Day 7 & Final Weigh in!!!

DAY 7- RICE & VEGGIES

Hey everybody, well I did it, 7 longgggg days of this crazy diet eating foods with no flavor and having my willpower tested to the max!!

Surprisingly the week went by faster than I thought it would, and I'm just really relieved that this diet is over. My last day was Saturday June 23, but I'm writing this Sunday morning.

Day 7 actually wasn't too bad. I started the day eating rice and leftover stir fried veggies. I was pretty stuffed after that, and it carried me till about 2pm. By then I was starving so I ate my LAST bowl of cabbage soup (there was just no way by Day 7 that I was going to be able to eat 2 bowls of that crap lol)

I was sooo full after that bowl. The soup really is very filling (as it's filled with sooo many veggies). I did find that I was eating every 2 -3 hours on day 6 and 7 (guess my metabolism was kicking in) so a few hours later I had more rice and veggies.

For dinner I steamed carrots and broccoli and stir fried that in olive oil spray and garlic (it was sooooo yummy!!) and mixed that with rice. I actually didn't eat anything after that as I had a headache half the day yesterday and didn't even want to eat anymore.

Overall Day 7 was good, it was nice to eat rice, and I drank about 5 glasses of water through the day which also filled me up. I found if I got a bit hungry, I would just down a glass of water and then I would be fine. I have to say I haven't felt bloated at all since day 5 so that's been really nice.

My cravings were very minimal today unlike the past 2 days which I feel have been the worst for cravings! As I had a headache (don't know if it was due to this diet or not) I went to bed early (also so that day 8 could come quicker and I could eat NORMAL foods again!!)

 Food Recap

1 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup of veggies-9am

1 full bowl of soup-2pm

1/2 cup rice, less than 1/2 cup veggies-4pm

1 cup rice, 2 cups veggies-6:45pm

Water Intake= 5 glasses

P#=7

My overall thoughts of the Cabbage Soup Diet

Negatives

Bloating-I felt very very bloated (especially after meals) every day except day 6 and day 7. I feel on day 5 after introducing meat back into my system I just didn't take it well, and I was extremely bloated, and lethargic.

Cravings- The first few days of the diet were ok, I did have cravings but they were quite minimal and I was still very motivated to stick with the diet. Day's 5 & 6 were HORRIBLE for cravings, I had cravings for sugar, sweet foods, and basically anything with flavor in it. I found that if I ate soup during those cravings they would subside, but it still sucked having to eat soup rather than ANYTHING ELSE!

The Soup-After a few days I was getting pretty sick of eating that soup (yea yea its to be expected) but 7 days of the SAME OLD SOUP got to be a bit much. The soup itself wasn't disgusting, but you definitely have to get creative if you're going to eat the same thing everyday. I found adding pepper to each bowl I had REALLY helped!!

Tired-I was pretty tired the whole entire week, some days I had more energy (day 4 , 6, 7) but the other days I was pretty lazy, and didn't have much energy for anything.

Bathroom Breaks- I know this comes with the territory but it was getting pretty irritating going to the bathroom about 8-15 times a day.

Water Intake-As it's always been difficult for me to drink A LOT of water everyday, this diet definitely challenged that, but I have to say I feel I've done pretty good in drinking a lot of water every day (definitely way more than I drink on a regular basis) and I feel my water intake played a big role in my weight loss during this diet!

Positives

Awesome sleep- I have to say I had the best sleep every night while on this diet. I'd be exhausted every night by 9pm (which I never was before) and I would get a good 8 hours deep sleep in.

Feeling Full-I have never been so full after meals like I have been on this diet. One bowl of soup, or one cup of fruit and I was stuffed. It was great because I was eating small low calorie portions, but eating numerous times a day. I'm definitely going to stick with trying to eat smaller portions more often to keep this weight off.

Weight loss! Of course the best part for me of this diet was the weight loss. I was losing on average 0.8 of a pound a day, and I feel that was my BIGGEST motivator to stick with this diet (believe me there were more a than a few times where I was about to quit, but I didn't!) I think it was day 5 that I was starting to see noticeable physical change in my weight loss, and that was sooooo rewarding! Of course getting compliments of my weight loss was sooo cool as well!!

Feeling Good-Although each day of this diet came with its ups and downs, I have to say overall on day 8, I'm feeling really good. This diet is a great cleanse and I do feel so much better overall, its hard to explain, but its a good feeling knowing your body went through a cleanse and got rid of a lot of water/toxins/waste.

Recommendations

So...do I recommend this diet to others?..Well if you are dead set on losing weight fast or wanting to go through a good cleanse then this is the diet for you. It's a very very quick way to lose weight, but it defiantly comes at a price of having your willpower tested significantly.  I DO want to stress that you should ONLY do this diet for 7 days, and if you wish to lose more weight, it is highly recommended you wait 2 weeks before you start this diet again.  For your own health, you need to give your body a break in between rounds.  If you have any health concerns it is also recommended you talk to your doctor first before trying this diet.  

This is a very strict diet, and going off course and even cheating a little bit will absolutely set you off track. It's very important to stick with every day's meal plans, drink lots of water, and put as little salt in your cabbage soup as possible (I think the only salt that was in my soup was from the 4 cups of V8 juice I put in there and even that was low-sodium juice). I cut out the options of putting onion soup mix and bouillon cubes in my soup, and I even cut out the butter that I was allowed to have on my baked potato on Day 2. I took this diet pretty seriously, because even after day 1 I knew that it was going to be a rough week, and if I was going to go through this crazy strict plan, I might as well go full force to get the best results.

I recommend doing this diet on a week where you don't have a lot of plans and get togethers, as I could see those events having huge temptations (drinks and food). I was pretty much a homebody most of the week, and when I was at my bfs or at work I always brought soup and the food that was allotted for that day with me, so if I got hungry I would never turn to any other food.

I do recommend doing this diet on your days off (or during the majority of your days off) if possible, because I personally experienced fatigue, cravings, headaches and bloating which all were uncomfortable, and I definitely wasn't 100% myself when it came to my concentration on anything (but overall it wasn't too significant). I've read that many people have done this diet during work days and they just bring their soup with them and plug on through the day. I give them a lot of credit, because even though I worked a few days this week, I couldn't imagine working the majority of the week feeling the way I was feeling. I was actually going to start this diet before my graduation (which I should have) but I was working a lot and was soooo busy that I felt it would benefit me more if I did it on a low work week and so I specifically waited for this week. I feel just preparing myself for this diet really helped with my motivation and willpower.

I first heard about this diet online a few weeks ago, and I soon began watching numerous YouTube videos of peoples Cabbage Soup Diet Experiences (I totally recommend watching the videos, some of them are pretty hilarious!!). I also searched out many blogs of people who have completed the diet, and definitely did a lot of research to know what I would expect and if I should really do the diet.

Lastly, I recommend eating as much of the soup as possible. They said the more soup you eat the more you will lose, and I saw that on days where I had more soup. I found it harder and harder to eat the soup as days went by so I chose not to eat that much, and although I'm really happy with my weight loss, I feel if I had drank more soup I probably would have lost more weight.

So here it is...my weigh ins for the week, and my final results!

My Weekly Weigh In's

Day 1= loss of 1.4

Day 2= loss of 1.8

Day 3= loss of 0.8

Day 4= loss of 1

Day 5= loss of 0.8

Day 6= loss of 1.4 (see note on Day 6 Blog)

Day 7 = loss of 0.8

OVERALL LOSS OF: 8 pounds!!!!

Thanks for coming along my journey of The Cabbage Soup Diet and thanks for all the comments and encouragement! They say the hardest part of this diet is keeping the weight off, so I will be posting a blog at the end of this week with a weigh in to let you all know if I was able to keep off the weight for the first week!!

*All photos (that weren't taken by me) are courtesy of Google images*