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Cabbage soup diet - application and effect
In northern Europe, sauerkraut (fermented cabbage), savoy cabbage and kale in winter were some of the few ways to prevent vitamin deficiency. Losing weight and a healthy diet are two different types of shoes: Eating plenty of fruit is healthy because of the vitamins in fruits, but the sugar content provides us with plenty of calories - for example, a big apple contains 20 calories more than a glass of Coca Cola.
The Kohlsuppendiät, more specifically diets, because there are a variety, is in the diet plan several days a week cabbage soups. The concept is simple: Kohl saturates and prevents cravings. From the as digestible as low-calorie soup, the affected people should eat as much as they want, and thus prevent bingeing. The "Fatburner" cabbage supposedly consume more calories than it supplies due to the heavy digestion, according to the thesis.
Cabbage soup is a traditional local dish, which is often used today to lose weight. However, the effect of Kohlsuppendiäten remains quite controversial. (Image: Nick Freund / fotolia.com) Representatives of such cabbage diets claim that a cabbage diet could reduce weight by five to eight kilos in one week. Critics believe this is a sham: The low-calorie cabbage diet works in conjunction with a nutrient deficiency due to the one-sided diet, draining, because the body on his own carbohydrate stores diet. The lack of protein also causes the body to break down muscles, and they weigh more than body fat. Burning of fat, meaning a sustained decrease in weight, is not.
In the medium term, a cabbage diet would even lead to weight gain: the body needs energy to supply the muscles. Therefore, someone who trains several times a week in the weight training center consumes up to three times more calories even when at rest than someone whose muscles are untrained.
Sports related diets are useful for this reason. Although you can lose weight without taking any exercise, if you consume fewer calories than the body consumes, a well-trained person can apply more calories. Weight training trainers eat, for example, six bread rolls or a large plate of pasta for breakfast in order to be able to supply their muscles at all.
Easy to organize
An advantage of the cabbage soup diet is that its ingredients are easy to obtain and very cheap. Instead of extremely expensive appetite suppressants or exotic foods, there is the hardware in every supermarket. Basic ingredients are, for example, white cabbage, kale or savoy cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, parsley or celery. Who buys a bunch of greens and a cabbage, has almost everything he needs except salt and pepper. In addition, the soup can be prepared in large quantities and frozen or filled in a thermos to be eaten on the go.
A Kohlsuppendiät is basically lent feasible. As basic ingredients can serve, for example, the savoy cabbage shown, but also white cabbage or kale. (Image: oxie99 / fotolia.com) sidedness
The focus on the "magic agent" Kohl also means that small pleasures in between are taboo. Depending on the degree of purism, even fruits or other vegetables are not allowed. Supplementing with turkey, chicken or low-fat fish would contradict pure teaching. Then it would still be a diet, but no more Kohlsuppendiät.
Even if the cabbage soup is full, cravings increase on the forbidden foods: appetite and hunger do not arise physiologically primarily because the stomach is empty, but because the organism lacks nutrients: In the case of the cabbage soup diet these are mainly proteins, but also carbohydrates.
In addition, cabbage is not a "simple food", especially if it comes on the table every day. Some people are actually disgusted by the smell of boiled cabbage, and presumably many more people are as uncomfortable with the bloating caused by the cabbage as the obtrusive smell of stool.
Many people who poked a cabbage soup diet report that they liked the soup in the first days, but later got sick of it when they only smelt cooked cabbage. The taste and smell of white cabbage are pervasive, regardless of whether it is seasoned with chili, garlic or Mediterranean herbs.
Positive aspects
Cabbage contains many vitamins and minerals as well as phytochemicals that promote good health and are likely to prevent cancer. Cabbage also contains a lot of fiber, but with the side effect of heavy flatulence. Generally, there is nothing wrong with a cabbage soup.
Loose variants
The cabbage soup diet is the same for everyone. Today, most cabbage soup diets provide free space that relaxes the monotonous diet. In some of these diets, the sufferers may treat themselves to fruit in between, while others are filled with vegetables other than cabbage for whole days; other cabbage soup diets also allow boiled potatoes, low-fat yoghurt and skimmed quark.
As a rule, it is recommended to drink plenty of water - up to three liters a day. Alcohol and coffee, however, are considered taboo. Some variants provide protein shakes or protein muesli for breakfast to prevent protein deficiency.
From a scientific point of view, there are few arguments for the cabbage diet and nutrition experts advise against its use. (Image: Africa Studio / fotolia.com) What do scientists say??
The German Nutrition Society warns of a cabbage diet as of all one-sided crash diets. The main criticism is the lack of protein. The claim that cabbage boosts fat burning also has no scientific basis.
In general, all diets that promise accelerated metabolism and increased burning of fat by certain foods are skeptical. The metabolism plays only a very minor role in whether we increase or decrease. The biological law is simple: we lose weight when we consume fewer calories than the body consumes, and we increase as we consume more calories.
Even with diseases that are associated with a disturbed metabolism such as thyroid problems, the effects on body weight are usually not serious. Even worse: If our metabolism gets so out of balance, that we therefore lose weight, it is associated with severe symptoms: balance and concentration disorders to unconsciousness, fatigue, fatigue, feelings of weakness. Even short breath due to lack of oxygen can be the result.
Conversely, if our metabolism moves beyond the spectrum of serious diseases, it has relatively little effect on how much we lose weight. Dr. Nadja Hermann dedicates herself to this mythical metabolism in an extra chapter of her book "Overcoming the Fat Logic".
According to supporters of the cabbage soup diet, the cabbage soup removes "slag" from the body through its fiber. But "slags" are an esoteric fantasy. Science is not aware of something like "slags" associated with the human body. When the cabbage soup diet works, it's because of the reduced calorie intake.
What or how much?
The cabbage soup diet is one of the diets that developed from the thought: It does not matter how much, but what you eat. These are in contrast to the diets that are about how much someone eats.
However, this debate is a bogus debate: cabbage, but also cod, turkey fillet, or skinny quark, for example, have far fewer calories than smoked eel, gooseneck or Roquefort cheese. A person can eat four to five times as much of it, until he comes to the same amount of calories.
But the result is the same: it is always important to stay below the amount of calories the individual body consumes. This amount is different mainly because of the body mass. For example, a muscular man of 100 kilograms and 2 meters tall would lose 2,000 or more calories per day, and a woman who barely moves and weighs 50 kilograms would have to reduce her daily calories to about 1,200 a day to lose weight.
The cabbage soup diet is rigorously eliminating high calorie foods. So instead of starving all day long to get a whipped cream sundae in the evening, those affected can actually eat a lot more because the cabbage has very few calories.
A typical cabbage soup
For a standard cabbage soup, buy about 5 onions, one kilo of carrots and one medium white cabbage, two peppers, two celery stalks and six fresh tomatoes. Suitable herbs are lovage, oregano, parsley or thyme. Ginger, chilli, black and white pepper harmonize with white cabbage, as well as garlic, wild garlic and chives.
They cut the vegetables into small pieces. First, boil the cabbage with five liters of water. Then reduce the heat and simmer the remaining vegetables over a low heat for another 20 minutes. The herbs are added just before the end.
The basic recipe can be varied without greatly changing the amount of calories. You can, for example, cook white turnips, add a little yaw from the garden, and use cabbage or savoy cabbies instead of cabbage.
But taboo are "classic" ingredients of a northern European cabbage soup such as Mettwürstchen, bacon, mutton or bone marrow. These served our ancestors for additional fat and calorie intake, which should be avoided in a diet just.
There is nothing against various vegetables such as pumpkin, salsify or zucchini, some "refine" the low-calorie diet even by green asparagus, lovers of exotic delights add sometimes bamboo shoots. Germinated cress and various sprouts give such a soup the icing on the cake.
If you have no experience with soup kitchen, be sure to note: the finer the vegetables, the later they add it to the soup. Fine means that a vegetable loses its taste and bite at low temperatures and with a short cooking time - even vitamins are lost. During salting they taste good. If you have little time or desire to snip, you can also use tomato paste or canned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes.
In fact, having a cabbage soup diet can often result in a significant reduction in weight in the short term, but it is usually not of a long-term nature. (Image: Voyagerix / fotolia.com) Benefits of a cabbage soup diet
The advantage of a cabbage soup diet is that it will visibly lose weight within a week. Also, the constituents of the cabbage soup diet are healthy if you take care to additionally supply proteins, for example in the form of lean quark.
Another advantage is that they can do well when they feel hungry and do not have an empty stomach.
Crash diet or long-term weight loss
As for all crash diets is also true for the cabbage soup diet: Who wants to sustainably reduce his weight and keep at a lower level, does not need special diets and should renounce them.
Since hardly anyone will eat mainly cabbage soup in the long run, a pure cabbage soup diet does not have a sustainable character. The cabbage soup diets even seduce, after over-feasting, for example, over Christmas, a "week of cabbage" to insert then again strike.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with incorporating cabbage into a general change in diet - on the contrary. For example, you can include low-fat fish with green salad, turkey breast with wild rice, Icelandic skyr with stevia as well as cabbage soup.
Much more useful than a week-long "diet attack", however, is to measure daily calories, compare them to their body mass index and calculate their individual calorie needs. There are now apps that you can download. If you eat more targeted, eat less, and stay below your calorie intake every day, then lose weight and keep your weight off! (Dr. Utz Anhalt)