Popular Diets
The Cabbage Soup Diet
The Cabbage Soup Diet is a radical weight loss program that focuses on eating a lot of low-calorie cabbage soup for seven days...
The Cabbage Soup Diet
Cabbage Soup Diet Book
Read a book before starting this diet.
It is an example of an unproven, unscientific fad diet, designed for short-term weight-loss without requiring any long-term commitment. Its relative success has lead to several similar diets.
Proponents claim that cabbage soup dieters can lose 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of weight in a week. Perhaps most of the weight loss is water; most nutritionists feel that it is almost impossible to lose so much fat within a week. This has lent credence to claims that much of the lost weight is merely water. While the origins of this diet are unknown, it first became popular in the 1980s.
Cabbage Soup
This cabbage soup looks good, but not for seven days.
One reason for this diet’s popularity is its simplicity. Dieters don’t have to deal with counting calories or points, and don’t need to weigh out portions carefully. They may only drink water and unsweetened fruit juice on the days when fruit is allowed. They are allowed as much cabbage soup as they want. Here is a typical version of the Cabbage Soup Diet:
* Day 1 - Cabbage soup plus as much fruit as you like, excluding bananas* Day 2 - Cabbage soup plus vegetables that include a baked potato with a little butter
* Day 3 - Cabbage soup plus fruit and vegetables but no potatoes or bananas
* Day 4 - Cabbage soup plus up to eight bananas and unlimited skimmed milk
* Day 5 - Cabbage soup plus up to 20 ounces of beef and up to six tomatoes (You probably won’t need a scale to measure out less than 20 ounces of beef.)
* Day 6 - Cabbage soup plus as much beef and vegetables (excluding potatoes) as you like
* Day 7 - Cabbage soup plus brown rice, vegetables (excluding potatoes), and unsweetened fruit juice
Many medical professionals and others are critical of this diet. We have already suggested that the weight lost is mostly water that will be regained rapidly after the week. Others problems include the cabbage soup’s high sodium content and the extreme lack of protein during several days. It comes as no surprise that many people report feeling weak and light-headed during the course of the diet. The cabbage soup is usually quite bland. On a personal note I wish I had my grandmother’s recipe. Hers was hardly a diet soup and we didn’t eat it seven days a week, but it was far from bland. Another problem is the reaction of many dieters to cabbage. Some proponents lower the soup’s sodium content and add dairy and protein shakes to deal with some of these criticisms.