Slimmercook

I’ve completed the week on the Cabbage Soup Diet. I didn’t follow it 100%, especially yesterday evening. We were out all day, I had taken the rice with me and had that at lunch with a salad, but in the evening we visited friends and stayed rather longer than planned so on the way home Son was hungry and we stopped for souvlaki. I was too embarrassed to fetch my rice from the car so I chose three chicken skewers and cucumber salad.
I lost 1.9 kg in the week. This loss was in leaps and bounds: -0.7 kg after the first day, no change for three days, another -0.7 after fourth day, no change for two days, a final -0.5 after sixth day, no change on last day. Following that pattern, if I had followed it religiously, especially last night, I might have lost another 0.5 kg at most. I think my other little deviations (milk in my morning tea every day, a little bit of cheese on the milk day, a few nuts twice) helped me to stay on the diet for the rest of the time rather than going off it completely so a possibly slightly smaller loss was worth it.
I can honestly say that I wasn’t hungry–if ever I felt my tummy gurgle I had some soup, or some of its component vegetables in the later days. I did feel light-headed a few times, perhaps because I have low blood pressure anyhow. A friend said he’d heard the CSD causes flatulence. I didn’t have serious problems in that department, perhaps because I’m used to eating lots of vegetables anyhow, but I did find I had more frequent bowel movements on Days 2 and 3, so my accidental pattern of starting on Friday might actually work better than the traditional Monday start for people who work during the week, so they can be at home near a loo over the weekend (and if they do find that the first days of increased fiber intake from the vegetables and fruit causes unwanted side effects). From the fourth day (Monday) onwards my plumbing was back to normal and also the foods were the kind that would be easier to carry to an office by somebody working.
Bottom line is, it worked, and fulfilled its function of a kick-start to a more balanced long-term eating plan. It was endurable without too much deprivation but personally I don’t think this is a diet I’ll be repeating in a hurry, and certainly no more frequently than once a month. However, I might do just Days 1 and 2 as a quick crash diet if I needed to look better for a special occasion. I will keep it in my arsenal and seriously consider repeating the whole week when I reach the inevitable plateau during my new eating plan.
Probably the most positive part of the CBS is teaching how filling low-calorie vegetables can be, either as a soup or on their own. I know this already, but tend to forget, so from now on I’ll make sure I reach for vegetables as a snack before anything else when I am hungry. I may even make the soup again–it’s really quite tasty! And research has shown that people who eat soup regularly lose more weight–it fills the stomach so less higher-calorie food can fit.