Cabbage Soup Diet Review

What Is The Cabbage Soup Diet?

The Cabbage Soup Diet is considered by many to be a radical fad diet, and has taken a lot of criticism from the dieting community in general, in spite of it’s seeming popularity. This is a low calorie (and everything else) diet that operates on a 7 day schedule, and promises that you can lose 10 pounds or more in the period of 7 days. This is not a long term diet so doesn’t require a whole lot of determination or commitment. One of the big selling points to this diet is that you are allowed to eat as much as you want, as long as it is the cabbage soup.

Who is The Author Of The Cabbage Soup Diet

Getting it’s start in the early 80′s no one really knows the exact origin of the diet. It has had many names in the past, like The TJ Miracle Soup Diet , The Sacred Heart Diet, Military Cabbage Soup, and The Russian Peasant Diet . All these names presumably to lend credence to the diet, as we mentioned earlier. There are many versions of this diet on the internet attempting to claim association to larger corporations through name association.

Overview of the Cabbage Soup Diet Exercise Plan

So far we haven’t found a version of this plan that pushes or exhorts any type of exercise plan, though many of them do assert that exercise would be helpful to speed up the fat loss process. With the low protein levels recommended by this diet it probably wouldn’t be too advisable, too, as many people who have used this diet have reported light headed feelings and dizziness.

Overview of The Cabbage Soup Diet Nutrition Plan

The Cabbage Soup Diet has many variations, many of which include a meat or some form of protein, in the soup, Due to the bland nature of the diet, there have been many variations of the recipes on the internet, and often people will add other flavorings, or even salt, and this is one of the reasons that many physicians do not recommend this diet.

Basic Cabbage Soup 7 day plan:

1. Cabbage soup, and as much fruit as you wish excluding bananas.
2. Cabbage soup, fresh vegetables, and a baked potato with a little butter.
3. Cabbage soup, fresh veggies, and fruits. This excludes bananas and the baked potato.
4. Cabbage soup,and as many bananas as you would like up to 8. You can also have as much skim milk on this day as you want.
5. Cabbage soup,and up to 10 oz. of beef of some type, ans as many as 6 tomatoes.
6. Cabbage soup and as much beef and veggies as you would like., but no potatoes.
7. Cabbage soup, brown rice, veggies, and unsweetened fruit juice, no potatoes today either.

During the duration of the diet plenty of water is recommended, and we’ll give you a pretty good recipe at the end of this article.

There are often very few pros and more cons to a fad diet and this is the case with this one too. Due to the low proteins consumed during this program protein shakes and the like are often recommended, and as we mentioned earlier, there is the dizziness and light headed feeling that goes along with the low protein diets. Doctors recommend against this diet due to this and the often high sodium content that often goes with it. Flatulence (gassy) has also been reported to go along with the cabbage soup diet.

Our Conclusion About The Cabbage Soup Diet

Some of the newer variations on this diet have taken the low protein detail of this diet into consideration, and made adjustments. Others have added bullion, and other flavorings to improve on the soup. The soup would make an outstanding low calorie filler though, to go in with other diets. And while this diet make cause you to lose a lot of weight in a short time, most of this will be water weight according to experts. This isn’t one of our top choices, but if the idea appeals to you, here is a pretty good cabbage soup recipe.

Cabbage Soup Diet Recipe

• 6 large green onions. (Spring onions)
• 2 Green Bell Peppers.
• 1 or 2 cans (to taste) either whole or dices tomatoes.
• 3 carrots.
• 10 oz. can of mushrooms.
• 1 Bunch celery
• Cabbage, half head.
• 1 package of Lipton (or any other brand,) soup mix.
• 2 cubes beef bullion, (optional.)
• 48 oz. Can V-8 Juice.
• Seasoning to taste, remember, no salt.

Cut up green onions and saute in pan using cooking spray until clear, about 4-5 minutes. Clean and cutup the bell pepper, and add it to the onions. After removing any bad leaves, chop cabbage into bite sized pieces then add in the cabbage to the mixture. Clean and cut carrots and celery into bite sized pieces, and add them, the mushrooms, and tomatoes.

Time to spice it up, add in the soup, any flavor you like, or the beef bullion cubes. Any flavoring you would like is fair game here, just be cautious about the salt. Now add in the V-8 juice, and around 6 to 8 cups of water, make sure the vegetables are completely covered. Put a lid on the pot and let it simmer until the veggies have all cooked, usually around 2 hours or so.