The cabbage soup diet is a short term fast weight loss plan that claims you can lose 10 pounds in a week. Its origins are unknown but it seems to have come into circulation in the 1980s.

What Is Involved?

You eat unlimited cabbage soup for a week, plus certain other foods. A typical plan goes like this:

Day 1: cabbage soup and fresh raw fruit (except banana and coconut).

Day 2: cabbage soup, non-starchy vegetables and 1 baked potato.

Day 3: cabbage soup, fruit (except banana and coconut) and non-starchy vegetables.

Day 4: cabbage soup, skim milk and bananas (maximum 8).

Day 5: cabbage soup, tomatoes, beef (maximum 20 oz).

Day 6: cabbage soup, non-starchy vegetables, beef (unlimited).

Day 7: cabbage soup, unsweetened fruit juice, non-starchy vegetables, brown rice.

You can have as much of the named foods as you want, except where a portion size is specified. You can eat as often as you want. You must not use any oils, salt or anything else that is not on the list. No drinks except water.

To make cabbage soup, just boil plenty of cabbage for 10-15 minutes in enough water to cover it, remove from the heat for a few minutes and blend with a hand-held blender. On days when you are allowed other vegetables you can add onions, herbs, celery etc.

On beef days you can cook the beef in the soup if you want, or buy steak and grill it, or toss ground beef in a frying pan in a little water.

Why Does It Work?

Drastic calorie reduction for the 7 days of the diet will produce weight loss, although much of the loss is due to water.

To lose one pound of fat you have to eat 3500 fewer calories than the amount that would maintain your weight. This means that to lose one pound in a week you would have to eat 500 calories per day less than your maintenance calorie level. To lose 10 pounds of fat in a week you would have to eat 5000 calories per day less than your maintenance level. Since most people’s maintenance level is a lot less than 5000 calories a day, this is impossible. That is how we know that a large weight loss in a short space of time is mainly water loss.

However, even water loss will result in you looking thinner. Water retention makes us look bloated. So if you do not go back to eating a lot of salt and processed foods, you may be able to maintain the loss.

Cabbage is a low calorie, high fiber food so it will make you feel full without weight gain. This makes it easier to stick to the diet. It is also a very nutritious food. It contains a surprising amount of protein as well as minerals and vitamins.

The diet follows food combining principles, not mixing starches with proteins or fat with fruit. This is claimed by some people to make the food easier to digest and help you get the maximum nutrition from it.

If we had no imported food we would tend to eat a lot of the same vegetables and fruits for a time while they were in season, so this may be a very natural way to eat.

Any Negatives?

The main problem, as with all short term diets, is that most people put the weight right back on again as soon as the diet is over. You will need to change your eating habits to keep it off, and you will need another diet plan to follow afterward if you want to lose more than 10 pounds.

You may become very tired of cabbage soup, although if you have never had it before, you will probably be surprised how good it tastes (especially when you are hungry). Changing the permitted foods each day provides some variety but not nearly as much as we are used to. Boredom is likely to be a problem.

It may be difficult to follow this diet if you need to take your lunch to work and do not have anywhere to warm your soup. You will want more than you can fit in a vacuum flask. Some days, you could eat fruit during the day instead. On other days this is not possible.

It is possible that eating huge quantities of cabbage may have some negative consequences for health. This should not be a problem in 7 days but staying on this diet any longer is not recommended.

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You should see your doctor before starting the cabbage soup diet or any other weight loss plan.

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The Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate diet developed by Dr Robert C Atkins in the 1970s. Dr Atkins wrote many books and did refine the diet later, but in the beginning it focused on cutting out almost all carbohydrates regardless of where they came from. It is also known as the high protein diet, because in the absence of carbs we have to get our calories from proteins and fats. It is set up in structured phases, with the first being the most restricted, as is normal for most diets. Some people skip the first phase (the induction).

Why Does It Work When we are eating a lot of carbs, the sugars in them require the body to produce a lot of insulin. These levels of insulin help the body to convert a lot of food into fat in the form of triglycerides. This is stored in the body, making us gain weight. However, if there are no carbs available, the body will switch to a system called ketosis where it can create energy directly from fats. This creates ketones which suppress the appetite (we quickly feel we have eaten enough, or do not feel very hungry and use our fat reserves for energy). In order to bring on ketosis we have to eat less than 40 grams of carbohydrate in a day. To give you an idea of how little this is, the average person on a standard Western diet consumes around 300 grams per day. 40 grams is about 2 small bananas, or 3-4 slices of bread, or less than 1 cup of cooked brown rice. For people who like meat and dairy foods the Atkins diet can be a refreshing change from other weight loss programs. This can help motivate you to stick with the diet.

Any Negatives? You have to get used to a whole new way of figuring out what to eat. It involves taking account of the number of grams of carbohydrate that are in everything. The diet can be boring and many people do not get enough variety or essential nutrients while following it. This can be overcome by making an effort to include more vegetables and/or supplements, but Dr Atkins does not tend to focus on these points as much as he might. Many Atkins dieters eat a lot of saturated fat which research has shown can contribute to heart disease and other conditions. It seems likely that some people’s bodies do better on a low carb, high protein diet, but other people’s do not.

 

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Check with your doctor before starting and have your cholesterol levels monitored regularly while you are following the Atkins diet.

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