How to Do a Cabbage Soup Cleansing Diet

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered dietitian with Austin Regional Clinic and I have had some questions about how to do a cabbage soup cleansing diet. This is another fad diet that has been around for many decades and the original author is not known. There have been several variations of it but the basic premise is the same for all versions and that is the basic primary meal is cabbage soup that you can eat as much as you want. It is very restrictive in what fruits and other vegetables that you can eat and you are really not eating meat for the majority of the diet. The diet actually lasts seven days. As far as beverages you are limited to plain unsweetened tea, black coffee, water, or unsweetened cranberry juice. Now this particular diet is not nutritionally sound. Again it is very low calorie even though it sounds like you can eat as much cabbage soup as you want and that would fill you up. It is primarily just cabbage broth, a little bit of onion and garlic so again you are not getting very much protein at all and if you are very restrictive with your other fruits and your vegetables and you are not including any nuts or seeds or beans you are not getting any other source of protein so again this is not a nutritionally sound diet. You will lose significant weight on it because it is very low calorie but as soon as you get off of this diet after the week and resume your normal eating habits, you will regain any of the weight that you have lost and the majority of the weight that you did lose during that weight is going to be water weight, it won't be any sound lasting weight loss so he cabbage soup cleanse diet is not recommended. Again it is very low in protein, very low in calcium and a lot of other needed nutrients so it is not recommended for the majority of people."