A disclosure before we go further: I develop soup cleanse products, which is a reason to read the evidence sections closely rather than take my word for it. Where the research is thin, I’ve said so.
Why three days, not seven
Three days is the length I recommend, and the only length most people should attempt. Five days is for people who’ve done a shorter cleanse before and already know how their body handles it. Seven days of near-liquid eating is long enough that the risks stop being trivial: electrolyte disturbance, muscle loss, and a difficult reintroduction.
Length isn’t a measure of commitment here, and extra days don’t make the practice more rigorous on their own.
For what actually changes in the body over these three days, hydration, digestive load, blood sugar, and why nothing is being “flushed out,” see the physiology chapter in History & benefits. This guide sticks to the practical side of running it.
Who should skip this entirely
Anyone pregnant or breastfeeding. Anyone with diabetes or on medication that requires food or steady blood sugar. Anyone with kidney or liver disease. Anyone underweight. Anyone with a history of disordered eating. Anyone recovering from illness or surgery. Talk to a doctor if you’re unsure.
This is a low-risk practice for a healthy adult, and a genuinely bad idea for several groups who aren’t. There’s no version of this guide that changes that.
What’s actually in the broth
Bone broth carries a specific overhyped claim worth correcting in detail, which is why it gets the longer treatment below. Vegetable broth doesn’t have an equivalent myth attached to it, so its section is shorter without being any less important.
Bone broth contains gelatin, minerals, and free amino acids, primarily glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. The common claim is that these amino acids repair the intestinal wall. Two problems with that.
Collagen isn’t a meaningful source of glutamine, despite how often the two get linked. Glutamine does have a role in intestinal barrier function, but what glutamine is in bone broth comes mainly from residual muscle tissue left on the bones rather than from the collagen itself.
And the dose isn’t there. A 2018 analysis in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism found bone broth supplies substantially less glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline than a therapeutic dose of a collagen supplement, with wide variation between batches and recipes.
Broth is food. It supplies fluid, electrolytes, some protein, and considerable flavor, and it goes down easily when nothing else does. That’s a solid set of benefits on its own, without a barrier-repair mechanism propped on top of it.
Vegetable broths and blended soups contribute fibre, potassium, and phytonutrients. Blending keeps the fibre, which straining removes, so blended soups feed gut bacteria in a way clear broth doesn’t.
Planning and preparation
Set your reason first. Reducing bloating, establishing a baseline for food reintroduction, or interrupting a stretch of chaotic eating are all reasonable. Weight loss isn’t what this is for. Three days of restriction followed by normal eating doesn’t produce lasting change.
Everything below works two ways: an all-vegetable track, or one that includes bone broth. Neither is the default. Use whichever fits how you eat, and swap freely between them slot by slot if that’s easier.
Equipment
- A large stockpot or slow cooker
- A blender for the pureed soups
- A fine mesh sieve
- Jars or containers for storing portions
Shopping list, three days, one person
Vegetable broth and blended soups: 5 carrots, 3 celery stalks, 2 zucchini, 1 cup chopped kale or spinach, 1 sweet potato (peeled and cubed), 1 garlic bulb, 1 thumb of ginger, sea salt, black pepper, turmeric, cumin.
Bone broth: 3 lbs chicken or beef bones, 1 onion (quartered), 2 carrots (roughly chopped), 2 celery stalks (roughly chopped), 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns.
Herbal additions: chamomile flowers or peppermint, fresh parsley or cilantro.
Batch cook before day one
Vegetable broth: simmer the chopped vegetables in water for 1 to 2 hours, then strain. Reserve some of the cooked vegetables to puree for the blended soups.
Bone broth: roast the bones at 400°F for 30 minutes, then transfer to a stockpot with the vegetables, water, and vinegar. Simmer 12 to 24 hours. Strain, cool, and refrigerate in 2 to 3 cup portions. The vinegar is traditional and helps a little with mineral extraction, though the effect is modest, so don’t expect much from it.
Keep a journal through the three days: energy, sleep, hunger, mood, bowel movements. This is what makes the reintroduction on day four useful.
A daily framework
Adjust portions to your own hunger. These aren’t targets to hit.
- Morning: 8 to 12 oz of water, then 1 to 2 cups of vegetable or bone broth. Sip slowly.
- Mid-morning: herbal tea. Another cup of broth if you’re hungry.
- Midday: 1 to 2 cups of blended vegetable soup, plus water.
- Afternoon: half a cup to a cup of vegetable or bone broth. Ginger tea.
- Evening: a heartier blended soup, cooked vegetables pureed into vegetable or bone broth with cumin or turmeric. This should be the largest bowl of the day. A ten-minute walk afterward.
- Before bed: chamomile, and five minutes with the journal.
Running it well
Expect hunger. It’s part of the three days, worth expecting rather than solving. A useful check: if you can’t drink it through a straw, it isn’t part of the cleanse. A soft-cooked egg, steamed zucchini, or a bowl of rice porridge is gentler on the system than a plate of pasta, but it still asks more of your digestive system than a cup of broth does, and reaching for one quietly turns three days of cleanse into three days of soft solids. If you’re too hungry to continue, the honest move is to stop the cleanse entirely and eat a proper meal, rather than patch it with a small snack that lets you call the three days finished anyway.
Stop if you feel unwell. Dizziness, weakness, a headache that won’t lift, or a racing heart means the cleanse is over. Eat a proper meal. If those symptoms are severe, don’t ease within a few hours of eating, or keep recurring, get medical attention. This guide can tell you when to stop the cleanse; it can’t tell you what’s actually going on if something feels genuinely wrong.
Salt your broth. A low-calorie liquid diet can drop sodium, and lightheadedness on day two is often that rather than hunger. Every batch of broth should be seasoned.
Move gently. Walking, stretching, and easy yoga. Skip hard training. You don’t have the fuel for it, and there’s nothing to gain.
Come off it slowly. Day four is steamed vegetables, eggs, and small portions of soft food. Add grains, legumes, and larger protein servings over the next two or three days. If you’re reintroducing foods to test for sensitivities, add one food at a time and leave a day between them, or the results tell you nothing.
A cleanse is a punctuation mark. What you eat for the other 362 days is the sentence.
Common questions
- Can I do this while working full time?
- Yes. Portion everything into jars before day one and keep a thermos at your desk. Plan the cleanse for a stretch without unusual demands.
- Is a juice cleanse better?
- They’re different rather than one being better. Juice removes the fibre and carries more sugar. Blended soup keeps the fibre and can carry protein. Neither one detoxifies anything. Your liver and kidneys do that continuously, without help from either.
- Do I need bone broth for this to work?
- No. The all-vegetable track covers the full three days on its own, with cooked vegetables blended into the broth in place of bone broth wherever it appears above. Skip the L-glutamine supplement some articles suggest as a substitute, too; the evidence behind it is thin for healthy people, and it has no place in a three-day plan either way.
After day three
Broth as a habit. A few bowls a week, as food rather than as therapy.
Fermented foods. Small servings of sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, or yogurt, added regularly.
Fibre and variety. This is the intervention with the most evidence behind it for gut health, and it’s the one a cleanse can’t substitute for.
The full protocol, the shopping lists, and sixteen tested recipes are in the books. If you’d rather not build your own broth from scratch, a pre-portioned three-day kit is currently in development.