Cabbage soup diet reviews

Cabbage soup diet is one of those diets that claim to help you kick-start your weight loss plan or lose weight quickly and easily. This article reviews this diet and  its overall effectiveness as part of a weight loss program. We will discuss pros and cons of the cabbage soup diet, and suggest helpful hints on how to modify it for better and healthier outcome.

The Basics:

The Cabbage Soup Diet is low-fat and high in fiber. It requires you to eat cabbage soup for seven days with addition of certain other foods during every day of the diet. There is no portion restriction or calorie count. The cost of this diet is very low and anyone can afford it.

 You will not eat all required food groups every day, however the foods you eat are high fiber and high in antioxidants, which is refreshing in comparison to some other diets.

The 7-Day Plan

The seven-day plan for the Cabbage Soup diet goes as follows:

    
• Day one – you can eat all the soup and fruit you want (recipe follows)
• Day two – eat all the soup and vegetables you want. Do not eat fruit today. You can have a baked potato with butter at dinner
• Day three - eat all the soup, fruit and vegetables you want (no baked potato though).
• Day four – enjoy bananas and skim milk along with your soup
• Day five – consume up to six fresh tomatoes and 10-20 ounces of beef. Make sure to drink plenty of water. Have soup at least once today. Baked chicken without skin is an acceptable substitute for beef.
• Day Six: Eat as much beef and vegetables (or fish and vegetables) as you want (no potato again). Have soup once.  
• Day Seven: Have your soup once along with brown rice, vegetables and fruit juice.

It’s strongly suggested that you take a good multivitamin every day throughout this week.

How to make cabbage soup? Follow this simple recipe...

Recipe for Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

• 6 green onions chopped
• 2 green peppers chopped
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes
• 3 carrots chopped
• 1/2 lbs white mushrooms
• 1 bunch of celery, chopped
• half a head of cabbage, chopped
• 1 Lipton soup mix
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 1 48oz can tomato juice
• 1-2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp. each minced garlic, pepper, parsley and onion powder
• 10 cups water

Directions:

1. Lightly sauté the vegetables in a little extra virgin olive oil.
2. Move the vegetables into a large stock pot and add all the other ingredients. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

What Doctors Say:

There has been no clinical evidence that suggests the Cabbage Soup Diet is useful other than perhaps as a way to “kick off” a lifestyle change. You can certainly try it if your physician doesn’t object, but it’s not the healthiest option.

Some doctors call the Cabbage Soup Diet a “fad” diet that’s intended for fast weight loss. Most of what a person looses is water weight. Like any crash diet, it’s very likely that individuals who use the diet will re-gain that weight unless they continue to follow an exercise and diet plan afterward.

Cabbage soup diet review:

With small modifications, this diet has a great potential.

Pros:

• Cheap price – no requirement to buy any special nutritional bars of meals
• Requires very little time for planning or cooking
• Easy to adopt – no portion control, no calories
• Relatively healthy: cleansing elimination diet high in fiber and allowing no artificial sweeteners, alcohol, or white sugar and flour. Healthier than a Standard American diet.

It’s not as dangerous as some people may think since it includes a lot of fruit and vegetables, yet there are concerns associated with the cabbage soup diet that need to be considered if you are adopting it for more than a week and worried about your long-term health.

Cons:

1. This diet may be hard to stick to for some people
   • Most North Americans are not passionate about cabbage
   • It’s hard to eat the same soup day in and day out
   • It’s hard to “enjoy bananas and skim milk along with your soup”
2. Eating favorite foods = lack of variety of nutrients
   • There is usually a short list of “fruit and vegetables you like” and there are dozens vitamins and minerals your body need to function. Likely, some of them will be under-represented in those fruit and veggies that you could tolerate as a part of this diet.
   • Eating vegetables without oils reduces absorption of some oil-soluble vitamins, for example vitamin A. This is a reason why salad with olive oil is better than just plain greens and carrots.
3. You must get enough essential fats in your diet. This diet doesn’t provide enough.
4. This diet is very low in complex carbs. Complex carbs are your source of energy low in calories. There is no reason why you shouldn’t eat your yams or brown rice every day and keep your energy high.
5. There is no portion control or calorie count. It’s easy to overeat favorite fruit and veggies and consume more calories that you spent. The result is no weight loss.
6. After severe lack of calories, your body goes into ‘starvation mode’ where weight loss becomes harder and harder. There is no calorie target and no calorie measurement in this diet.
7. After severe lack of calories imposed by the diet, it’s easy to over-indulge into your favorite foods and nullify the effects of the diet, gaining all weight back.
8. You cannot be on this diet if you exercise. Your body must get enough protein for building muscle and complex carbs for energy. Instead of steady supply of these nutrients, cabbage soup diet calls for eating them one or two days a week.
9. Be careful of you are a diabetic. Fruit contain a lot of carbs.

Here are some ideas how to modify cabbage soup diet to be better for you:

1. Use a variety of cabbage soup recipes
2. Use other low-fat vegetable soup recipes, such as cream of broccoli soup and pumpkin soup. The will provide you with much-needed energy and sense of fulfillment
3. There are myriads of recipes for delicious high fiber low fat food that you may use instead. Check NutritionMD.com as an example
4. Eat one serving of grains every day ( brown rice, for example, is a base of another diet. It is perfectly fine to be used every day in moderation)
5. Restrict your fruit to one serving a day, do yourself a favor. Eating grapes, for example, can overload your diet with simple carbs that you don’t benefit from.
6. Better strategy is to calculate target calorie deficit, and approximate calories you get from the diet. Compare the two and see if you will lose any weight or not. You may be up to the grim discoveries, as I have been many times. According to the research, people underestimate amount of calories they intake by 30% on average.

   As you can see, it’s not the type of diet you should continue for a long time. It’s intended for one 7 day period ONLY. Continuing the diet beyond that point can rob your body of important nutrients.

   While most people do lose weight during that week, not everyone is successful in keeping the weight off. Realistically slow and steady weight loss is far healthier and easier to maintain. However, if you’re looking to drop a few pounds for a special occasion quickly, the Cabbage Soup Diet may be your answer.
   
   
   

   

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