Cabbage soup can help you drop 7-10 pounds in a week, but only about one-third of that loss is actual fat—the rest is water weight and muscle that you'll likely regain once you stop the diet.
Keep reading to understand why this approach comes with serious health risks and discover smarter ways to use cabbage for sustainable weight loss.
What Happens When You Eat Cabbage Soup for Weight Loss
The numbers look impressive at first glance. You can drop 7-10 pounds in just one week on the cabbage soup diet.
But here's what those numbers don't tell you: only about 34% of that weight loss is actual body fat.
The remaining two-thirds? That's water weight and muscle mass leaving your body.
This dramatic drop happens because your daily calorie intake plummets below 1,000 calories.
To put that in perspective, a typical serving of cabbage soup contains just 45-134 calories per cup, depending on what ingredients you add.
Cabbage itself brings only 22 calories per cup to the table and consists of 92% water.
The high fiber content does help you feel full despite eating so few calories, which makes the restriction slightly more bearable.
But let's be clear about what's actually happening here.
This isn't some special fat-burning magic—it's simply extreme calorie restriction doing what extreme calorie restriction always does.
Your body has no choice but to shed weight when you're eating that little, though much of what you lose isn't what you wanted to lose in the first place.
The Real Reason Cabbage Soup Causes Weight Loss
Despite what some diet proponents claim, cabbage doesn't possess special fat-burning properties.
The weight loss mechanism is straightforward and unglamorous: extreme calorie restriction forces your body to tap into stored energy when you're not eating enough.
The exceptionally low caloric density of cabbage soup means you can eat a large volume of food while still creating a massive calorie deficit.
The fiber in cabbage does play a supporting role.
It promotes satiety, which makes the severe restriction slightly easier to tolerate.
You feel fuller for longer, even though you're consuming far fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its current weight.
Here's what might surprise you: no scientific evidence or formal studies actually support the effectiveness of this diet.
Not a single health authority recommends this eating regimen.
The diet traces back to the 1950s and gained traction as fad diet folklore in the 1980s, spreading through word of mouth and photocopied sheets passed around offices.
It has never undergone rigorous clinical testing.
Think about that for a moment.
This approach has been around for decades, yet no research institution has bothered to validate its claims.
That tells you something important about how the medical and nutrition communities view its credibility.
Why the Weight Always Comes Back
Your body starts fighting back faster than you might expect.
As early as three days into the diet, your metabolic rate begins to slow down.
This is your body's survival response to what it perceives as starvation, and it creates weight loss plateaus that frustrate dieters.
More importantly, this metabolic slowdown makes it significantly harder to maintain results after you stop the diet.
The rapid weight loss you see initially comes from depleting glycogen stores—carbohydrates your body keeps in reserve for quick energy.
Here's the catch: glycogen molecules bind to water, so when you deplete these stores, you lose the water attached to them.
This explains why the scale drops so dramatically in the first few days.
When you resume normal eating, your body immediately works to rebuild these emergency stores.
The water weight returns quickly, often within days of eating normally again.
Most people watch the pounds creep back on unless they make permanent lifestyle changes, which the diet does nothing to teach or support.
The temporary nature of these results makes the approach ineffective for long-term weight management.
You're essentially borrowing weight loss from your future self, only to pay it back with interest when your metabolism has slowed and your body is primed to regain.
Health Risks You Need to Know About
The inadequate protein intake on this diet leads directly to loss of lean muscle mass—the very tissue that helps you burn calories at rest.
Meanwhile, the diet lacks essential nutrients without supplementation, setting you up for deficiencies that can take months to correct.
Common side effects that most people experience include flatulence, cramping, bloating, dizziness, weakness, lightheadedness, fatigue, and abdominal pain.
These aren't minor inconveniences—they can interfere with your daily activities and work performance.
More serious complications emerge with prolonged use.
The low-fat nature of the diet prevents your gallbladder from emptying regularly, which can lead to gallstone formation.
Even more alarming: consuming fewer than 800 calories daily is associated with irregular heart rhythms, which can be fatal for those with a history of heart disease.
The diet can also dangerously lower blood glucose levels, making it particularly risky for people with diabetes who take insulin or blood sugar-lowering medications.
The mental health toll deserves attention too.
Severe restriction may cause feelings of deprivation, poor self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.
This increases the risk for developing eating disorders, especially in vulnerable individuals.
Who should avoid this diet entirely:
- Anyone with hormonal dysfunction
- Pregnant or breastfeeding women
- People with a history of disordered eating
- Individuals with diabetes
Even if you don't fall into these categories, you should never follow this diet for longer than one week—even under medical supervision.
The risks simply outweigh any temporary benefits.
A Smarter Way to Use Cabbage for Weight Loss
Here's the good news: cabbage itself is an excellent low-calorie, nutrient-dense food worth including in your diet.
You just don't need to eat it exclusively to get the benefits.
Cabbage delivers vitamins C and K, B vitamins, potassium, manganese, and calcium. It also contains anti-inflammatory compounds like flavonoids and anthocyanins that may support weight management through reducing inflammation.
Studies confirm that eating more low-energy-dense foods like cabbage helps people feel full while reducing total calorie intake—the exact outcome you want, without the extreme restriction.
Practical ways to incorporate cabbage:
You can add it to stir-fries for crunch and volume, toss it into salads for fiber, or use leaves as wraps to replace high-calorie tortillas.
Fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut enhances its probiotic content, which may support gut health and indirectly aid weight management.
A reasonable approach involves incorporating 1-2 cups of cabbage into your daily meals as part of a balanced diet.
Some nutritionists have developed modified high-protein soup versions that address the original diet's flaws.
These improved recipes add bone broth or chicken for protein, beans for fiber and resistant starch, and MCT oil for sustained energy.
Starting meals with broth-based soup—whether cabbage-based or not—can reduce your overall calorie consumption at that meal without leaving you hungry.
The key difference: this approach is sustainable when combined with variety rather than treating soup as a mono-diet.
You get the benefits of cabbage without the deprivation and health risks.
Better Alternatives That Actually Work
Evidence-based approaches like the Mediterranean diet or DASH diet produce lasting results because they focus on nutritious whole foods rather than extreme restriction.
These aren't quick fixes—they're sustainable eating patterns designed for long-term success.
The core principles are straightforward.
Reduce sugar and refined carbohydrates, which spike blood sugar and leave you hungry shortly after eating.
Ensure adequate protein at each meal to preserve muscle mass and boost satiety.
This matters more than most people realize: protein helps you feel full longer and prevents the muscle loss that slows your metabolism.
Incorporate resistance training alongside dietary changes.
While cardio burns calories during the workout, resistance training preserves and builds muscle mass, which keeps your metabolism elevated even when you're not exercising.
This combination addresses both sides of the weight management equation.
Here's where cabbage soup fits into a smarter strategy: use it strategically as part of a diverse, nutrient-rich diet.
You might have it as a starter before meals, as a low-calorie lunch option a few times per week, or as a side dish.
Cabbage can be a valuable component without being the entire solution.
Long-term weight management requires permanent lifestyle changes, not week-long diet sprints.
The Mediterranean and DASH approaches teach you how to eat in a way you can maintain for years, not just days.
They address sustainable eating patterns that become second nature rather than temporary restrictions you count down the days to abandon.
Conclusion
The cabbage soup diet delivers fast results that disappear just as quickly, while potentially harming your health in the process.
Cabbage itself deserves a place in your weight loss plan—just not as the star of a restrictive mono-diet.
Save yourself the misery and metabolic damage by incorporating cabbage into a balanced eating pattern that you can actually maintain long-term.
