Basically the Cabbage Soup diet involves consuming large quantities of the eponymous food, and very little else. As our diet plan review will explain, the Cabbage Soup diet causes weight loss only by reducing your daily calorie intake almost to starvation level. Nutritional experts advise that the Cabbage Soup diet should not be followed for more than a week.

Diet meal plans for this programme are very strict, and also very simple. You can eat as much broth made from this single vegetable as you like, every day, with the goal of eating enough to make you feel full up. There are also specific additional foods allowed on each day of the week. You're not allowed to drink any alcohol, and the only drinks you can have are water, or unsweetened fruit juice (but only on the 'fruit' day of the week).

Here are the different foods allowed on different days of the diet (in addition to the main dish of the programme):

Day 1 - fruit (excluding bananas)
Day 2 - vegetables (including 1 jacket potato with a small amount of butter)
Day 3 - fruit and vegetables (excluding potatoes and bananas)
Day 4 - bananas (up to 8) and skimmed milk
Day 5 - beef (up to 20 ounces) and tomatoes (up to 6)
Day 6 - beef and vegetables (excluding potatoes)
Day 7 - brown rice, vegetables (excluding potatoes), unsweetened fruit juice

Recipes for the broth vary, but all include onions, tinned tomatoes, green peppers, celery, carrots, and mushrooms in addition to the main ingredient.

Although you will lose weight quickly following this plan, this will mainly be from loss of water and muscle, not fat. Nearing starvation point every day forces your metabolism to slow down, and store your fat reserves, rather than burning them up.