Diet A-Z: Cabbage Soup Diet - What, Why and Review

For now i have missed out B diets and jumped on to C. The only B i could think of was the blood type diet - where you eat foods thats are only meant to be for your blood type - but with no scientific evidence of it helping iv decided to avoid it, at least for now and move on to the C’s…

The Cabbage Soup Diet

This is a short term diet that is usually thought of as a fad diet. It will or should result in quick but short term weight loss. It should only be done for one week at a time (and then a couple of months off) for a special occasion/holiday. The diet allows you to have as much cabbage soup as you wish for an entire week, whilst having a limited amount of particular other foods throughout the week.

Origins

The cabbage soup diet first became mainstream around 20 years ago. Who created it is still unknown but i would like to go out on a limb and suggest it was somebody that either liked cabbage soup or could not afford much more cabbage soup and as such had it regually. This person noticed they lost weight eating it, and the cabbage soup diet was born. That is just speculation however, and it is more commonly thought to have been created by military institutes as a high fiber get-in-shape quick meal plan.

How do you go on the “Cabbage Soup diet”?

As described above, you are allowed to eat as much cabbage soup as you can stomach. Cabbage is sometimes referred to as a negative calorie food, and tap water should contain zero calories and as these are the two main ingredients you can understand why you are going to lose weight fast.

Tips

On each day of the week you are allowed a secondary food source, such as fruit or rice.

Drinks should be water only (unless you are on a fruit day, in which case you could drink pure fruit juice).

It is not a sustainable diet, you do it for a week then return or transfer onto a regular diet, such as weight watchers.

If you are feeling ill, stop the diet. You are probably not getting all the food your body needs.

If you are bored of the soup, spice it, herb it or put a little salt in it. I like pepper so used plenty.

Try vitamin tablets daily to make up for the lack in the food you eat. They may or may not work, but its worth taking them just in case.

Cabbage soup meal plans

This is a typical cabbage soup menu for the whole 7 days, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Day 1 - Cabbage soup + as much fruit as you like (but no bananas)


Day 2 - Cabbage soup + vegetables including 1 baked potato with a small amount of butter


Day 3 - Cabbage soup + fruit and vegetables excluding potatoes and bananas


Day 4 - Cabbage soup + up to eight bananas and as much skimmed milk as you want


Day 5 - Cabbage soup + 20 ounces of beef (at most) and up to six tomatoes


Day 6 - Cabbage soup + beef and vegetables (no potatoes)


Day 7 - Cabbage soup + brown rice, vegetables (no potatoes) and pure fruit juice


Review

I did this diet a long time ago and have trouble remembering it all. I do remember making a big mistake the first couple of days on it, and having nothing but cabbage soup and water. That is not right for this diet - do that and you are starving yourself.

The diet was a struggle - half way through when i would get hungry my body hated the idea of drinking more soup. But i completed it, i lost around 7 pounds and i never did it again.  7 pounds sounds good for a week diet but i will go into that in the next section.

Criticisms

A strong criticism of this diet is that most of your weight loss will be water that your body usually retains. The more liquid you drink the less you retain so after a diet of liquid you have less water and weight less. I can back this up with the fact i put back on most of the weight a couple of weeks later even though i was still eating healthily.

With a rapid diet like this you are going to lose as much muscle as you do fat and that is not a good thing, seeing as how organs such as your heart are muscle (unless you are doing a bit of exercise too).

Most people overdo the salt in the soup to make it palatable. That has other repercussions for your health.

Is it for you?

It may be worth trying if you need to lose weight quick for a good reason and you realize that it is not a sustainable diet, that when you finish you need to move on to a proper, healthy diet.  I don’t recommend yo yo diets, as i feel this one could easily become, so be aware of putting the weight back on after and do not do this diet too regularly.