Admin answers:

It’s fine for maybe one meal a day, without the potatoes, which destroy the whole idea.

Eat a balanced diet and exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
Quit all that junk food and sugared sodas. Pizzas, burgers, fries one time a week.

Kinda boring, right? Weight control requires a lifestyle change. Educate yourself about nutrition and exercise. Will serve you well the rest of your life.

Good luck.

Admin answers:

I was on the cabbage soup diet a few years ago and lost half a stone in a month. Unfortunately I did put the weight back on again. Now I have to lose a stone by June as going to Cuba with my wife for my 40th birthday. Now eating smaller portions and only when I’m hungry. Also walking at least 5 miles daily.

Admin answers:

Gosh…I got a great laugh with Escher’s “bowels of soup”!!

I also have a wine “thing”. I’m French. I think it’s genetic.

Diuretics are drinks like alcohol, tea, cranberry juice, and food like cucumbers, watermelons, fresh tomatoes, asparagus, artichokes, beets, carrots, lettuce, raw onions, radish and horseradish, oats, melon, celery, parsley (really, it’s funny, I eat some parsley and I have to use the bathroom and pee a lot), and all the cabbage family including cabbage and Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, turnip greens, spinach, and radishes. (If I missed anything, please anybody just let me know).
I would lose one or two pounds on the scale each time I eat those but I don’t because I’m smart and do not dehydrate because I compensate with water retention foods (anything salty).
This is why some recipes have ingredients that complete one another. For example, cabbage is THE powerful diuretic so you have to eat it with something very salty in order to not dehydrate, like the “corned beef and cabbage” recipe I really like to cook for St. Patrick’s Day…or you have to eat a sauerkraut/sausage combination or combining other diuretics with salty food like adding ham/bacon to your lettuce, tomato, onion sandwich. Either that or in order to not dehydrate, you need to drink more water and spend a lot of time peeing.

Losing weight by losing water retention and dehydrating looks good on a bathroom scale but not on your face (shaped lips and itchy red skin…as the skin is the first organ to suffer from dehydration).

Your goal when losing weight should be to lose fat reserves and gain muscle mass and not worrying about water/waste fluctuations.

You can eat soup if you want but if it is cabbage soup, you better add some salty sausage or ham with it…so you won’t dehydrate and lose weight but still get good nutrients from all the vegetables. Personally, when eating or drinking diuretics, I’d rather eat a 2 inches serving of Kielbasa sausage with it than have to drink tons of water and pee a lot.

I like cabbage on St-Patrick’s day, but I eat more broccolis the rest of the year, with some occasional recipes with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, spinach…

Once you eat soups or salads, any homemade vegetables soups or salads, (soups in winter, salads in summer) you’re on your way to eating healthier, so you stop gaining weight as your only reason to lose weight is because you gained weight by eating junk food or too much food and/or not being active (exercising).

You “would love to blast through the first 10 lbs or so, just to get a nice head start”…that is so wrong on so many levels!
You’re not in a race…and what about the “babies aren’t for a few years”?!? How is that relevant? (No offense).

You should eat enough calories to cover your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or your body will adapt to a low caloric intake and lower your metabolism, making it very hard for you to use your fat reserves. And then, as soon as you would eventually start eating normally again, you would make fat reserves very easily, because you would have a lower metabolism and therefore regain all the weight you lost and keep going up, unless you exercise A LOT.

Women’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR):
655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – minus (4.7 x age in years)

Do not focus on the scale. As long as you’re eating enough to cover your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and not too much above that and that you exercise, you will lose one pound of fat reserves for each 3,500 calories of exercising, no matter what the scale indicates.

Losing one pound of fat reserves does not mean losing one pound of weight because it does not take into account muscle mass gain (which is very good) and water and waste fluctuations, which can be huge and are very confusing and irrelevant since only temporary because eventually, your body settles down. Eating healthier and drinking more water will make you lose water retention (less sodium) and waste (more fiber and better regularity).

Using a tape measure once a month to chart your progress will reassure you because when you lose half a pound of fat reserves (the best weekly fat reserves loss…1750 calories of exercising) but gain some muscle mass and some water weight so you don’t lose any weight on the scale…it’s a little depressing, when, in fact, you should be happy, and you get happy when you use a tape measure and lose half an inch somewhere, or even a quarter of an inch (like the thighs) even if you did not lose any weight on the scale.

No matter how you slice it, one pound of fat reserves is still 3,500 calories of exercising, so get moving.

Admin answers:

I would not want to be in an elevator with someone on a cabbage soup diet.

Admin answers:

I think what’s happening is your stomach is producing the normal amount of acid in order to digest the type (and quantity) of food that you used to eat, but as you’re eating less (and easier to digest) food, there is excess acid in your stomach. Hence the burning sensation.
In order to get rid of it (without increasing your quantities) try drinking some milk. This will neutralise the acid in the stomach until your body gets used to the new diet.

Admin answers:

It took me 16 weeks to lose 31lbs i stuck to the diet and took moderate exercise i have kept the weight off for nealy 12 months now.

Admin answers:

To put it more exactly, less calories go in than go out. You could eat 3000 calories a day, as long as you were burning 3500 calories and you’d lose weight.

If you are a completely inactive slug, you may need to consider eating next to nothing. On the other hand, if you engage in vigorous aerobic exercise every day, you can continue to eat what you used to eat in your former lazy slug life and you will probably lose plenty of weight.

To put it another way: “get off your @ss and deal with it!”

Admin answers:

That is a very unreasonable diet plan. The key to any diet is to trick the body into thinking it’s full while burning more calories. You don’t want to let your body go into “starvation” mode. You should eat your first meal/ snack within an hour of waking up, and then eat every 2 hours after that. Do some type of cardio exercise at least an hour a day, but don’t do the same exercise 2 days in a row. You also have to make sure you’re getting all the nutrients you need so that you’re dieting healthy. First I want you to know that you BMI for your size and weight is 21.5 pounds, which is in the normal/ healthy category. There’s no medical need for you to lose weight but if you insist on losing 15, I would suggest you do it healthy. Most people think that losing weight means starving themselves, but the key to a successful diet is to eat 6 small healthy meals or snacks a days. Make sure all your meals contain lean protein, low starch vegetables, healthy fat, and adding something with wheat is optional. Drink at least 8 oz of water a day.

An acceptable meal plan would be:
Breakfast- Whole wheat toast w/ pure grape jelly and low fat milk
Snack 1- orange or any type of fruit
Lunch- a cup of soup
Snack 2- chicken salad
Dinner- whole grain pasta, 100% tomato marinara sauce, small tossed side salad
Snack 3- fruit or nuts

It might seem like a lot to eat, but that’s the proper way to diet.

Admin answers:

Sounds good