Lose Weight with the Vegetable Soup Diet
If you are looking for a diet based on hearty food that is actually filling during mealtimes, then you may want to consider the vegetable soup diet, also known as the 7-Day Soup Diet. Forget about cabbage, apple cider vinegar, and rice diets that not only make weight loss a miserable task, but they can be potentially dangerous for some people.
The Vegetable Soup Diet Plan
The vegetable soup diet is a simple and fun diet to follow because the nutrient-rich soup not only provides your body with plenty of complex carbohydrates, but it also tastes wonderful! The best thing about this diet is that you don’t have to live off of vegetable soup as some other diets mandate. With the vegetable soup diet, you slowly introduce vegetable soup into your diet by replacing a meal and snacks with the soup for seven days. As long as you make healthy choices for your remaining meals, you should see a steady but healthy weight loss. An example of a day on this diet would be: high-fiber cereal with skim milk for breakfast, a leafy green salad with grilled chicken for lunch, and vegetable soup for snacks and supper. As the week progresses, you can substitute more meals with vegetable soup to see quicker weight loss, or you can simply munch on it as a snack whenever you feel peckish.
How It Works
The idea of the vegetable soup diet is to lower one’s total caloric intake. All food contains carbohydrates which the body converts into energy. The carbohydrates in vegetables are much more complex than the carbs found in sweets and starchy foods, and in most cases of complex carbs, the body actually uses up more energy to convert the carbs than it actually gets from them in return. Therefore more complex carbs you take in, the more energy your body will burn to convert them, resulting in weight loss.
How to Make Vegetable Soup
Don’t feel as though you can’t do the vegetable soup diet because you’ve never made soup from scratch. The following recipe is a cinch to make and completely conforms to the requirements of this diet. So, give it a try and see if it works for you!
Ingredients:
1 pound of carrots, chopped
4 cups of chopped onions
4 large celery stalk, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed or chopped
2 (28 oz) cans of tomatoes in juice
6 cups of chopped or shredded green cabbage
3/4 pound of prepared green beans
1 1/4 pounds of zucchini, sliced into half circles
2 (6 oz) bags of whole baby spinach leaves
1 (48 oz) can of chicken broth
6 cups of water
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation:
The easiest cooking method for this recipe is via a 12-quart slow cooker, but you can also use a large stock pot or two medium pots. Heat the pot over a medium heat and add just a bit of oil to keep the vegetables from sticking. Toss in the carrots, celery, onions, and garlic. Keep an eye on the vegetables and stir them often. After about eight minutes, the vegetables should have begun to soften.
Next, add in the two cans of tomatoes—juice and all. Go ahead and add in the broth and water. Mix well. Stir in the green beans, cabbage, and salt and pepper. Turn up the heat to medium-high and stir the mixture occasionally.
After about 10 minutes, reduce the heat to low and cover with a lid. After another 10 minutes, stir the mixture, then add the zucchini and spinach. Turn the heat to high and allow the soup to come to a boil. After it reaches a boil, cover with the lid and reduce the heat to low and simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.