The Cabbage Soup

This past week I was on the cabbage soup diet. The idea is to have cabbage soup every day, with each day having a different supplemental food as well.

The recipe I used for the soup was as follows:

• 1 head cabbage
• 6 medium onions
• 6 spring onions
• 6 carrots
• 2 green or red peppers
• 3 large tomatoes
• 5 stalks celery, trimmed
• 4 oz (110 g) uncooked brown rice

I spiced it with a little salt and black pepper, however I should have taken my mother's advice to throw in a chicken or beef bouillon cube. My cabbage soup was quite bland.

The full program is:

Day 1: Fruit Day. Besides cabbage soup you can eat as much fruit as you like (no bananas, no honey dew melon)

Day2: Vegetable Day. Besides the soup you can eat raw vegetables (no corn or peas). At night a large baked potato with 2tbs of light sour cream.

Day 3: Fruits and Vegetables Day. Besides the soup you can eat raw fruit and vegetables.

Day 4: Banana Day. Besides soup, you should eat 3 bananas and 250g low fat milk or 250g low fat yogurt.

Day 5: Poultry of Fish Day. Of course soup and 200g poultry meat OR low fat fish. And 6 raw tomatoes.

Day 6: Meat Day. Low fat steak, green vegetables and salad without dressing. And of course soup

There is also a day 7, but since I only do diets for 6 days it was skipped.

Day 7: Rice Day: Additional to soup you will have whole grain rice, free choice of vegetables and 250ml freshly pressed fruit juice.

Having hot soup for breakfast in the middle of summer is a difficult thing. It was sometimes hard to choke down an entire bowl before heading off to work. Having that same soup for lunch is also a kill joy, particularly since 10 minutes after breakfast you become hungry again. On the other hand, you can have as much soup as you want.

The soup does not get better with age, it is not an acquired taste, and it is impervious to pepper if you attempt to change the flavor. On the other hand, you can have as much as you want.

The recipe made approximately 3 gallons of soup, which translated to about 17 bowls that I ate over the course of the week. By the last day I dreaded the very idea of even touching the soup, but I managed to finish all if it.

As I progressed through the week the eating pattern became more difficult. Initially I could eat as much fruit or vegetables on the side that I needed between having soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Half way through the week that changes, as the the freedom to eat as much supplemental food is snatched away. Limited to 3 bananas or 6 tomatoes, or just a steak dinner means that in between servings of soup there is nothing but hunger. On the other hand, you can have as much soup as you want.

I wasn't quite on par with the diet guidelines. Thursday I ate 5 bananas instead of just 3, because I had them and I was quite hungry. (When I tell this to people they seem to think I ate 5 bananas all at once, but this was over the course of the whole day, I'm not an orangutan). Also on Friday I could only bring myself to eat 5 raw tomatoes. I got medium to large sized tomatoes thinking they would help fill me up, but what actually happened is I discovered I really don't like raw tomatoes all that much.

Last week I was at a family reunion and did not diet, I also ate quite a bit more than I would have had I just been going about my normal week. When I came back from the reunion I was 5 pounds heavier than when I left. When my friend gave me the diet she said that a person should expect to lose 10 pounds in a week. I managed to lose 9.2. I suspect that I had a few pounds of food still in me from the vacation, but that still means I had the largest weight reduction since starting my dieting.

Given the very low amount of protein this week I was very concerned about losing muscle instead of fat. Since I started tracking my fat percentage a month or so ago I've gone down from 19.3% to 18.0%.