Michelle had known that her 10th high school reunion was coming up for months. She had promised herself that she would get back down to her high school weight. But, as a busy mom and part time office administrator, she never made it to the gym. With her reunion only 2 weeks away, she turned to the cabbage soup diet to lose pounds in a week.

The cabbage soup diet is a popular program where you eat as much of the special soup as you want for 7 days. Every day, you are given special foods that you can eat in addition to the soup. For instance, one day you get all the vegetables you want plus one large baked potato with butter. Another day, you can have up to 8 bananas and 8 glasses of skim milk.

The cabbage soup diet is an excellent way to lose pounds in a week, but it should not be used for more than 7 days as it is not nutritionally balanced. In addition, one of the reasons it works is because it is a very low calorie semi-fast. On average, people on the diet eat only 800 calories a day.

Tawnie’s husband was coming home from Iraq after an 11 month deployment. During that time, she had often turned to food for comfort. She had put on about 15 pounds and didn’t want Jim to come home to a “fat wife.” Tawnie turned to the grapefruit diet to lose pounds in a week.

On the grapefruit diet, she ate a half grapefruit or 8 ounces of grapefruit juice at each meal. But, the other foods she ate had extremely limited carbs. For instance, breakfast consisted of two eggs and two bacon strips in addition to the grapefruit. Lunch was salad greens with unlimited meat and olive oil based salad dressing. Dinner was Meat or fish, and red or green leafy vegetables in addition to the salad. She had the grapefruit at lunch and dinner as well. Right before bedtime, she drank an 8 ounce glass of water.

Like the Cabbage Soup diet, the Grapefruit diet has very few calories. Most people eat about 1000 calories a day on the diet. There are no scientific studies that show that Grapefruit has any “magical” effect on weight loss or fat burning. But this low calorie low carb diet works for many, including Tawnie.

Tawnie was so excited to be able to meet Jim at the tarmac a slimmer person as a result of her effort to lose pounds in a week.