January has been a month of abstinence for me. Not exactly a diet, but no booze, no coffee, no cows’ milk, no crusty bread, no hard cheese and no red meat. Despite constant cravings, I’ve eaten well. I’ve learnt to love goats’ milk, become a master at steaming and poaching – particularly fish – and a whiz at making a meal of salad.

My sixth and seventh day on the cabbage soup diet,which promises fast weight loss based on eating unlimited quantities of a cabbage-based soup which costs more calories to digest than it provides, so you can eat enough to feel full and still lose weight.

My fifth day on the cabbage soup diet,which promises fast weight loss based on eating unlimited quantities of a cabbage-based soup which costs more calories to digest than it provides, so you can eat enough to feel full and still lose weight.

My fourth day on the cabbage soup diet,which promises fast weight loss based on eating unlimited quantities of a cabbage-based soup which costs more calories to digest than it provides, so you can eat enough to feel full and still lose weight.

Day 3 of testing the Cabbage Soup Diet, with some thoughts on the Raw Food diet and Instinctive Eating (Instincto).

The Cabbage soup diet is a radical weight loss diet designed around heavy consumption of low-calorie cabbage soup over the space of seven days. It is generally considered a fad diet, in that it is designed for short-term weight-loss and requires no long-term commitment. Indeed, it was arguably the first short-term diet to become popular, and inspired several copy-cats based around similar principles.The typical claimed intent of the diet is to lose 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of weight in a week, though nutritional experts point out that it is impossible to lose that much fat within a week.The origins of the diet are unknown, and it first gained popularity as a piece of faxlore in the 1980s. The cabbage soup diet has many names, usually linking the diet to a mainstream institution, including the "Sacred Heart Diet", "Military Cabbage Soup", "TJ Miracle Soup Diet", and "Russian Peasant Diet". All of these institutions, especially the russian peasants, have denied a link with the diet. Russian peasants have gone as far as to go on CNN to deny this attribution. As a general rule, most if not all forms of the diet emphasize that the dieter can consume as much cabbage soup as he/she wants. On some original documents mentioning the diet, it was claimed the diet is designed for obese heart-surgery patients, so they could lose weight quickly and therefore be at lower risk of complications during surgery.Many individuals and medical professionals are critical of the diet. It's claimed that most of the weight lost is water, and therefore not permanent. In addition, the recipe for the soup as often given has an extremely high sodium content, usually to make it palatable, and the diet provides practically zero protein for several days at a time. Many people report feeling weak and light-headed during the course of the diet.On a practical level, the most common forms of the soup recipe have been criticized as being bland, though spicy variations have appeared. Even so, the blandness of the soup means that few manage the entire seven days, and often report feeling nauseous whenever they smell the soup toward the end of the week-long diet. It has also been noted that flatulence is a common side effect of the diet.A frequent comment on the soup is that it makes a good low-calorie filler meal, but is not substantial enough to be relied upon as a dietary staple. The newer, healthier versions of the cabbage soup diet however take the fact of missing protein into account and add protein (dairy and protein shakes) to the diet plan while decreasing sodium. External linksCabbage Soup Recipes on successful-diet-cabbage-soup.comDescription of cabbage soup diet on faddiet.comDescription and critical commentaryUtah State University commentary on fad diets; the Cabbage Soup diet is mentioned under "food specific diets"