About Cabbage Soup Cleansing Diets

The cabbage soup cleansing diet is considered a fad diet but many people use the diet to lose extra pounds. Cabbage soup cleansing diets vary slightly in ingredients such as some may allow you to eat meat and fruit while others only allow a strict diet of broth, nonstarchy vegetables and water with no extras. All variations follow the same general guidelines: three meals a day of the soup mixture until one is no longer hungry.

Significance

The cabbage soup cleansing diet provides essential nutrients that are beneficial to flushing the body's urinary system as well as the digestive system. This cleansing diet combined with exercise can help people lose weight while getting rid of unwanted health issues like headaches, digestive discomfort and cramping, bloating, sluggish tendencies, insomnia and belly fat. Cabbage is a green vegetable that is low in starch and provides a slight peppery flavor to the soup. Cabbage keeps for a long time in a refrigerator, making it a good soup base for this type of diet. Drinking eight 8-oz. glasses of water in combination with a multivitamin are essential in getting adequate and proper nutrients throughout the course of the diet.

Features

Some of the added features to the cabbage soup cleansing diet are the healthy vegetables and ingredients that are included with the diet. Peppers, onions, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, celery and V8 vegetable juice are the base ingredients for most cabbage soup cleansing diets. Many variations of the diets omit all vegetables except for the cabbage and broth and many do not include the vegetable juice. Some diets demand strict intake of only the soup itself for the duration of the diet, while others promote fruits, lean meats and starchy vegetables to the menu, as well.

Benefits

Cabbage can be a natural diuretic for some people, causing them to urinate more frequently and also drink more water and liquids. This process flushes out toxin buildup as well as bacteria that may be lying dormant in the kidneys and the urinary tract. Cabbage is a green leafy vegetable that is full of vitamin C for giving the body added energy and helping to boost one's immune system. The cabbage soup cleansing diet helps to promote healthy bowel movements and cleans out the intestinal tract, making one feel lighter and healthier. This diet is also inexpensive as compared to other diets on the market today. It can be generated at home from common household spices for flavoring as well as inexpensive vegetables from the grocery store or the garden.

Time Frame

The cabbage soup cleansing diet should not be utilized for more than seven days at a time, as it is very close in resemblance to a liquid diet. The vegetables in the soup give off the nutrients and provide the de-toxing effect but do not replace solid foods in a diet. Some variations of the diet allow for lean meats such as turkey, chicken and lean hamburger to be implemented every other day in the diet, but the more strict diets forbid any other foods other than the soup for a whole seven days. One should start to see a weight loss within the first three days; some people on the diet have reported a weight loss of up to 10 pounds in just seven days.

Effects

The positive side effects from being on the cabbage soup cleansing diet is that one begins to have a renewed sense of energy and empowerment when finished with the cleansing diet. Hunger control has been achieved as well as a reduction in cravings for overeating and consuming foods that are unhealthy. This diet also allows dieters to break their cravings for sugar as no sugar is allowed during the cleansing period. Less of a bloated feeling in the stomach as well as visible weight loss, especially around the abdominal area, is an added benefit for many.