Cabbage Soup Diet

The Cabbage Soup diet has gained near legendary status in the world of fad diets. With its outlandish weight loss claims – it’s suggested you can lose up to 10lbs in a week on the plan – the Cabbage Soup diet has become a by-word for crazy, implausible, quick-fix weight loss. But it’s certainly endured and has proven to have as much staying power as the stench of stewed cabbage.

Celebrity Followers: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jaime Pressley

The Idea

The Cabbage Soup diet was one of the first fad diets and is based around the dubious power of the much maligned vegetable.

Advocates of the Cabbage Soup diet have made outlandish claims in the past that cabbage is some sort of miraculous fat burner. It’s not. In reality you could follow this diet with any non-cream based soup and lose weight. In fact you could swap the soup for a doughnut and still drop the pounds as you’re consuming so few calories.

You do get to eat more than just cabbage and you get to eat as much of the foods on the plan as you like. The one big plus with this diet is that you should never go hungry; every time a hunger pang strikes, simply heat up another bowl of soup.

As you can lose weight quickly, the diet is often flagged as the perfect way to shift those extra pounds before that holiday or wedding.