The cabbage soup diet is okay, I guess, but maybe not for the long haul. It’s probably fine as a quick jumpstart if you need to drop more than 20 pounds fast.
One little tip—eat like a baby. Have tiny meals every three hours, even if it’s just a few lettuce leaves, a scrap of lean meat, or half a banana... just enough to keep your metabolism from falling asleep.
If you eat next to nothing and feel starving, even the soup won't help much in the end.
The simplest way—though it involves a lot of sacrifice—is basically eating what bodybuilders eat, just scaled down for women.
Figure out your basal metabolic rate—that's literally the calories your body burns in 24 hours just sitting there doing nothing, based on age, sex, height, and weight—then subtract about 400 or 500 calories to get your deficit.
Add some exercise... I know, starting is hard, but maybe try replacing one addiction with another.
After ten days of working out, you'll probably feel a weird sense of guilt if you miss a day. It sounds impossible, but you can actually get hooked on exercising, and the perks speak for themselves. Lift some weights—you won't bulk up because you don't have the genetics for it anyway.
Try three days of cardio, four days of lifting, and one rest day.
Switch things up so your body doesn't get used to it—like hitting legs one day and arms the next.
Eat this:
Lean protein: turkey or chicken breast.
Veggies: broccoli is great, cauliflower too; otherwise, stick to leafy greens and seasonal stuff.
Forget the starchy vegetables—potatoes, peas, beans... whatever else is heavy.
Fruit? Sure, but never two kinds at once. If you had a banana, wait three hours before having an apple or a peach.
Maybe skip watermelon; it's mostly water and has a lot of bad sugars, which acts like a diuretic.
Rice, fish—even canned tuna is fine if you rinse off the oil—and low-fat cottage cheese. Try not to add salt; staying bland is better.
Basically, aim to stay under 20 grams of fat a day.
To track that, www.myfitnesspal.com works wonders—set up a profile, plug in your height and weight, and log everything you eat to see your weekly progress.
Once you see the scale moving after a few days, you'll start seeing all those nice little stats.
And most importantly—seriously, most importantly—drink massive amounts of water. Force yourself to do it. If you don't drink enough, your body just holds onto fluid, and the scale won't budge.
Even when those fat cells empty out (thin women basically just shrink the size of their fat cells rather than the number of them—since we can't actually destroy them, which is why it's so easy to gain weight back)—
Rule number two: six small meals a day. There's nothing better; it turns your body into a little fat-burning machine.
June is already here, so don't panic about summer. Just make the decision today, and you might actually be happy with yourself for a long time.
Step on the scale once a week—once you see a 5 or 6 pound drop and you know it isn't just your cycle, get right back to work.
No more YO YO dieting again.
