Cabbage Soup Diet – Recap

Ah, the wedding is over and it was a great party. Wonderful celebration with family and friends. The bride was GORGEOUS! And I fit into my dress perfectly!

Day 6

Beef and Veggies day. As much beef (or chicken) and vegetables as you want along with the soup.

I was down 12 pounds the morning of day 6. Which was more than I wanted to lose, and (I think) an absurd amount of weight to lose in only 6 days. So, instead of following the diet plan, I had a huge container of chopped up fruit that I snacked on all morning, had a bowl of soup for lunch (which was the last bowl of my batch) and went to dinner and ate pollo asada, beans, chips and some grilled veggies for dinner. I didn’t drink, while out with the gals because I knew I’d be doing that the next day at the wedding, and drinking basically makes my self-control with food go out the window.

Day 7 – Wedding Day

I knew I was not going to follow the cabbage soup diet plan on this day. I didn’t even try. Was down exactly my goal of 10 pounds in the morning (actually, 10 1/2) when I weighed myself before our 7:30am hair and makeup appointment. The day was filled with wedding festivities. Photos, dresses, makeup, hairspray, high heels, music, dancing, food (the reception food was AH-MAZING), drinks and more dancing. It was a great day.

Recap

So, here are my thoughts on the whole cabbage soup diet thing. It works. You follow the eating plan (which I did…to the letter) and you WILL lose weight. I started at 147.8 pounds. By the morning of the 6th day I was down to 135.7. I have no idea what I would have lost the last two days if I’d continued on the plan. As it is, after a wedding day and night of frivolity (aka: drinking), dancing, and eating (including wedding cake at 11pm and a McDonalds stop on the way home), I was still down over 9 pounds.

However, this diet is not a long-term solution at all. I was so happy to eat real food yesterday. I overindulged.  In just about everything. Today, I’m having huge cravings for all my favorite “bad foods” and it’s taking lot of self-control not to continue pigging out. I can totally see how this diet might actually be counter productive in the long run since after a week of fruit and veggies along with cabbage soup, absolutely every single other food sounds like 5 star cuisine. I want to eat cheese and bread by the bucketful today. Instead, I went to the gym this morning and am eating a healthy, well-balanced lunch (the best sandwich ever!) and dinner. My toe is totally healed so it’s back to my normal routine of weight maintenance – working out (hard) and eating right. Another drawback of this diet is that after dropping so much weight so fast, doing it the right way is going to seem even harder than it was before.  Switching back to maintaining my weight or maybe losing a pound or so is going to seem so lame coming off dropping 10 pounds in a week. I will say though. My lunch today was the best, most amazing turkey sandwich I’ve ever had.

I can’t say that I would recommend this diet really. You absolutely should not workout at all when doing it and probably should take a multivitamin while on it as well. I actually tried to do a vitamin the first day, but there was so little food in my stomach that the vitamin hit it like a piece of lead and it made me feel nauseated. I’m sure that’s not a good sign. I do see why people get so excited about this diet though. I felt incredibly skinny yesterday. I felt great and there’s no other way I can think of – not even with workouts and a low-calorie eating plan – I could have lost 12 pounds in 6 days.  I’ll have to wait a few days of normal eating and workouts to see how much of the weight I put back on as my muscle mass builds back up. Then I’ll know if this is a good plan for “jump starting” a diet/exercise regime, or if it truly is only useful to lose weight quickly for a specific event…expecting to put the pounds back on as soon as you’re done with your cabbage soup.