Day 7 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Bruno

“You shouldn’t do any more fad diets.”

To summarise: This diet has been about as much fun as being trapped in a lift, naked, with a swarm of angry bees and an animal rights activist. You don’t get used to being hungry; you just accept the constant, dull aching as much as you would a receding hairline or a clumsy offspring. There is little you can do about it, so best to try and ignore it and hope it goes away. Mealtimes have, by and large, been short staccatos of boredom and angst. I have never eaten with my head in one hand so much in my life. Probably because eating with a spoon requires only half of one’s body to be working sufficiently. My posture has disappeared, not least because I have spent at least 75% of my waking days doubled over in empty pain. The “eat as much as you like” mantra is a meaningless ploy and serves more as a catalyst for self-imposed guilt and paranoia (“Gosh, is that tiny handful of brown rice too much? I would hate to overeat at this late stage!), than it does for encouragement. Breakfast is largely ignored, not because I wouldn’t give my left eye for a pancake and an espresso, but because I don’t want to eat steamed greens at 9am. This means you eat irregularly, which I’m sure is against the principles of a weight-loss regime. This afternoon I nearly fainted. The cause? Writing a letter. Anything that turns me into a Victorian woman on the brink of marrying the wrong man is bad news, frankly.

My love-hate relationship with the soup fortunately comes to a marginally satisfying climax today. It’s now a pathetic quagmire of disfigured vegetables, and upon finishing the pot our house immediately begins to smell less like the games room at an old people’s home. I’ve overdosed on kale and our steamer has worked harder than Katie Holmes’ conscience, though with markedly better success.

Worse, the relatively consistent eating has made me feel podgy, aided by the customary drowsiness I have suffered since Day Three. I mostly communicate through a shrug of the shoulders and a glance in the other direction. In fact, if this diet was a mannerism, it would be a shrug. It’s neither precise nor flexible enough to be enjoyable, and by Day Two you’ll be too ravenous to fashion any common sense, leading to constant nervousness about how well you’re interpreting the instructions (which, at their most generous, are the equivalent of a wizard’s riddle). Pockets of respite in the giant overcoat of bland humourlessness do exist, but the honeymoon period is shorter than a list of cocktail bars in Riyadh. I am genuinely interested in the results, but won’t be surprised if it’s good news or bad, and there can’t be a worse endorsement for a weight-loss plan than that.

A final piece of advice for anyone looking to embark on the Cabbage Soup journey; don’t be near people who order cheap pizza. It will revolt you to your core. Rather the opposite of temptation, as you fight to the door through the misty screen of lardy garlic and pulpy, sweaty meat fumes, you will feel ashamed of- and disgusted by- the partakers. By God, I hope they’ve left the menu out for tomorrow morning…

Day 7 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Day Seven

Brown rice, unsweetened fruit juices and vegetables: Again stuff, stuff, stuff yourself. Be sure to eat your soup at least once this day.

Day 6 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Rigamoon

Ikea is a painful process at the best of times … it’s hell on a Saturday when you’re so hungry that the soulless furniture looks delicious.   We went on a flat trip and to be fair to Bitchney and Mr Carbs were very patient with mine and Bruno’s horrendously stroppy moods.  As a reward we allowed ourselves a pot of 10 small meatballs, heaven for five minutes, today is another meat day after all.  Not strictly allowed, but at this point, we didn’t care.

A quick meeting with a friend and then home for a bowl of soup before assembling some furniture and arranging books in colour order.  Then dinner of chicken and … wait for it … steamed kale.  Quite delicious compared to the monotony of cabbage and co. 

My problem at this point in the diet is threefold: firstly I’m more bored than yesterday, secondly i can’t face anymore cabbage soup and although tomorrow is the last day, it doesn’t feel like any sort of consolation, and thirdly, I don’t even think I’ve lost any weight.  I’m tired, devoid of energy and inspiration.  I miss Gwyneth.

Bruno

“I’m not making any more cabbage soup. I don’t care if we run out.”

Today I want the soup about as much as the parents of a newborn baby want pictures of their child e-mailed to everyone on the Sex Offenders List, alongside details of fixed abode, times it might be likely to be alone and a road map to Belgium.

Yesterday’s meat raffle was another sly trick. This morning I feel hungover, which I hardly think possible on six glasses of water and a mug of green tea. It can only be the emotion of losing a loved one after an all-too-brief affair. I’m being unfair as usual. We are permitted to eat more beef today, but we feel somehow wrong with that suggestion. It’s a diet, not a theme park, after all. The meatball breakfast hardly helped.

Eating like this has made me absurdly lethargic and utterly dismissive. I’m like the friend you didn’t really want to hang out with again after their lobotomy. I have the attention-span of a 5-year old with ADD at a convention for colourful objects that make a lot of noise. I’ve not showered in two days, though not for want of trying. I grab a towel, begin to undress, start reading a book and before I know it I’m back in bed with another mug of herbal tea, texting someone I haven’t seen in five years. I’m no nutritionist, but I imagine the body needs fuel much like a steam-train. If you throw coal onto the fire sporadically, then it stands to reason that the engine’s output will follow suit. That may explain why I feel like Kate Bush at midday and Laura Bush by mid-afternoon.

We opt for skinless, fatless (sometimes called “flavourless”) chicken for supper, and it is excellent, in all it’s baked robustness. Mountains of green leaves make up the support act, and we even dared add a lemon to the exclusive ingredients (that sly old face-distorter really knows how to loosen a crowd of prudes). Like yesterday however, this semi-replete sensation leaves without warning, and I am once again eyeing the soup like a delinquent teenager would his parents, after running away from home only to be returned two days later; “I don’t like you, but I need you and for now you’re all I’ve got.”

Luckily, by now I am well-accustomed to sleeping in a foetal position so as to minimise the pangs of hunger that shoot through my body. Given my non-existent energy-levels, the understated shivering is the most exercise I’ve been getting all week.

Day 6 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Day Six

Beef and Vegetables: Eat beef and vegetables this day to your heart’s content. You can even have 2 or 3 steaks if you like, with leafy green vegetables. No Baked Potato. Eat your soup at least once.

Day 5 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Bruno

“Meat.”

It is a testament to the mind-numbing nature of this diet that I had, really honestly, not even realised that I’ve been a vegetarian for the past four days. And not one of the good vegetarians, who might share a bucket of fried chicken with you when they’re drunk, or aren’t too fussed it you pour beef-stock gravy all over their precious alfalfa sprouts and splash their favourite ethically-dyed smock. No, by today I’m so herbivorous that I am more likely to be up a tree picking the sunniest leaves for supper than shaking it to make the baby quails fall out.

Now, I think about meat all the time. I love it so much, that I don’t even care how the previous sentence could be interpreted. Sometimes I make mental lists of my favourite porcine portions. I daydream about how awesome it would be if Buffalo wings were actually the wings of buffalos, and you had to straddle them to sink your teeth in. I consider foie gras a basic human right, and Peking duck a better invention than the internet. Now I’m standing in front of countless supermarket steaks, and am overcome with joy. Meat day has arrived, and I’m in the mood for a food party.

Can there be a more regal re-introduction to beef than the fillet steak? Soft, buttery forkfuls of flesh, cooked so rare the thing practically tip-toes itself to my plate. The accompanying tomatoes are frankly an embarrassment to themselves, rather like your younger, one-armed sister trying to serve drinks at a Poker night for the lads. But then I have had quite enough of fruit and vegetables this week.

And may we take a brief bow for the mighty sirloin? I could marvel at that fat for hours, indeed often do, though today the journey time from pan to stomach was less than the average calf takes to open its eyes.

To eat both in one day was pure luxury. The expensive beef demotes the cabbage soup to its proper position- a sad little prelude which even a homeless person would think about twice.

My temporary protein-high leads to a night at the theatre and some light bar-hopping. But of course, it is not the meat that fills you up, it’s the pommes dauphinoise. Without carbohydrate I am once again starving in a few short hours. Are McNuggets allowed? Doner kebab meat? Of course not. By bedtime I am the same curt nuisance as I was this morning. I’ve had my holiday fling, now it’s back to reality. At least there’s a photograph to fantasise over later.

Rigamoon

‘My wrist bones are protruding more, why am I losing weight from my wrists?’

After feeling really quite sleepy and devoid of vitality this week I found the energy to go to the gym and do 40 minutes of fairly hardcore swimming and then 100 sit ups before bed.  This makes me feel good, like a fat busting queen.  Eating two steaks was a bizarre experience and I have to admit not one that, on the whole, I enjoyed.  Don’t get me wrong, the first steak was delicious, tender, rare and melted in my mouth like a smooth, rich honeypot of gold.   The tomatoes were sweet and tasty and for 20 minutes I was in food heaven.  Fillet steak on a diet?  I could get used to this.  Until I had to eat it again for dinner.  I got three quarters of the way through and suddenly became overwhelmed by a sinful guilt about what I was doing.  What was I doing?  Who eats two steaks in one day?

Quite how this diet works baffles me.  I am very interested to see the results after a week.  Obviously, if I’ve not lost any weight I will be furious.  But who do I direct my anger at?  Who created this ‘diet’?  I love Bruno’s theory about two stoned dieticians coming up with this as a joke.  I do slightly feel like I’m the subject of a practical joke.  I am told with passion by successful cabbage soup dieters that ‘it works!!  It really does!!’  I am yet to be convinced.

So looking to tomorrow, more meat but with vegetables.  Oh .. and don’t forget the compulsory minimum on one bowl of cabbage soup …

Day 5 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Day Five

Beef And Tomatos: Ten to twenty ounces of beef and up to six fresh tomtoes. Drink at least 6 to 8 glasses of water this day to wash the uric acid from your body. Eat your soup at least once this day. You may eat broiled or baked chicken instead of beef (but absolutely no skin-on chicken). If you prefer, you can substitute broiled fish for the beef one one of the beef days (but not both).

Day 4 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Rigamoon

This diet is boring.  Boring, boring, boring.  The same boring soup every day.  The same boring additions to accompany the boring soup.  Am I boring you yet? 

Today we were allowed up to eight bananas and as much skimmed milk as we liked.  As much skimmed milk as I like?  That’s none, ever.   So as you can imagine,  I wasn’t particularly enthralled by today’s menu.  The obvious solution was to liquidise said ingredients and create milkshakes (minus the ice cream, semi-skimmed milk, sugar and vanilla that I would ordinarily add), the end result was like eating cardboard mashed with cotton wool, the most bizarre sensation.  I scoffed at the preposterous idea that one might eat eight bananas in a day but ending up scoffing a hearty six and a half.  Amazing what hunger can drive you to do.

The Rockstar came over today.  Bruno decided that to make up for the lack of actual cooking this diet allows, he would get his kicks from cooking The Rockstar lunch.  ‘What food don’t you like?’, Bruno enquired, ‘cucumbers’ The Rockstar replied, ‘splendid, I’m going to make you a killer lunch.’  By killer, Bruno meant ‘I’m going to block up your arteries and satisfy your stomach with the most delicious, calorific lunch I can possibly imagine served with lashings of butter.  A ham, cheese and harissa sandwich, but not with bread, oh no, with turkey for bread .. TURKEY; pan fried then baked and served on a bed of mashed potato full of milk (semi, not skimmed), butter, cheese, garlic and onion.  At this point I pretty much hate Bruno.  I want that for lunch.  I want that to touch my tastebuds, fill my stomach and leave me feeling full and happy.

Again, at this point in the regime I am beginning to remember how happy food makes me.  Food is supposed to be enjoyed not endured.  And tomorrow we get to eat between 10 and 20oz of beef.  Weird.

Day 4 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Bruno

“This milkshake is expanding in my mouth.”

I am wondering what the conversation leading to the release of this diet plan sounded like.

Dietician 1: Okay, we have six days, but we’re one short. Any ideas?

Dietician 2: Hmmm… What are people least excited to eat?

Dietician 1: Fruit and vegetables.

[Dietician 2 hands Dietician 1 the eighteenth spliff of the day…]

Dietician 2: What are we making them eat on Days One and Two?

Dietician 1: Fruit then vegetables.

Dietician 2: Day Three?

Dietician 1: Fruit and vegetables.

[Both crease into hysterical laughter, taking a minute to calm down…]

Dietician 2: Wait, wait… [starts to giggle]… I’ve an idea.

Dietician 1: What?

Dietician 2: What about bananas?

Dietician 1: Huh?

Dietician 2: A day of bananas! Come on, it’s brilliant!

Dietician 1: Nobody is going to fall for that. We’re trying our luck with the beef day as it

is…

Dietician 2: What if we tell them that they can’t eat bananas on Day One and Day Three,

but they have to eat eight bananas on Day Four?

[Short pause as they look at each other, then more uncontrollable laughter…]

Dietician 1: Bananas and cabbage soup! Genius! We’ll tell them bananas are special.

Dietician 2: Yeah, special bananas from Skinnyland. Do you think they’ll believe us?

Dietician 1: Fat people will believe anything. Pass the nougat…

Apparently the bananas are meant to stop me craving anything sweet. I don’t crave anything sweet. I crave anything. Actually, that’s a tiny fib. What I don’t want is bananas and skimmed milk. Particularly not when, as blended into a milkshake (or “milkfake”), every difficult mouthful expands like a banoffee tampon.

Drinks in Mayfair this evening (and by “drinks” of course I mean “Just a glass of tap water for me, please, and then I’m running off so I don’t foam at the mouth when the menus arrive”), which leads me to my final assertion of the day. It is perfectly possible to socialise on this diet. You won’t be any fun, but at least you’ll have the ability to clear the bar with a single fart.

Day 4 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Day Four

Bananas and skimmed Milk: Eat as many as eight bananas and drink as many glasses of skimmed milk as you would like on this day, along with your soup. This day is supposed to lessen your desire for sweets.

Day 3 - The Cabbage Soup Diet

Bruno

“I hate this diet.”

I so desperately wanted to be optimistic about today. Our choices have effectively doubled as we are allowed to combine the items from the previous two days. Let’s think. Spinach and pear bisque? Apple and lettuce terrine? No, two negatives do not make a positive here. They merely double the misery.

I have barely left my bed today, which can’t be a good thing. The kitchen is not the comforting place it used to be. I feel as though I am committing a series of small crimes every time I walk in there. Steaming kale, slicing a pear, stemming some broccoli, heating small bowls of cabbage soup… I feel every other item on the shelves staring at me in disgust. You know you’re not right if you feel judged by half a packet of tempura batter and a jar of pesto.

Anyone with a fond feeling towards food must surely agree that half the joy is in the cooking. I like preparing my meals; it’s the most methodical component of my life. That has disappeared. You make a giant pot of soup at the beginning, and then supplement its diminishing appeal with ingredients that really don’t need your culinary flourishes. I can imagine watercress on a photo shoot for a cookbook: “Oh, no make-up for me please. I’m lucky, I was born this way. Just wash me gently and I’ll take my place.” I want to chop, and marinade, and stir. Not just peel off another leaf straight into my mouth. All enjoyment has been taken out of eating.

I take my floundering vitality out for an evening. Hosted by the sweetest couple imaginable, we eat salad leaves and cocktail beetroots. I am constantly apologising for being such a drip. “No, really, it’s fine! We usually eat salad if we’re not out for the evening. Honestly…” I want to believe them, but guests are an excuse to get drunk on a weeknight, not crack open a couple of bags of salad.

Before weakly passing out in bed (again), I review tomorrow’s itinerary. Bananas and skimmed milk. Not exactly the Bonnie and Clyde of the food world, are they? Rigamoon assures me that we can make milkshakes. I wonder how I might be able to consume that with a knife and fork.

Rigamoon

This is a mixture of days 1 and 2, with NO baked potato, a real shame.  The headache has gone though which is great news. 

Lunchtime, steamed kale and brocolli on a bed of spinach and watercress.  I’m an extremely slow eater and an obsessive chewer, most of lunch was taken up by my staring through the prongs of my fork (you know when you hold it really close to your eyes so it feels like you’re in prison?) stewing over my  internal debate as to whether I was using more calories chewing my food to liquid or if I would burn more with the effort my stomach would have to go to in digesting bigger lumps of food.  If anyone has the answer to this question, please do let me know.  This diet is driving me to severe boredom.  I don’t ever want to see cabbage soup again and we’ve got to make the second batch in the morning, urgh.

I headed to a meeting straight after lunch paranoid that on every word there was the scent of a thousand brocolli heads and embarrassed by the gurgling in my stomach (please don’t fart, please don’t fart, I did one yesterday, 3 words, oh.  my.  gosh.).  Actually, whilst we’re on the subject of farting, it’s probably the worst thing about this diet and I know it’s about to get worse.  If you’re doing this in the office, colleagues beware!

I retire tonight with a feeling of dread about tomorrow, I am absolutely starving and I’m not enjoying this one bit.  We have to continue to eat this wretched soup daily, bring on Friday and the meat!