After the Cabbage Soup Diet, Now What?

You have probably tried a diet that allowed you to eat cabbage soup for one week but prohibited you from eating bread and drinking carbonated drinks or alcohol. Yes, that’s right. It’s the popular Cabbage Soup Diet.

The promise of this diet dictates that you will lose more than 10 pounds in a week if you follow the food plan and you did not cheat. It is sometimes called “T.J.’s Miracle Diet,” “Dolly Parton Diet,” or “Fat Burning Diet.”

Recycled Diet Plan

This Cabbage Soup Diet is all over the internet, in tabloids, and even in women’s magazines. The authors are unknown, but through the years, copies of this diet have been faxed, photocopied, and transferred from home to office and from friend to stranger.

Sometimes dieticians say that new diet plans today (like Beverly Hills Diet, Fit for Life, Scarsdale Diet, and Grapefruit Diet) all come from the concept of this diet. This is because Cabbage Soup Diet usually comes up every few years, and it is frequently recycled all the time. It’s just like hearing a new version of the same old song.

Ketogenic Diet

New diet plans are recommending high protein and low carbohydrates. According to the book titled “Protein Power,” the authors Drs. Mary Dan and Michael Eads contend that the excess carbohydrates may be killing everyone.

They further said that when you eat too many carbohydrates, it will cause the body to generate plenty of insulin. Then the insulin produced will encourage your body to store the calories as fat. This will result to a range of problems including heart disease and adult diabetes.

But Mary Dundas, a dietitian and assistant professor from University of Tennessee’s family medicine department and the spokeswoman for Tennessee Dietetic Association said that carbohydrates are the body’s preferred energy source. If you eat a diet with no carbohydrates, it can put your body into a ketosis state.

Ketogenic diets such as Cabbage Soup interfere with calcium absorption and may cause kidney problems. However, many say that these type of diets work for them. And according to Dundas, the reason why it still exists is because it actually works (even if only temporarily).

Weight Loss Principles

Dietitians say that your long-term success will depend on your proper eating discipline after a ketogenic diet like Cabbage Soup. In fact, Dundas added that he has seen patients really lose weight and even keep it off.

Based on his experience, the success of your weight loss after your 7-day diet will depend on these principles:

• Follow a well-balanced diet but eat fewer calories from your food everyday.

• Increase your exercise routine and become more active.

• Use behavior modification – this pertains to people who use food as an outlet for their emotions. For example, they tend to overeat when they’re bored, nervous, or angry. This must be avoided.

So if you are looking for a quick way to include plenty of vegetables in your diet, you will find that Cabbage Soup Diet is not a bad choice after all. Just make sure you follow these weight loss principles after going through the diet plan.