The Pros & Cons of the Cabbage Soup Diet - Does it Really Work?

Can a  diet  comprised of soups, salad, vegetables, and small quantities of beef and chicken really help you lose the weight super fast? The notion that you can lose ten pounds in a week with the  diet  is true. It can in the short-term anyway. This  diet  is much like the Atkins  diet , South Beach  diet , and other radical  diets  that focus on limiting your food choices to a single low-calorie set of foods. The good news is that you will likely lose the weight to begin with. The bad news is that it's simply not healthy, and it teaches you bad weight-loss habits which can have dangerous consequences.

The Cabbage Soup  Diet  focuses on weight loss through a lack of calories. This lack of calories also comes with a lack of essential vitamins and nutrients. You could take vitamin pills and other supplements in an effort to make up the difference. However, the  diet  is still a very extreme method of losing weight. There is no variety--it is a strict regimen of specific foods.

The other problem with this and other lose weight fast  diets  is that you made unhealthy food choices to get yourself into the mess and are using unhealthy food choices to try and fix it. You only get one body. Do you really want to spend your entire life making one unhealthy choice after another? The  diet  doesn't encourage you to exercise or make good choices in the first place--basically, it's a quick fix which works but can set a dangerous precedent. Also, a lot of the weight loss will be a reduction of fluids and even some muscle which will come back once you begin eating healthy again.

While some people may try to convince you that cabbage has magical fat-burning properties, health experts state that it does not. It's the super-low calorie consumption that gets the fat off. Experts also agree that any  diet  which advises you to consume less than 1,200 calories is to be avoided. Most will tell you that you can become sick from depriving your body of essential nutrients over a long period of time.

If you are dead set on trying the cabbage  diet , at least check with your family doctor and see if he clears you to try it out. The best thing you can do is to lose fat the right way. Eat a balanced meal in proper portions and exercise. The fat may not fall off as fast, but it's more likely to stay off. This is simply due to the fact that you're making a lifestyle change instead of reaching for instant success. Good-bye to you, and hopefully to that excess weight, too!