Honest look at the cabbage diet craze

The cabbage diet, also called the cabbage soup diet, is just that. For seven days, you eat as much cabbage soup as you want and you'll lose a few pounds. Don't worry, there's a bit more to the cabbage diet than just cabbage soup. Each day there are one or two other items or categories of food that you are allowed to eat. For instance, one day it's fruit and another day it's beef. As long as you're eating the foods specified for that particular day, you can eat as much as you want.

You're probably asking yourself how eating cabbage for a week straight is supposed to help you lose weight. Contrary to some of the information floating around, cabbage soup has no magical fat-burning properties. The cabbage diet works because you're going to wind up consuming only 800 or 900 calories a day. Some also tout the high fiber content of cabbage diet as another reason you'll lose weight.

Here's the day-by-day breakdown of what you should eat during the 7 day cabbage fest:

Day One: Cabbage soup and (with the exception of bananas) as much fruit as you want. You can drink water, unsweetened tea, and black coffee.
Day Two: Cabbage soup and raw vegetables, with a few exceptions - no dry corn, peas, or beans. You can have a baked potato with butter for dinner.
Day Three: Cabbage soup, as well as a mixture of fruits and vegetables.
Day Four: Cabbage soup, up to 8 bananas, and as much fat-free skim milk as you want.
Day Five: Cabbage soup, up to 6 tomatoes and 10 to 20 oz of beef, chicken (absolutely no skin), or fish. Plus, you NEED to drink 6 to 8 glasses of water
Day Six: Cabbage soup plus meats AND raw vegetables
Day Seven: Cabbage soup, brown rice, unsweetened fruit juice, and raw vegetables.

You must strictly follow the daily guidelines. With all this cabbage soup, you'll be highly tempted to cheat, but the cabbage diet is only going to work if you religiously follow the rules. Bread, diet soda, and alcohol are absolute no-nos.

There are numerous recipes for cabbage soup out there, all of which are supposed to be acceptable for the cabbage diet. You can throw in a number of additional vegetables to liven things up. You're also encouraged to experiment with spices to break up the monotony.

Is the cabbage diet right for you? First off, you've got to like - or at least be able to stomach cabbage soup. If you need to lose weight quickly, say for a special event, the cabbage diet might be a good option. It's not right for you if you have health problems such as diabetes that would make the nutritional imbalance of the diet a danger to you. Plus, some people might find that the unpleasant side effects of the cabbage diet outweigh the rapid weight loss. Be prepared to feel light-headed, irritable, and unable to concentrate well.

Lastly, and most importantly, never use the cabbage diet for more than 7 days in a row. The cabbage diet's week-long menu is lacking in, or only contains minimum amounts, of some very important nutritional elements - protein, carbohydrates, and essential fats. Doing the cabbage diet for longer than a week is just plain unhealthy, and potentially dangerous.

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