Healthy Cabbage Diets

Cabbage soup diets are a popular method for effectuating rapid weight loss that have been largely lambasted by nutritionists and diet reviewers as being excessively restrictive and potentially dangerous. While cabbage is not necessarily a bad choice for dieters in and of itself, basing your entire diet around little more than cabbage soup is not necessarily the best approach for long-term health. What follows is a more nutritious take the on the traditional Cabbage Soup Diet.

Original Cabbage Soup Diet

The original Cabbage Soup Diet is a seven-day plan designed for weight loss at any cost. During each day of the plan, you are instructed to consume liberal amounts of cabbage soup alongside one or two other additional foods. Day one of the plan calls for consumption of cabbage soup alongside any fruit except for bananas. Day two requires you to eat soup plus any other vegetables with only a baked potato and butter for dinner. Day three is cabbage soup plus all fruits and vegetables. Day four is soup, six bananas and skim milk. Day five is soup, six tomatoes and 450 grams (almost 16 ounces, or one pound) of meat or fish. Day six is soup, beef and veggies. Finally, day seven is soup, brown rice, fruit juice, and vegetables.

Revised Cabbage Soup Diet

To revise this plan into a healthy cabbage diet, a few changes need to be made. First, you should aim for five or six small meals throughout the day--consume a bowl of cabbage soup at the beginning of each of these meals. Second, you should have a lean protein source with each meal. Consuming protein with each meal has been shown to boost metabolism, which will result in additional calories burned throughout the day. Your protein source should be either meat, fish, chicken, turkey or eggs. Third, each meal should consist of an additional fruit and an additional vegetable, above and beyond the cabbage soup. This will provide your body with plenty of fiber, helping to keep you regular while cleansing your digestive tract. Fourth, you should also aim to consume a small portion of healthy fat at each meal. Healthy fats include monounsaturates like olive oil, peanut oil, sesame oil and avocados, along with polyunsaturates like walnuts, almonds, fish oil, and sunflower seeds.

Making these changes to the cabbage soup diet will result in more sustainable weight loss by providing your body with an adequate number of calories throughout the course of the diet. Furthermore, you will avoid the risk of malnutrition that is ever-present with plans like the original soup diet. Whereas the original diet was only meant to be followed for a week at a time, this revised version can be safely adopted indefinitely, nourishing your body and gradually taking you closer to your physique goals.