Cabbage Soup Diet - Does This Cabbage Detox Really Work?

In essence the Cabbage Soup diet plan requires you to eat immense quantities of you guessed it, cabbage, and not many other cuisine.

Aside from the cabbage broth, some fruits, vegetables and sources of protein such as fish or meat in limited quantities, are comprised in the seven-day plan.

As I wish to make clear throughout this analysis, the cabbage diet causes you to reduce you calorie ingestion to almost to starvation level.

As you may be aware once you achieve starvation levels then your metabolism begins to shut down and you may even gain weight as fat takes longer to be broken down.

Therefore I was warned to only stick to the cabbage diet for a week at the most. I was pleased I adhered to that suggestion! It is not unusual for dieters to lose 10-15 pounds in one week with the cabbage diet

The cabbage diet is very easy as you can imagine. You mostly eat cabbage soup and more soup until you are bursting. There are also specific additional foods tolerated on each day of the week.

I was not permitted to drink any alcohol. The only other drinks I was permitted to take were water and unsweetened fruit juice (but be aware that fruit juice is only allowed on the "fruit day" of the week).

The cabbage diet formula is hard to maintain because although there are a range of recipes for the cabbage soup existing online and from other sources, I could not go on eat cabbage soup for the rest of my days!

In addition to my day by day eating of cabbage soup, I was permitted to eat the following on the respective day:
Day 1 - fruit (excluding bananas)
Day 2 - vegetables (including 1 jacket potato with a small amount of butter)
Day 3 - fruit and vegetables (not potatoes and bananas)
Day 4 - bananas (up to 8) and skimmed milk
Day 5 - beef (up to 20 ounces) and tomatoes (up to 6)
Day 6 - beef and vegetables (excluding potatoes)
Day 7 - brown rice, vegetables (excluding potatoes), unsweetened fruit juice

There are a lot of cabbage diet recipes on the market but the essential ingredients are onions, tinned tomatoes, green peppers, celery, carrots, and mushrooms in addition to of course, cabbage.

I did lose quite a lot of weight with the cabbage soup diet, 8lbs in a week but my physician maintained that this was due to loss of water and not fat weight loss.

Nearing starvation point every day forces your metabolism to slow down, and pile up your fat reserves, rather than burning them up.

I believe the rewards of undertaking the cabbage diet are:
• You will experience fast weight loss
• As long as you don’t mind eating cabbage soup, you don’t have to suffer from hunger

My criticisms of the cabbage soup are:
• Quite a few dieters have suffered from lack of energy and nausea with the diet
• The food plan does not offer much variety or nutritional value

Verdict: I would prefer to find a sustainable diet or a health program that will help me keep the weight off.

Jansen Weber is a diet writer with 15 years experience. He started trying to lose weight through diets and fitness whilst at university. For tips and further information go to Easy Diets and Weight Loss. Find more at - Free Weight Loss Guide.