Jump start your weight loss with the Cabbage Soup Diet!

cabbage by Nick Saltmarsh on flickr.com

The cabbage soup diet is a very popular choice for losing weight quickly. Though it is not a long term solution, it can help you lose pounds rapidly in time for a special occasion or event.  The diet is extremely restrictive and the only way to get the results promised is to follow the diet rules rigidly.

Here is the suggested way to follow the diet:

Day 1:  On this day, you are allowed to consume fruit. There is no restriction upon the amount of fruit that you eat. The only restriction is that you CANNOT eat bananas. All other fruits are fine.  On this day, you eat fruit and soup only.  For drinks, you are allowed water, unsweetened tea, and cranberry juice (be wary of the added sugar in most brands.)

Day 2:  You are allowed to have vegetables on this day. You are actually allowed to consume as much as you want and they can be raw or cooked.  Though you can eat any that you want, the general recommendations are to choose green, leafy vegetables and stay away from beans, peas, and corn.  And of course, you can have all the soup that you want and you should eat as much of this as possible. If you want, you can reward yourself at dinner and have a baked potato with butter. You are also allowed water and unsweetened tea this day.

Day 3:  This day combines day one and day two: you can have as much fruit and vegetables as you want throughout the day. Make sure to consume lots of soup. However, on this day, you need to skip the baked potato.

Day 4: This is a day when bananas are allowed. You can have up to 8 bananas throughout the day. You are also allowed skim milk (make certain it is skim and not something else). You can have as much of the milk as you want through the day. And as always, eat as much soup as you want.

Day 5:  On this day, you are meant to consume beef and tomatoes. The recommendation is to eat 10 to 20 ounces of beef and up to 6 fresh tomatoes.  It is important to drink at least 6-8 glasses of water in order to wash out the uric acid from your system.  If you do not want to have beef, you may substitute it with chicken, boiled or baked, as long as there is no skin on it. You can also substitute beef for broiled fish, but should you choose that, you cannot substitute fish for beef again on day 6.  Make sure to eat your soup at least once during the day.

Day 6: This day is devoted to beef and vegetables. You can have unlimited quantities of both throughout the day, as well as eating the soup. The only restriction is that cannot have baked potato on this day. It is recommended again that you choose green leafy vegetables and eat them with the beef.  Make sure to drink lots of water or unsweetened tea.

Day 7: The final day of the diet is devoted to eating brown rice, unsweetened fruit juice, and vegetables. There is no limit to the amount of these things that you eat. Just make sure to eat your soup throughout the day as well.

The diet is restrictive and the only way to make sure you get the impressive results you are looking for is to follow it exactly. Cheating on this diet would be a disaster.  The restrictions generally only refer to types of food, not amounts, so you should not really go hungry while following this plan.  The key, of course, is to eat lots of soup along with the other things allowed on each day.  For the people that love this particular diet, the motto seems to be “the more cabbage soup, the better”, so eat lots.

cabbage and caterpillar net_efekt on flickr.com

The Cabbage Soup Diet.

Looking for a quick way to lose weight in the shortest amount of time? The popular cabbage soup diet may be exactly what you are seeking.  This diet is based on eating a fat-burning soup that has little or no true calories. The food choices are a strange and bizarre mix of things.  On this particular diet, you are allowed unlimited quanities of water, cabbage soup, and extremely specific daily foods, such as vegetables or fruit. No other foods are allowed.

The basic principle behind the diet is that eating cabbage soup will allow you to lose a lot of weight.  In fact, the claim is that the more of the soup that you actually eat, the more weight you will drop over the course of the diet.   This diet needs to be taken with a small grain of salt: Cabbage is not a magical food. It will not miraculously melt away all of your fat. However, you will lose weight on this diet. Since you have zeroed in on only one specific type of food and removed almost everything else from your eating plan, you are almost guaranteed to drop some of the pounds you are attempting to shed.

Before beginning this diet or any diet really, you should consult your doctor to make sure that you are healthy enough for it. This one in particular should have doctor approval as you are forcing your body into a starving position for a period of time. Losing a few extra pounds quickly is not worth risking your health over. There are safer, if slower, ways to accomplish that.  If your doctor agrees, you can begin the diet. Keep in mind though; this is NOT a long term diet plan. The cabbage soup diet has been designed to only be followed for 7 days. After that, you are risking your health and you may find that forcing your body into a starving position will backfire on you.  When you are on the diet, you are allowed to eat as much as you want of very specific foods, and you can eat whenever you want to eat.  The group of foods that you can choose from, aside from cabbage soup, is exceptionally small.

You can and will lose weight on this diet. The amounts will differ depending on the person but testimonials put the top amounts near 10 pounds in a week.  This is a perfect diet for losing a few pounds very fast. And, although you will not officially go hungry due to the fact that you can eat as much soup whenever you want, you should probably take the time to truly consider how much soup you can actually eat for a week.  It is important that you stop following this diet plan after 7 days. However, if you want to go on it again, you can simply wait for 2 weeks and then go back on it.  For many people, this is not a sustainable way to keep off pounds. This diet is alright for those infrequent times when you really want to lose a few pounds before an important occasion or event, but every few weeks will not be good for the vast majority of the population.

In short, this is an effective 7 day diet. You are pretty much guaranteed to lose weight if you follow it to the letter. Remember to get a doctors approval before starting it to assure no bad side effects. It is also critical to remember that this is NOT a long term diet plan. It was only designed for 7 days at a time and anything longer than that risks your health.