The Cabbage Soup Diet is a quick weight loss plan. You eat lots of cabbage soup for a week.
Some people claim you can lose up to 10 pounds in a week on this diet. However, many experts say it’s not a healthy or lasting way to lose weight.
This article looks at the Cabbage Soup Diet and how well it works.
What’s the Cabbage Soup Diet?
The Cabbage Soup Diet is a quick way to lose weight. People who follow it say you can shed up to 10 pounds in just seven days.
Here’s how it works: for a week, you eat mostly homemade cabbage soup. And, every day, you can also have a small amount of other foods like skim milk, fruits, or veggies.
This diet is meant to be short-term, lasting no more than seven days. It’s like a kickstart to a longer diet plan.
Some folks call it the Sacred Heart Hospital Diet or the Mayo Clinic Diet, thinking it was made for heart patients before surgery. But those hospitals say that’s not true.
It’s not clear where this diet came from, but it got popular in the 1980s and has stuck around since then.
Here are the simple steps for the Cabbage Soup Diet:
Step 1: Make Cabbage Soup
The main part of this diet is cabbage soup. You need to prepare a big batch of this soup to eat throughout the week. The exact ingredients can vary, but here’s a basic recipe:
Cabbage Soup Recipe
Ingredients:
- 2 large onions
- 2 green peppers
- 2 cans of tomatoes
- 1 bunch of celery
- 1 head of cabbage
- 3 carrots
- 1 package of mushrooms
- 1–2 bouillon cubes (optional)
- 6–8 cups of water or vegetable cocktail (like V8)
Directions:
- Cut all the veggies into small pieces.
- In a large pot, cook the onions with a bit of oil.
- Add the rest of the vegetables, pour in water or vegetable cocktail, and add bouillon cubes or seasonings if you like.
- Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for about 30-45 minutes until the veggies are soft.
You can add salt, pepper, hot sauce, or other spices to flavor the soup. You can also include non-starchy veggies like spinach or green beans.
Step 2: Follow the Diet Rules
While on this diet, you can eat as much cabbage soup as you want throughout the day, especially during your main meals.
Here are the diet rules for each day:
- Day 1: Eat as much cabbage soup as you want and have fruits, but not bananas.
- Day 2: Stick to soup and veggies. Focus on raw or cooked leafy greens. Avoid peas, corn, and beans. You can also have one baked potato with a bit of butter or oil.
- Day 3: Enjoy fruits and veggies along with the soup, but no baked potato and no bananas.
- Day 4: Eat unlimited bananas, skim milk, and cabbage soup.
- Day 5: You can have 10-20 ounces of beef (you can choose chicken or fish instead) and up to six fresh tomatoes. Drink plenty of water.
- Day 6: Focus on the soup, beef (or fish), and veggies. Skip the baked potato and aim for leafy greens.
- Day 7: You can eat vegetables, brown rice, and unlimited fruit juice, but avoid added sugar.
Remember, it’s not recommended to follow this diet for more than seven days at a time. However, you can do it again if you wait at least two weeks before starting it over. And don’t forget to take a daily multivitamin to make sure you get all the needed nutrients.
Does the Cabbage Soup Diet Help with Weight Loss?
The Cabbage Soup Diet hasn’t been studied much, so we can’t say for sure if it really works.
However, because it’s super low in calories, it’s likely to make you lose weight. You can eat as much cabbage soup and a few other foods as you like on this diet, but they’re so low in calories that it’d be hard to eat enough to keep your weight the same.
But here’s the catch: most of the weight you lose will likely come back once you stop the diet. When you seriously cut your calorie intake or drop a lot of weight, your body reacts by slowing down how many calories it burns each day. This slowdown can make it tough to keep the weight off in the long run.
On the bright side, very-low-calorie diets can have some benefits. Studies show that when overweight people follow these diets for a few weeks with a doctor’s help, they can see short-term improvements in weight loss and their health.
Some studies even suggest that very-low-calorie diets can temporarily improve insulin resistance, even though they don’t lead to big changes in body fat.
Another good thing about the Cabbage Soup Diet is that you won’t go hungry. You can eat as much of the allowed foods as you want each day. Plus, the diet includes lots of fruits and veggies, which are low in calories and high in fiber.
What’s more, this diet is easy on the wallet. Unlike other diets that make you buy pricey supplements or books, the Cabbage Soup Diet only asks you to get affordable ingredients for the soup and a few basic foods.
Who Should and Shouldn’t Try the Cabbage Soup Diet for Weight Loss?
The cabbage soup diet is a short-term fix for losing weight quickly, lasting only a week. It’s not meant for long-term use.
After the week is over, you can still enjoy some of the recipes you like as part of a regular, balanced diet. This diet is also budget-friendly because it uses everyday foods, especially lots of cabbage.
This diet works best for folks who enjoy the foods allowed on the diet. Some people quit because they don’t like the taste of the soup. If you need someone to help you stick to a diet, this might not be for you.
The cabbage soup diet is not suitable for people with a lot of weight to lose. It’s also not for those with chronic illnesses like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, as they have specific dietary requirements that may not be met with the limited calories and food options of this diet.
Cabbage Soup Diet: What to Eat and What to Avoid
On the cabbage soup diet, you can eat these foods and drinks:
- Lots of cabbage every day
- Other veggies (cooked or raw) every day, except for potatoes
- Apples (only on day 3)
- Berries (only on day 3)
- Brown rice (only on day 7)
- Beef (only on day 6)
- Sugar-free juice (only on day 7)
- Skim milk (only on day 4)
However, you can only have these foods on specific days, as shown in the meal plan below. Avoid these foods:
- Bananas (except on day 4)
- Potatoes
- Chicken
- Turkey
- Fish
- Eggs
- Dairy products with whole or reduced fat
Anything not mentioned in the diet plan is not allowed on the cabbage soup diet.
Possible Issues
While the Cabbage Soup Diet might help you drop some weight, it comes with its own problems.
One major issue is that you can only stick to this diet for a week, which isn’t long enough to see significant weight loss. In the first week of a low-calorie diet, only about one-third of the weight you lose is actually fat. The rest is water weight and muscle loss.
The water weight comes from your body’s quick energy reserves, and when you don’t eat enough, your body uses up these stores and loses the extra water. But as soon as you go back to eating normally, your body stores water again, even if you stick to a healthy diet.
Another downside is that the Cabbage Soup Diet lacks many essential nutrients. It doesn’t give you enough vitamins and minerals and doesn’t provide a good source of protein on most days. Without sufficient protein, you might lose muscle during the diet.
Also, the diet is pretty boring, which can make it tough to stick to for a whole week. Plus, you need to cook large batches of cabbage soup often, which can be a hassle for some people.
