My ZenCleanz ONE Review: What I Wish I Had Known First

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If you have found your way to this ZenCleanz review, you are about where I was when I first heard about these products. Curious, and reading everything I could find, which back in 2020 was not very much. There is a great deal more out there now, and I have been working with them ever since.

This one is about ZenCleanz ONE, or Zen Cleanz One as you will also see it written, the single day kit, because it is the one most women start with and the one I am asked about most.

If it is the seven day one you are looking at, read my week with the Rainbow kit instead. And if you are still deciding between them, how the three kits compare puts all three side by side.

What follows is what I know now. How to set yourself up properly, what the day asks of you, how to come out of it well, and the handful of things nobody thinks to mention until you are already in the middle of it.

If a question comes up while you are reading, message me on Instagram. I am @bloomwithjodie_ and I would far rather answer it than have you guess.

What is ZenCleanz ONE?

A single day kit, and the one I would point most women at first. Inside are eight sachets of intestinal management meal powder, three small bottles of Ambrosia, which is their liquid enzyme, and one sachet of Fiber Crystals.

Ambrosia and the Fiber Crystals are both sold on their own as well as inside the kit, and there is a Gut Essentials set alongside them. Plenty of people take one or another in the week before a cleanse and in the days after it, rather than only on the day itself.

Here is the part nobody says plainly enough: you do not eat. The whole day is drinking. Sixteen timed drinks, each one mixed into a large glass of lukewarm water, which comes to around four litres by the evening. That is fewer separate things than it sounds: eight sachets, six small doses of Ambrosia poured from the three bottles, the Fiber Crystals at the end of the night, and one glass of plain water in among them. Then two more Ambrosia the following morning.

The sachets are not all the same, and I like that. It keeps the day from being the same thing over and over. Cacao is my favourite. The oat one is more of a vanilla.

As for what is in it, the sachets are largely fermented plant material and fibre, with psyllium husk, agar agar, apple and blueberry fibre among them. Ambrosia is a liquid fermented from around fifty seven plants, fruit and vegetables and herbs and mushrooms and seaweed, left for three years before it is bottled. If you have an allergy, read the full lists on the packaging rather than my summary of them, because there is soy in there, along with oat, cacao butter, seaweed and mushroom.

They are not certified organic and they say so, which I would rather hear than not. The reason is a practical one: they ferment more than a hundred and fifty plants sourced from farms all over the world, large and small, and getting a certificate out of every one of them is not realistic. What they do instead is test the finished product for more than two hundred substances, heavy metals and pesticides among them, and the factory holds the usual food safety certifications. Given the choice, I would rather have a result from the bottle than a certificate from a farm.

I am not going to reprint the timings here. Every kit comes with its own manual and ZenCleanz publish them online as well, and my honest advice is to read one before you schedule anything, rather than once the box has already arrived. It lays out the whole day hour by hour, which is what you want in front of you while you are deciding. Doses and intervals are the manufacturer's to specify and they update them, so work from the current version rather than from a copy of a copy.

ZenCleanz ONE is a one day cleanse that needs more time around it

This is the thing most people get wrong, and it is worth understanding before you order anything.

The cleanse itself is one day. What it asks of you is more. There is the day before, when you are preparing. There is the day itself. And there is the day after, which is the release, and which you do not get to schedule.

The preparation is the part that catches people out, because it does not come in the box. Eating the right way in the lead up takes work, and energy, and a bit of commitment, and none of that is printed on anything.

So do not book one day and then find, halfway through, that there is a great deal more to fit around it. Two days in a row that you can properly clear will do it, and a long weekend is better still. I have never once regretted having more time around it and I have often regretted having less.

Of course, none of that is compulsory. You can skip the preparation and just do the day, and plenty of people do exactly that.

But by then you will have committed the time and the money, and the preparation and the transition out are what decide whether the day is worth the trouble you went to. They cost nothing extra. They take a bit of thought and a bit of planning, and they are the two places I would put your effort if you are going to do this at all.

How to prepare for ZenCleanz ONE

Choose the week before you choose the day

Look at your diary before you look at the box.

You want a stretch where you are not busy and not under any particular pressure. Not a week you are already dreading, not one with something in the middle of it you cannot move. Being well and rested going in makes the whole thing easier, and if you are already run down, wait. It will keep.

There is a second layer to this for us, and it is the one I would not skip: where you are in your cycle. That has its own section further down, and it matters a good deal more than which day of the week you pick.

Then put it in the diary properly. Not a vague intention for sometime this month, but an actual block with the day before and the day after attached to it.

Be going to the toilet every day before you start

If you take one practical thing from this page, take this one.

You want to already be going at least once a day, comfortably, before you do this at all. Where things are backed up before you start, the day is a good deal less comfortable than it needs to be. That is the piece of feedback I hear most often from other women, and it is completely avoidable.

Some people see a colon hydrotherapist beforehand to get things moving. Others get there with food, water and time. Either way, sort it out first rather than starting and hoping.

And one more thing I would want said to me. If you are not going regularly, this is not the thing to reach for to fix that. I would not want you buying a kit hoping it will sort out something that has been going on for months.

Being regular is its own piece of work and it deserves more than a single day. It usually comes back to the ordinary things. What you are eating and how much water goes with it. How much you move. How much stress you are carrying, and whether you ever properly slow down. It is all very ordinary, and it matters more than any kit does.

If it has been going on a long time, take it to a doctor or to a practitioner who can look at you properly. Knowing what is going on is worth a great deal more than adding another thing on top of it.

If you are not sure whether you are there yet, that is exactly the sort of thing to ask me. I would rather answer it than have you start and find out the hard way.

What to eat in the days before

This is the question I am asked more than any other, so here is the whole of my answer.

First, the reassuring part. You do not need to fast beforehand, and ZenCleanz say plainly that you will be fine whatever you ate the day before. So treat all of this as making the day easier on yourself, not as a rule you have broken if you have a normal dinner the night before.

For the two or three days before, simpler and softer is the whole of it.

What I aim for

• •Soups and broths
• •Steamed or roasted vegetables, rather than a big raw salad
• •Fruit
• •Rice, oats, anything plain and easy

What I leave out

• •Meat, which is the one I would drop first
• •Anything fried, and anything very rich or heavy
• •Alcohol and coffee, from a couple of days out
• •Large meals late at night

If you already eat a lot of raw food, go gentler rather than stricter. Warm and soft is the direction here, not cold and virtuous.

The point of all of it is that your digestion is already settled by the time the day starts, rather than being asked to settle and do the day at once.

Make the house somewhere you want to be

The practical half is that once you have started, you do not want to need anything. Do the shopping beforehand rather than on the day, and have the food in for either side of it, the broths and the soft things, so you are not standing in a supermarket working out what you are allowed. Have a jar with a lid you can shake properly.

The other half is the one I would not skip. Clean the place before rather than during, partly so you are not spending the day's energy on it and partly because nobody wants to be scrubbing a bathroom in the middle of all this. Then make it somewhere you would like to spend two days. Fresh flowers if you love them. Clean sheets. Something nice for the bath if you have one. Somewhere quiet you can lie down without moving anything first.

None of that is required and all of it helps. It is much easier to sink into a day like this when the house is already looking after you.

If you have children, this is the piece to arrange early rather than leave until the last minute. Mothering does not pause for a cleanse, so whatever help you can ask for, for the day itself and the morning after, ask for it. A day like this is far easier when somebody else is holding the ordinary things for a while.

What a day on ZenCleanz ONE is like

You will be full rather than hungry

This is the thing that surprises people most, and it is the part I like best about this one. It is not a water fast. The sachets are fermented fruit and vegetable powders and fibre, so what is in the glass is thick, and closer to something you have eaten than something you have drunk. Four litres of that across a day is a good deal of food to get through, which is why hunger is not really what you are up against. I would far rather be full than empty on a day like this.

By the evening it can tip the other way, and getting the last of them down is the part women write to me about most. It is worth knowing that ZenCleanz build for that: if you are too full to finish, they ask for five or six sachets and the Fiber Crystals on the day itself, and the rest the following morning. Slowing down and spacing them out is the instruction, not stopping.

Set an alarm, even on a slow day

This is a day for being out of time as much as you can manage. No clock watching, nothing to be anywhere for, nothing in the diary except slowing right down. The one part that still has to run on time is the intervals, because things need taking regularly whether you are watching the clock or not, and I would not do a day like this without an alarm going. Set them all the night before if you can, so the only thinking left to do is picking up the next glass.

Read the manual so you have what you need

Reading it beforehand is less about the order of things and more about having everything in front of you. Scrambling to work something out halfway through means missing an interval, and missing one puts the rest of the day back. You want to know before you open anything whether you need a jar with a lid, a measure, a particular glass, and that is true of any cleanse rather than just this one. ZenCleanz also update and improve their materials often enough that anything I listed here would be out of date before your box arrived, so read theirs rather than mine.

The Ambrosia one, which people really do get wrong

There are three bottles of Ambrosia and they are not one-bottle-per-go. Each one is meant to be split across several doses, and drinking a whole one in one go is the mistake I hear about most. Read that section twice before you open anything.

Stay home

There are two days to think about here, and they want you at home for different reasons. On the day you are taking everything, there is something to mix and drink every half hour or so, through three stretches of the morning, afternoon and evening. Doing that around meetings or at a desk means either carrying the whole kit about with you or losing track of it, and I would not try either. The day after is the release, and that one is simpler: you want your own bathroom, and not to be working out where the nearest one is.

Emotions can come up

When I slow right down and stop reaching for food as a way of managing myself, things I have been carrying tend to surface. Irritability, mostly, in my case. Some grief. I do have a way of understanding that, and it is the same one this whole range is built on: Chinese medicine has always held the body and the emotions to be one thing rather than two, and the five element framework the kits are ordered around comes straight out of that tradition. Whether you hold with it or not, something does tend to come up. Setting an intention at the start helped me meet it rather than fight it, and so did having nowhere to be. That is the part I did not expect the first time, and it is the reason I am so firm about clearing the day. It is hard to meet any of that when there are people needing you through it.

What to do between the drinks

The gaps are not dead time, and this is the part I would protect if I could only protect one thing. ZenCleanz ask for belly massage through the day and they are not casual about it: lie on your back with your knees bent so everything softens, then work in slow circles with your fist, giving time to wherever feels sore or tight. They suggest short walks as well, light rather than exercise, and working with your breath when the day feels like a lot. Beyond that it is a warm bath, a nap, a heat pack on your middle, your own bed and your own kettle and nothing to be sharp for. Having your own comforts around you is most of what makes it a good day rather than one to be endured.

Coming off ZenCleanz ONE & what to eat afterwards

ZenCleanz ask you to stay on liquids for a few days afterwards rather than only the day after, which is more than most people expect and more than most people do. Thin broths, chicken or vegetable, a miso, a weak herbal tea, a green juice with nothing sweet in it. What they ask you to leave out is anything with fibre, fat or sugar, including the natural kinds, so no carrot or beetroot juice, no honey, no smoothies.

Two of those are worth making rather than buying, because shop bought tends to be saltier and richer than you want here. A stock of celery, carrot, onion and whatever herbs are about, barely salted, simmered and then strained so it stays thin. And a juice of cucumber, celery, greens and lemon, with ginger if you like it.

When you break it, keep the portions small and the food simple. Steamed vegetables with no oil on them are about the best thing going. Vegetable soup, oatmeal, baked sweet potato. What I would leave for later is meat, heavy fats and nut butters, dairy, anything sweetened, raw or heavy meals, packaged food, and a full sized meal on that first day.

Their instructions stop at starting light, and they put no day on when anything in particular comes back, so the rest is how I would do it rather than a rule. Eggs after a couple of days of light eating, if your digestion feels calm. Chickpeas and other legumes around the same point, carefully and in small amounts, because they ask a fair bit of a gut that has been resting. Chicken after a few days, starting with a broth or something very plainly cooked. Beef and steak later still, once digestion has been steady for several days, because meat asks more time of you than anything else.

One thing at a time, portions smaller than you would normally serve yourself, and a day between each so you can tell what agrees with you. Build it back up slowly rather than all at once, and go gentler than you think you need to.

Keep everything warm through that week, food and drink both, and nothing straight out of the fridge. Your appetite will have shifted by then, which makes it a natural moment to change something about how you eat if you have been meaning to.

It is not only food. Keep the belly massage and the short walks going for a few days yet. If you had been thinking about a colonic or an enema, ZenCleanz ask you to leave it until afterwards rather than during. And they are firm about carrying on with the Ambrosia through all of it, which is sold on its own as well as inside the kit.

Rushing any of this is the most common way to get less out of the whole thing, and it is the part with no sachet and no timer to remind you.

Time it with your cycle

I choose my follicular phase, when energy is naturally rising and a day like this sits more comfortably inside it. In my luteal phase my body wants warmth and food and rest, and asking it to go without in that window has never gone well for me. If the phases are new to you, the Cleveland Clinic's plain description of the cycle is a good place to start, and how to track your cycle is how you work out where you are in yours. That one starts with what day one really is, which is the part almost none of us were ever taught, and it has a way of handing your notes to an AI tool if you would rather not do the counting yourself.

I learned that the hard way, years ago, working twelve hour days on almost no food and calling it discipline. My body did not thank me for it.

This is the piece almost nobody mentions, because almost nobody writing about cleanses is writing for a cyclical body. Most of what exists was built around a twenty four hour rhythm rather than a twenty eight day one, and then handed to women unchanged. If you do nothing else differently, do this.

The other thing I would say is that the kit is not the whole of it. The cleared diary, the simple food, the early night, that is the part I would keep if I could only keep one thing, and none of it is for sale.

Who I would steer away from ZenCleanz ONE

ZenCleanz name one outright: if you have kidney trouble of any kind, this is not for you. The day asks you to drink a great deal of water, and that is the reason. Please take that one seriously.

Please also talk to your doctor first if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to conceive, taking any medication, or living with a diagnosed condition.

Also, and I mean this sincerely: if you have any history of disordered eating, a day of no ordinary food is not a neutral thing for every body. I would far rather you were honest with someone qualified than brave on your own. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation run a national helpline on 1800 33 4673. Wherever you are reading from, Find a Helpline will give you the equivalent where you live.

If you are unwell right now, this is not the day for it.

Where to go next

• •How the three kits compare, if you have worked out that you want one and are choosing between them
• •My week with the Rainbow kit, which is the seven day one rather than this
• •What to ask yourself before any cleanse, which is free and has nothing to sell you
• •How to track your cycle, so you know which week you are in before you book anything
• •For Your Everyday, for the kitchen, home and body things I keep on hand

And if something here has not answered your question, message me on Instagram. I am @bloomwithjodie_ and I answer these myself.

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