Fat Burning Soup Diets Uncovered

Claiming to help you lose anywhere from 10 to 17 pounds of weight in just a week, fat burning soup diets like the cabbage soup diet have been referred to as the ultimate fad diets. How honest are these fat burning soup diets and do they live up to their claims?

After becoming popular in the 1980s, the cabbage soup diet is now circulated all over the Internet and as a result is popular still to this day. In fact, the actress Sarah Michelle Gellar has been known to use this fat burning soup diet to lose weight.

The idea behind fat burning soup diets is to fill you up on low-calorie soup and several other specific foods. The soup itself supposedly has fat burning properties. However, experts deny this and say that any weight loss achieved come as result of consuming very few calories, approximately 800 to 1000 calories to be specific.

Am I saying that these fat burning soup diets work for weight loss? Well, my answer is yes and no. The cabbage soup diet, for example, has been used by many people for short-term weight loss and is seemingly effective. However, when you take a closer look you realize that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Your body will always lose considerable weight when you drastically lower your calories and the amount of carbohydrates you consume, but this should not be confused with fat loss. Rather, you will lose water weight and becoming dehydrated, which will result in you feeling weak, having dizzy spells and even fainting if your blood sugar level goes down too much.

What's more, any water weight you lose is temporary and regained immediately when you go back to eating normally. If you thought that the 10 pounds you're losing would be permanent fat loss, then I'm sorry to disappoint you but that's simply not true.

Furthermore you'll also burn muscle tissue in addition to the water loss. This will reduce your metabolism speed making it easier to put the weight back on as fat. Not only will you have a slower metabolism, but when you drastically lower how many calories you consume you also encourage your body to conserve energy, which is stored as fat tissue.

In addition to everything I've mentioned, you also have to take into account the fact that fat burning soup diets can have high levels of sodium and MSG (monosodium glutamate) and leave you lacking in essential nutrients including protein, calcium and essential fatty acids, as well as some necessary vitamins and minerals.

Something else to remember is that if you exercise when on a fat-burning soup diet this can have negative consequences since you are consuming far less calories than what your body needs for to function properly. If you attempt resistance or strength training (lifting weights, for example) this can result in even more muscle loss as you do not have enough protein in your diet for muscle repair/growth.

I personally recommend against fat burning soup diets like the cabbage soup diet which are not only dangerously low in calories and leave you undernourished but also been shown to be ineffective for actual fat loss.