If all you eat is cabbage soup, you'll lose weight.

You might also lose your mind, or your will to live.

Do you know why the cabbage soup diet works (or the grapefruit diet, or any other diet that actually helps you drop pounds)? It works for one simple reason that gets lost in all the gloss and glitz of the weight loss industry.

The only way to lose weight effectively is to reduce your net caloric intake. That's simple physics folks. If you don't burn the calories you take in, your body is going to store the excess as fat. I guarantee it will be places you don't want.

The cabbage soup diet reduces your net caloric intake. Here's a secret, though. So does any effective diet. You can go with points, or portions, or any other nifty gimmick there is. Effective diets reduce your net caloric intake.

But what about the low-carb craze? Isn't that different? Nope. When you reduce your carbohydrate intake, and replace it with protein--prepare for a shocker--you eat less. That's the magic. By the time you stuff yourself with meat, you don't have room for other things. That effectively reduces your total caloric intake.

There. You never have to pay through the nose for another diet claiming to be different. The ones that work all do the same thing. The best ones don't eliminate entire categories of food. They simply focus on helping you reduce the number of calories you eat.

So don't feel like you have to live on cabbage soup for the rest of your life. That's not really living anyway.

Copyright by Roy Miller