Cabbage Soup Pros and Cons

The effectiveness of the Cabbage Soup Diet is debatable. Some individuals report great success with The Cabbage Soup Diet, while others are not able to stick with it, or gain the weight back immediately. Read the facts and decide if this diet is the one for you.

Cabbage Soup Diet Pros

Many people go on The Cabbage Soup Diet for only a week and report weight loss between seven and eleven pounds. It is almost a certainty that if you go on the diet and stick strictly to it, that you will lose weight.

If you have been eating a diet that is high in sugar and refined foods, making the switch to eating lots of vegetables, fruits, brown rice, lean meat and dairy is a wise one. At the very least, you will begin to lay the groundwork for a more healthful diet in the long run.

You do not have to go to the store and buy lots of expensive ingredients. With the staple of the diet being cabbage soup, and the other allowed foods consisting of brown rice, bananas, fruit and milk, this is probably one of the cheapest diets that you can go on. It is also one of the easiest, as far as meal planning goes. You will not have prepare multiple, complicated dishes for each meal of the day. Once you have made a big pot of cabbage soup, that is all of the work you will have to do for the next few days. Also, the diet is quite explicit about what you should be eating every day. The only decisions that you have to make are how many bananas you will eat on banana day, or what type of fruit you will eat on day one. You don’t have to worry about falling off the wagon inadvertently, as long as you follow the diet’s unusually simple instructions.

Cabbage Soup Diet Cons

If you do the math, you will see that it is simply not possible to lose 10 pounds in one week. In order to do that, you would have to have a calorie deficit of 35,000 in that one week. That means, if you were maintaining your weight on 5000 calories a day, you would have to eat absolutely nothing to lose ten pounds of fat or muscle. Unless you are a professional athlete, you are not maintaining your weight on 5000 calories a day. Most people need between 2000 and 2500 calories per day in order to maintain their weight. So, even if a person consuming 2500 calories a day ate nothing for one week, he or she would only have a calorie deficit of 17,500, in other words, the equivalent of five pounds. Therefore, much of the weight lost on The Cabbage Soup Diet must be water weight. Also, your body will not be loaded down with the usual foods that take a long time to digest, as the cabbage soup will keep your digestive system moving. Since your intestines are not laden with heavy meals, and you have lost water weight, the weight loss will show up, but all of it will not be the weight loss you are looking for. It is simply not mathematically possible.

Many individuals report feelings of weakness or other ill health, such as headaches, while on The Cabbage Soup Diet. The reason for this is that the caloric intake is very low, and the full range of nutrients that people should have as part of their everyday diet simply doesn’t exist with this eating plan.

If you are the person who prepares meals in your household, you will find that you will have to prepare two separate meals—one for yourself, and one for the rest of the family, lest you suddenly become very unpopular. It can be very challenging to be on a restrictive diet while preparing lasagne and garlic bread for others.

What pros and cons have you experienced following The Cabbage Soup Diet? Feel free to add your own experiences to the list!

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