The Possibly Amazing Soup Diet

I desperately need a nutritional reboot after the holidays, so I thought I'd try the Good Housekeeping Amazing Soup Diet. I stumbled across it long before I ever wrote for the magazine, and have been meaning to give it a whirl someday.

I plan to use it as a short-term jump-start on what I hope will be overall better nutrition and fitness throughout 2010. I discovered Livestrong, Lance Armstrong's wellness site, just before Thanksgiving, and in spite of a month of non-accountability and denial, I really like it a lot. Far and away the easiest online food and activity journal I've ever tried, and believe me, I've tried them all.

The Soup Diet adds up to 1,100 calories a day, which I think is unhealthy for me, even in my sedentary winter mode. So I'm upping it to 1200, and earning any extras with activity. And I'm customizing the breakfast/lunch suggestions to suit my own taste, keeping refined carbs to a minimum.

Basically, a day on the diet breaks down to 300 calories for breakfast, and 400 each for lunch and the soup supper. I made the basic batch today, and estimate I used up an extra 1,000 calories chopping vegetables.



But wow, it looked and tasted kick-ass when it was done. I had an enormous bowl of the fish stew version for supper, with tilapia and Cavender's Greek Seasoning.

You can get the full 4-1-1 here and the basic recipe and a week's worth of variations here, in case you want to play along. I'll report back in a week.