Lose Weight with the Cabbage Soup Diet

There are countless diets out there that make a variety of claims to be able to help people to lose weight at a variety of rates from a few pounds here and there to several pounds in a week.

All have their merits and downsides, but all are valid for one reason or another when adhered to as strictly as possible.

This article, looks at one such diet that makes some amazing claims.

Cabbage Soup as a Diet

First of all, it would help to understand just what is going on with a diet such as the cabbage soup diet plan. This one is derived from a special diet that overweight heart patients are placed on when the go to hospital in preparation for heart surgery or transplants.

In these cases, it is essential that the patient lose some weight before surgery to improve their chances of actually waking up again when its all over! In other words, if you are chronically overweight and in need of heart surgery, you had better lose weight pronto of you'll die!

So the cabbage soup diet was devised as a way of creating very rapid weight loss in heart patients over a short period of time, such as 5 days to a week, where several pounds can be lost. This is its strength and also its weakness, as a general eating plan for people who are not in quite such serious danger.

Rapid Fat Loss

As a strength, going on this diet plan based on cabbage soup will certainly cause rapid weight loss in the first week or so. But to sustain this new weight, the body has to exercise while gradually re-introducing normal food back into the diet.

If you fail to do that, all the weight that was initially lost will almost certainly return, with an extra pound or two just as a reminder not to mess with the body's metabolism in such a drastic fashion!

That's its weakness, by the way. Rapid weight loss is often followed by rapid re-gain of the weight unless the diet is continued. The problem with this dieting process is that is must be halted after a week or so to prevent malnutrition! Why is this?

The cabbage soup itself is fairly low in nutrients and very low in calories. The meal choice can be pretty harsh in that it actually consists mainly of, well, cabbage soup!

I can reassure you that there's not a whole load of flavor in a soup made of just cabbages! And there's not really very much bulk in there either, so don't expect it to make you feel satisfyingly full up.

The good news is that you can add onions, garlic, tomatoes, herbs and spices to make it tastier and more appealing, but not much more besides.

Very Low in Calories

This is why it is so effective at causing rapid weight loss--simply because it contains so few calories that the body is forced to burn its store of fat to provide energy for normal functioning. It is also why this program must not be continued over any length of time as the body's reserve will soon be depleted and the symptoms of malnutrition will appear.

So for the purposes of providing you with a quick jump start dieting solution, this is a great way to get you started. Then after a week or so, you'll need to switch to a more nutrient rich diet coupled with exercise to continue the initial work.

That way, you'll lose fat-based weight and stand every chance of keeping it lost as long as you do not return to unhealthy eating habits!

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Posted on Mon, Nov 23 2009 in Diet | 1 Comment



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