How to cook cabbage soup: recipes for weight loss

What is known about the cabbage soup diet?

It has long been popularized as a quick and effective way to eat for weight loss. People manage to lose up to 4.5 kg in just a week. You've probably heard other names for the method - for example, the model diet, the Dolly Parton diet, or the Mayo Clinic diet. Despite the fact that this clinic has nothing to do with cabbage soup at all.

Cabbage soup

To date, there is no consensus regarding the appearance of the technique and the identity of the person who developed it. According to the American Dietetic Association, the cabbage soup diet appeared in the 50s of the last century, but according to another version it happened much earlier. A recipe for something called Doughboy Cabbage Soup actually exists, and its appearance dates back to the First World War! Although it is assumed that American soldiers created the recipe not to lose weight, but to fight scurvy (you know, a historical disease that killed a lot of people, all because they suffered from a vitamin C deficiency). And it just so happens that cabbage contains a lot of vitamin C.

After its enormous popularity in the 50s, the diet was forgotten for some time. However, soon - in the early 80s - it was revived. People made photocopies and passed the recipe from hand to hand, and after faxes and the Internet appeared in the 90s, this diet became one of the most popular weight loss methods of all time.

The technique is also known as the Model Eating Technique, the Dolly Parton Diet, or the Mayo Clinic Diet.

Who is it best suited for?

The cabbage soup diet is most effective for two specific categories of women.

1. For those who can't really spend a lot of time on any other diet. Let's face it, we are a society of people who are constantly chasing something, and you know that in reality you are one of them too. Most diets require you to be on them for five to six weeks before you notice any results. But even before the results appear, you will most likely give up because you believe that losing excess weight is not easy. It's really not easy raising three kids while working two jobs and going to night school. It's not easy living with Parkinson's disease, after all. The essence of weight loss is a simple choice: what do you want - to be healthy and in good shape or to eat another donut?
2. Those who don’t think about changing their lifestyle, but just desperately want to lose a few kilograms in a week in order to fit into a wedding dress without experiencing discomfort due to the treacherous folds under the arms.

On a note! Despite the fact that cabbage soup for weight loss provides only a short-term effect, a person who loses significant weight in just a week receives excellent motivation for further action. This is the first step towards making real and lasting changes in your lifestyle.

Cabbage soup for weight loss - original recipe

The original cabbage soup recipe from the 50s is almost the same as what is used today. The only difference between the modern version is that less time is spent preparing such soups. According to the original recipe, the soup needs to be simmered for an hour, but this is more than enough time for the cabbage and other vegetables to lose almost all their nutrients. In the new version, you need to bring the dish to a boil, then cook for no more than 20-30 minutes.

What is typical is that you can eat such soups in as many quantities and as many times a day as you wish - there are no restrictions.

Ingredients

• green pepper (1 pc.);
• a can of tomatoes in their own juice (1 kg);
• celery stalks (6 pcs.);
• large onion, chopped (1 pc.);
• a good large head of white cabbage (1 piece);
• V8 juice (from eight vegetables - about 1.3 liters, if you can find one);
• water (4 glasses);
• olive oil (1 teaspoon, no more!);
• hot sauce (½ teaspoon or to taste).

Instructions

Step 1. First of all, take all the previously prepared vegetables and chop them finely.

Step 2 . Next, take the chopped onion and fry it for a few minutes in olive oil.

Step 3. Add the pepper and celery to the onion and fry it all for another four or five minutes.

Step 4. Pour water, juice into the pan, add sauce, bouillon cubes and tomatoes. Place over low heat and cook until the vegetables are soft (if you cut them into small pieces, this will take about 15 minutes).

Step 5. Add chopped cabbage to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes.

Cabbage soup for weight loss

Seaweed soup for weight loss

This soup may appeal to lovers of unusual and original dishes.

Product basket:

• Dry seaweed (kelp) – 250 g
• Soy sauce – ½ tbsp.
• Vegetable oil – 2 tbsp. l.
• Rice water – 0.5 l
• Salt - to taste

What to do?

1. First, soak the seaweed in water until it becomes soft.
2. Rinse the cabbage in salted water until the foam completely disappears.
3. Cut the cabbage into strips and sauté in vegetable oil to make it even softer.
4. Then pour the rice water over the cabbage and add soy sauce, salt and cook for a few more minutes until tender.

Seaweed soup is a Korean dish called miyeok-guk. You can see how to prepare it in the video:

Cabbage soup diet menu for 7 days

The first day . Let's call it a fruit day. Eat any amount of fruit you want, with the exception of bananas. If this is not enough, i.e. you feel hungry, then eat the soup prepared according to the above recipe. Today only fruit and soup.

Second day . Today, eat only vegetables - steamed or raw (the quantity is still unlimited). Try to avoid beans, corn and peas, but eat plenty of greens. In a word, eat only vegetables and soup all day. For dinner, you can have a large baked potato with butter (butter or vegetable) if you wish.

Day three . A kind of combination of the previous two days. Eat fruits (bananas are still not allowed), vegetables and soup in unlimited quantities. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to taste potatoes for dinner that day either.

Day four . Today is a wonderful day - you can finally eat bananas without traditional restrictions! Also drink plenty of skim milk and, of course, eat as much soup as you like throughout the day.

Day five . The diet allows you to eat about 300-500 g of chicken or beef. Although you can replace the meat with something high in protein. Also eat fresh tomatoes (no more than six). Ketchup you put on beef doesn't count! Finally, drink plenty of water (seven to eight glasses) to flush uric acid out of your body. As for the soup, use as much as you like.

Day six . Load up on vegetables and proteins! By the way, you can freely replace one of the “protein” days with baked fish, but not both at once. Eat a lot of protein (in fact, it can even be several steaks if you wish), soup and vegetables - if desired. Also eat as many greens as possible, and still avoid baked potatoes.

Day seven . Brown rice, vegetables and unsweetened fruit juices. Eat/drink plenty, but don't forget your soup.

Principles of the cabbage soup diet

Diet food

To get rid of extra pounds, you need to reduce the energy volume of food consumed per day, and increase physical activity (energy expenditure). Only a lack of energy forces the body to “burn” fat.

The unit for calculating the energy value of food - kilocalorie (kcal) - allows you to determine which food is dietary and which is not. The higher the calorie content of a product or dish, the worse it is.

Soups can and should even be included in diets, since hot first courses with plenty of liquid relieve hunger for a long time.

In order for them to help melt excess weight, you need to:

• cook in water or low-fat (chicken, beef) broth with minimal use of oil;
• use low-calorie vegetables and herbs as ingredients.

Diet cabbage soup is a great example of a daily meal for weight loss. But the weight loss course on this dish is short-term. For a short period of time (up to a maximum of 10 days), dietary cabbage soup becomes the main and main dish of the day. Low-calorie foods are added to it: fruits, vegetables, boiled chicken, brown rice.

For example, the daily diet looks like this - cabbage soup (without restrictions) plus one of the sets of products (calorie content is indicated per 100g):

1. Fruits with a calorie content of up to 60 kcal (bananas and dried fruits are not allowed).
2. Vegetable salad (vegetables with a calorie content of up to 50-60 kcal, for example, cabbage, carrots, onions, beets, celery, ground peppers, herbs, etc.) with vegetable oil dressing.
3. Boiled brown rice with steamed or fresh vegetables.
4. Boiled skinless chicken breast with vegetables, etc.

Important! Cabbage soup is included in any diet that allows vegetables. It will perfectly complement the carbohydrate, vegetable, Brazilian diet. For those who do not adhere to a ready-made food plan, but themselves count the calorie content of their dishes, it will also come in very handy.

How does the technique work?

As noted earlier, cabbage soup for weight loss contains a lot of fiber, which will make you feel full throughout the course. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 500 grams of raw cabbage contains just over 20 kcal, 5.6 grams of carbohydrates and as much as 32 mg of vitamin C, i.e., almost half the daily requirement of an adult. And thanks to the short cooking time, the bitterness of raw cabbage is softened without losing nutrients or destroying fiber.

On a note! The essence of the technique is this: the more nutritious and low-calorie soup you eat, the more weight you will lose.

Vitamins in cabbage

Brussels sprouts soup with celery

Ingredients:

• Brussels sprouts - 400 gr.
• celery root - 100 gr.
• onion - 1 pc.
• bell pepper - 1 pc.
• tomatoes - 600 gr.
• nutmeg - to taste
• bay leaf - 2 leaves
• vegetable broth - 3 l
• parsley - to taste

Chop the cabbage. Cut the celery root, onion and pepper into cubes. Place the vegetables in a saucepan, add vegetable broth, bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Then add salt and add tomatoes, bay leaves, nutmeg and cook for another 7-10 minutes. Serve sprinkled with finely chopped parsley. Bon appetit!

The right exercises to improve results

We do not at all recommend cutting down the number of calories you consume as much as possible or getting too involved in physical exercise by running 12 km every day! It's simply unreasonable. Will you lose even more pounds this way in a week in addition to the cabbage soup diet? Of course, but we still recommend resorting to more gentle exercises - swimming, walking or yoga.

While dieting, it is better to do yoga rather than more strenuous exercise.

Subtleties of cooking

Keen cooks will be interested in learning all the nuances of preparing delicious first courses with cabbage:

1. To prepare the soup, you can use some fresh cabbage and some sauerkraut. Especially if you like a sour taste. But this option will be quite salty.
2. Many nutritionists advise reducing the amount of salt in your diet to help the body get rid of excess fluid. To prevent soup without salt from being bland, use spices and herbs.
3. The taste of a dish can be improved without adding calories. For example, add more tomato paste. Or use lemon, apple cider vinegar.

Dietary cabbage soups are easy to prepare on the stove, in the oven or in the slow cooker.

What can and cannot be done while dieting?

DO NOT allow yourself to suffer from hunger. Eat plenty of other foods intended for that day. If you're hungry, you're not following directions. If you don't follow the directions, you won't get the results you want. All clear?

DO NOT add salt to soup, vegetables, potatoes or other foods. This applies not only to table salt, but also to sea salt, as well as substitutes and salty seasonings.

DO NOT drink anything other than water. You may have seen other diet options on the Internet that allow you to drink, for example, cranberry juice. This is not worth doing: if you want to lose 4 kilograms, not 2, and want to burn as many calories as possible, then drink water - its calorie content is certainly zero.

DO NOT change the soup recipe. If you believe that an additional 200 g of carrots will not harm you, then you will have to be disappointed - this vegetable contains a lot of sugar, and therefore calories.

But you can sometimes drink a cup of weak coffee or tea, WITHOUT adding cream or sugar. The calorie content of these drinks is minimal, so everything is in order here.

Sometimes you can drink tea or coffee, but without sugar and cream

Cooking options

With celery

This is a classic recipe. You will need: half a medium cabbage, one bell pepper, a couple of fresh tomatoes, 3 onions and one small bunch of celery greens.

All of the listed components must be thoroughly washed and finely chopped. Pour about 2 liters of drinking water into a pan (preferably enameled) and wait until it starts to boil (don’t forget to add salt). Then add all the prepared vegetables (this does not apply to celery yet) and cook them until soft. Celery greens should be added last, when everything else is cooked. Spices and any oil are strictly prohibited, otherwise you will not be able to lose weight. If you prefer creamy soups, you can puree it using a blender.

With brown rice

You will need: small cabbage, a liter jar of tomatoes rolled in their own juice, 1.5 cups of brown rice, a couple of sweet peppers, a couple of onions, 5 celery stalks, a few green onions, dill and parsley, spices that you like best (curry, coriander, cumin or others), salt - according to taste preferences.

All vegetable ingredients should be cut into small cubes, placed in a saucepan and filled with clean drinking water. We wait for it to boil. Then reduce the heat to low and cook the vegetables without covering the pan until they become soft (30 minutes should be enough). Separately, cook brown rice until fully cooked and combine it with boiled vegetables in a saucepan. Add seasonings (it is better to choose natural herbal ones) and herbs. Boil everything together for a couple of minutes. The soup is ready.

With beans

You will need: half a small cabbage, one sweet pepper, 3 carrots, 3 onions, one standard glass of young beans, a couple of tomatoes (can be replaced with a glass of fresh tomato juice), a small bunch of green onions, and celery.

All components must be thoroughly washed and finely chopped. Fill a saucepan with clean drinking water, put it on the fire, wait until it boils and add salt to the water. Then you need to load the prepared vegetables into it and boil them over low heat until fully cooked. After this, add chopped celery and green onions and remove from heat.

What is the effectiveness of the technique?

We've said this before, but we'll say it again: Most mainstream diets are perceived as a very slow path to weight loss. So slow that many women give up on them even before visible results appear. And the reason for the popularity of the cabbage soup diet is that the real weight loss that can be noticed occurs in just a week. And this, in turn, motivates women to make longer-term decisions that can lead to even greater weight loss and dramatic changes in their health.

Now you have all the information you need to lose up to 4.5 kg in just a week. Although success largely depends on your attitude. You can try your luck with the Estonian diet.