The Cabbage Soup Diet plan offers a 10-pound weight loss in one week, and dieters are restricted to one week at a time on the plan. If they want to lose more, just wait awhile before commencing another week on this super-low-calorie diet.
The Cabbage Soup Diet: What to eat
The 7-day Cabbage Soup Diet plan allows you to eat all you can — as long as you stick to the short list of allowed foods on alternate days, with two daily bowls of fat-free cabbage soup. Other foods that must be eaten including fruit, vegetables, skim milk, and meat. Remember also to drink lots of water and try avoid alcohol.
Here is a sample Cabbage Soup Diet plan:
Day 1: Cabbage soup and all the fruit except bananas. Drink unsweetened tea, black coffee, cranberry juice or water.
Day 2: Cabbage soup, all the low-calorie vegetables (except beans, peas, or corn), and a baked potato with butter.
Day 3: Cabbage soup and a mixture of the above fruit and vegetables.
Day 4: Cabbage soup, up to eight bananas, and two glasses of skim milk.
Day 5: Cabbage soup, up to 20 ounces of beef, chicken or fish, up to six fresh tomatoes, and at least 6-8 glasses of water.
Day 6: Cabbage soup, up to 3 beef steaks, and unlimited vegetables.
Day 7: Cabbage soup, up to 2 cups of brown
rice, unsweetened fruit juices, and unlimited vegetables.
The recipe for the cabbage soup varies a little among different versions of the diet. But it always includes cabbage and low-calorie vegetables such as onions and tomatoes, and is flavored with onion soup mix, bouillon, and tomato juice.
Typical recipe:
1 package dry onion soup mix
2 bouillon cubes, chicken or beef
1 celery stick, diced
1/2 head green cabbage, diced
3 carrots, sliced
2 bell peppers, sliced
6 large green onions, or 1 large onion, diced
2 cans of tomatoes, diced or whole
Cooking spray
Salt, pepper, parsley, garlic powder, soy sauce to taste (any other seasoning)
Spray a large pot with cooking spray and saute all vegetables except cabbage and tomatoes until tender. Add cabbage and about 12 cups of water. Toss in bouillon cubes, soup mix, and seasonings. Cook until soup reaches desired tenderness; add tomatoes.
Dieters, attention; you may encounter some gastrointestinal discomfort from the highly sulfurous cabbage and other gassy vegetables.
The Cabbage Soup Diet: How does it work
The Cabbage Soup Diet is essentially a modified fast, containing so few calories that dieters will lose weight rapidly during the week-long regimen. There is nothing magical about cabbage or cabbage soup that fosters weight loss. It’s the low-calorie nature of the diet plan that does the trick.
Dieters may very well lose the promised 10-15 pounds, but the problem is that most of the weight lost will be primarily from fluids, not fat, and will return once the dieter resumes eating normally.
The Cabbage Soup Diet: Experts view
“It is a monotonous, short-term fix, severely lacking in nutrients, which will result in a weight loss that is primarily water and not the essential fat loss that is so important to improving health,” says Connie Diekman, MEd, RD, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.
Diekman worries that diets like the Cabbage Soup Diet perpetuate feelings of failure for most dieters.
“People who go on and off diets get so discouraged when they lose weight only to gain it back, and these feelings make so many people think that diets don’t work,” she says.
As a registered dietitian, she urges dieters to find another plan that is balanced, varied, and includes regular physical activity. The only positive aspect of the Cabbage Soup Diet plan is that it may get people to eat more vegetables, Diekman says.
If you get the go-ahead, head to the grocery store, buy all the ingredients for the soup, stock up on fruit, vegetables, skim milk, fish, chicken, or meat – and plan on staying home. Consuming mass quantities of cabbage soup may cause you to be too gassy to go out in public.
You will lose weight on the Cabbage Soup Diet, but you can plan on seeing those pounds return. This diet plan that is nothing more than a quick fix that does nothing to help change the behaviors that lead to weight gain.

cabbage soup diet
The Cabbage Soup Diet plan offers a 10-pound weight loss in one week, and dieters are restricted to one week at a time on the plan. If they want to lose more, just wait awhile before commencing another week on this super-low-calorie diet.
The Cabbage Soup Diet: What to eat
The 7-day Cabbage Soup Diet plan allows you to eat all you can — as long as you stick to the short list of allowed foods on alternate days, with two daily bowls of fat-free cabbage soup. Other foods that must be eaten including fruit, vegetables, skim milk, and meat. Remember also to drink lots of water and try avoid alcohol.
Here is a sample Cabbage Soup Diet plan: Read more