"Cabbage Soup Diet"

Review

The Cabbage Soup Diet is based on a fat-burning soup that contains negligible calories. The regimen relies on strange food combinations that force you to nearly starve yourself each day. Dieters are allowed all the water and cabbage soup they want, plus a very restricted set of other foods. The basics of the plan:

Recipe for the cabbage soup:

• 10 cups of water
• 1 package Lipton soup mix
• 1 can V8 juice or tomato juice
• 2 cubes of chicken bouillon
• 5 large green onions
• 2 green peppers
• 2 cans of crushed tomatoes
• 4 carrots
• 1 cup of sliced or canned mushrooms
• 1 celery bunch chopped
• 1/2 head of green cabbage
• salt and pepper to taste

Day 1- Cabbage Soup plus as much fruit as you like, excluding bananas.
Day 2- CS plus vegetables including a potato with a little butter.
Day 3- CS soup plus fruit and vegetables, excluding potatoes and bananas.
Day 4- CS plus up to eight bananas and unlimited skim milk.
Day 5- CS plus up to 20 ounces of beef and up to six tomatoes.
Day 6- CS plus as much beef and vegetables as you want (no potatoes).
Day 7- CS plus brown rice, vegetables (no potatoes) and unsweetened fruit juice.

A running myth suggests that the Cabbage Soup Diet originated at any number of American hospitals, but thus far none have claimed it as their own. It probably started at Sacred Heart Hospital in Brussels, Belgium as a way for seriously obese patients to lose some quick weight before surgery.

As far as for the average overweight person, the Cabbage Soup Diet is totally unrealistic if one is interested in more than very short-term weight loss. It is hard to imagine following the cabbage soup diet for an extended period of time. How fast is that temporary weight loss going to stick? The Cabbage Soup Diet is not a nutritionally sound plan and certainly not one to live on. If you can't live on it, there doesn't seem much point in putting yourself back on the rollercoaster of weight loss frustration and heartache.

The reality of popular diet products and programs such as the Cabbage Soup Diet is that few work in the long term because they don't focus on the sustainable strategies of balanced nutrition, exercise and personal motivation.