The Better Homemaking Network

The results after a week of Good Housekeeping’s Amazing Soup Diet:

Pyrrh’s beginning measurements / ending measurements:

Weight: 170 lbs / 165.5 lbs
Stomach: 33.75″ / 33″
Hips: 41.5″ / 40″

This was with half-an-hour of aerobics and weight training every day but Sunday.   Looks like it all came off of my hips!

Mom lost a pound, with no increase in her activity.

Overall impression and review:

The way that the menus are published makes it hard to view conveniently; a printout results in strange columns with awkward page breaks, and each day’s soup recipe is on a completely different page.

The diet premise is sound. Whenever we did Weight Watchers we always made up a big batch of our favorite vegetable soup. We just added two more vegetables to our recipe to better match the Good Housekeeping version, and we like the improvement. Most of the soup variations would be better judged on individual tastes. We’ve got favorites, and will try new ideas.  After seven days of soup, it does leave us craving a steak or some spaghetti and meatballs!

I love strawberries, but there were so many of them; more fruit variety would have been great.

I personally prefer to have three snacks as well as three meals, and didn’t like when the menu didn’t allow for that. Admittedly, that wasn’t often; there was enough variety that I was able to save something from nearly every meal to eat a bit later on. The meals never left us hungry, either.

We liked the ideas well enough that we will try another week of it, with Good Housekeeping’s “Web Exclusives” variations. (After taking a couple days’ break for aforementioned steak and spaghetti!)

Pyrrh’s favorite meals:
Breakfast Day 4 – Honey-Cinnamon English Muffin
Breakfast Day 6 – Mexican Scramble
Lunch Day 5 – Waldorf Chicken Salad
Lunch Day 4 – California Turkey Pita
Dinner Day 1 – Minestrone Soup
Dinner Day 5 – Thai Shrimp Soup