the lineup is Sue Approved.
What's Actually In The Cleanse
The Shred is a six bottle daily lineup. Four cold pressed juices and two wellness shots, made in Toronto, never HPP'd (HPP stands for high pressure processing, a technique that extends shelf life by a few weeks but that we don't believe in because it changes the integrity of the juice).
Here's what each bottle is doing.
Rise and Rind is a citrus juice with a real bite of vitamin C. Bright, hydrating, immune supportive. It's a gentle morning starter, no caffeine needed.
I'm Celery and I Know It is pure organic celery juice. The natural sodium cluster salts in celery flush toxins, calm inflammation, and help the gut lining settle. We don't dress it up. The simpler the better.
IGingerX is a fresh ginger shot. It supports circulation, immunity, and digestion, and it's the small jolt of warmth that most cleanses are missing.
The Aloe Shot is the one I'm always telling people about. Aloe is the best thing you can take for the digestive system. Whatever it does for a cut on the outside of your skin, it does for the inside of your gut. It rebuilds the protective lining, calms inflammation, and helps with bloating almost immediately. There are about 400 varieties of aloe out there and only around 10 of them are medicinal. We use the medicinal kind.
You Spinach Me Right Round is a nutrient dense green juice with spinach, cucumber, apple, and lemon. Loaded with chlorophyll, magnesium, and trace minerals. Your cells absorb all of it.
The Skinny is the same 15 organic herb blend you may already know. Dandelion, nettle, parsley, milk thistle, horsetail, ginger, cayenne, and more. In The Shred, The Skinny anchors the day with deep liver and kidney support and that gentle thermogenic effect that keeps your metabolism quietly working.
Each bottle is doing something specific. Together, they cover the full body. Liver, kidneys, gut, lymph, immune system. That's the design.
The Ingredients
Every bottle in The Shred is built from real, organic, cold pressed produce. No fillers. No concentrates. No artificial sweeteners. No shortcuts.
Here's the full list of what's actually going into your body across the six bottles.
Citrus and vitamin C from oranges, lemons, grapefruit. Pure organic celery. Fresh ginger root. Medicinal aloe vera. Spinach, cucumber, apple. And the full Skinny herb blend: dandelion root and leaf, nettle, parsley, camu camu, horsetail, bilberry, milk thistle, lemon verbena, cardamom, lotus leaf, ginger, lemon, a touch of maple syrup, and cayenne.
That's pounds of organic produce and 15 dedicated herbs in a single day of cleansing. Every single ingredient there for a reason.
One Day, Two Days, Or Three
The Shred works on a build. You can do it for one day, two days, or three days back to back, repeating the same lineup each day.
One day is the beginner version. A reset. This is the cadence Sue's community runs every single week as part of her program. It pairs beautifully with intermittent fasting, which I'll come back to in a minute. One day on its own is enough to feel a real difference the next morning. Lighter. Less bloated. Calmer in your gut.
Two days is the intermediate. The first day is always the hardest. Your body is asking for the things it's used to. The caffeine, the snacks, the sugar. By the second day, things start to soften. Your digestion calms. Your energy levels out. You start to feel like you're floating just a little.
Three days is the advanced. This is where the deeper cellular work happens. Three days back to back gives the lymphatic system time to catch up, the liver time to actually rest, and stored toxins time to release in a meaningful way. And here's the thing nobody warns you about: day three is almost always the easiest. By that point your body has settled into the rhythm. The cravings quiet down. Your mind clears.
The longer you go, the more dramatic the reset. If it's your first time, I'd start with one day and see how your body responds. There's no rule that says you have to do three. I'd rather see somebody do one day a week consistently for a month than push through three days unprepared.
The best cleanse is the one you actually finish.
Why The Once A Week Cadence Matters
I want to come back to something I touched on earlier, because it's the part of cleansing nobody talks about clearly enough. Intermittent fasting.
Most people think intermittent fasting just means eating within a certain window. Eight hours of eating, sixteen hours of not. They'll say, I do intermittent fasting, I eat from 10am to 6pm. That's not intermittent fasting. That's just a feeding schedule.
Real intermittent fasting is when you fast intermittently. Which means a true 24 hour break from food once a week. That's when the actual repair work starts. That's when your body has the bandwidth to clean house instead of constantly digesting. That's what helps people break through plateaus, whether they're trying to lose weight, calm an autoimmune flare, or just feel like themselves again.
A juice cleanse is the easiest, gentlest way to do that 24 hour fast. You're not depleted. You're not white knuckling it. You're feeding your cells deeply while the digestive system gets a real break.
That's why Sue has her community do The Shred once a week. It's not a one time event. It's a weekly ritual that supports the rest of the work they're doing.
How To Actually Do It
A few things matter more than people realize.
Drink water after every single bottle. This is the rule that will make or break your experience. The juice fills your cells with nutrients, which pushes any stored toxins into the bloodstream. The water helps your kidneys and liver filter those toxins out. Skip the water and you'll feel sluggish, headachy, and stuck. Drink it and you'll feel light all day.
Sip the bottles in the order they're given to you. The lineup is sequenced for a reason. Each one prepares your body for the next.
Move gently. A walk, some stretching, easy yoga. Your lymphatic system isn't pumped by your heart, it's pumped by motion. Even ten minutes of walking helps everything drain the way it should.
If you're cleansing in winter, warm The Skinny in a mug. Just gently. The ginger and cayenne already in there make it feel like the most nourishing tea you've ever had. Sip it slowly. And if you tend to run cold, a pinch of dried ginger powder stirred into hot water on the side helps too. Powdered ginger warms the body in a way fresh ginger doesn't, and that small thing makes a real difference on a cold day.
What No One Talks About: The Emotional Side
Around mid afternoon, you might feel something strange come up.
A wave of irritability. A flicker of sadness. The urge to pick a fight or eat a sandwich just to feel normal again.
You are not failing. You are not doing it wrong.
When you pause the caffeine, the sugar, the snacking, the constant input, you're not just removing food. You're removing coping mechanisms. The body finally has space to feel what it's been carrying. Old emotions surface because they finally have room to.
This is called a healing crisis. It's a real thing, and it's actually a sign that something is shifting.
When the wave rises, drink more water. Light a candle. Take a 10 minute walk. Write down one sentence of what you're feeling without trying to fix it. Run a warm epsom salt bath. Sip a herbal tea like nettle or lemon balm. Use the tools.
The next day, you'll be amazed at how much lighter you feel. Physically and emotionally.
Your Body Knows What To Do
I keep coming back to this, because it's the heart of everything we make at Drink Juice Co.
The body has the power to heal itself, as long as we give it the vitamins and minerals to do so.
The Shred isn't magic. It isn't punishment. It isn't a starvation tool. It's a quiet weekly ritual that gives your body the space to do the work it's been waiting to do. The result is real, but it isn't dramatic in the way a fad cleanse promises. It's the kind of result that builds. Better sleep. Calmer digestion. Quieter cravings. Skin that looks a little brighter every week.
One day. Two days. Three days. Once a week, once a month, or once a season. There's no wrong way to do it.
Sip. Burn. Reset.
With love and minerals, Nadia 💚
P.S. New to cleansing or unsure if The Shred is the right place to start? The Beginner Cleanse is a softer entry point. Or pop into the shop at Leaside and we'll figure out the right starting point together. You don't have to do this alone, and you don't have to do it all at once.