Preparation Is Key

• Approach your soup diet like a mission. You won't want to be venturing into the temptation zone known as the supermarket while you're on soup rations for a week, so get everything you need to make your soup, plus the extras you're supposed to have or are allowed to have over the course of your diet. Consider how you'll prepare those extras as well, and be ready. For instance, on the popular Sacred Heart Memorial Soup Diet, you have one day in the course of the diet where you can eat unlimited amounts of beef and tomatoes. Come up with a few different ways to prepare your beef so you are less tempted to stray from the plan.
  
  Preparing the soup is also critical. Many soup diets advise you to cook the amount of soup you'll need for the entire regimen on day one. Although that may be a time-saving method, cooking up a few batches as you go has advantages. You can get to play around with textures. Maybe you want the veggies chunky in batch one, but by batch three, you want a smooth, pureed soup. Options will make the plan a little less painful to stick with.
  
  

Variety Is the Spice

• Adding grated cheese and buttery croutons to your soup may defeat the purpose, but you can experiment with zero-calorie spices to keep things lively. Add a sprinkle of curry powder in one serving or a dash of basil in another. Hot sauce can also perk up a bowl of soup. As long as you are not adding calories, doing what you can to alter the flavor of your soup will not get you off track while on your diet.
  
  One big exception is salt. Salt can lead to fluid retention, which can slow the march of your pounds off your body. Avoid adding additional salt, including salt substitutes that have MSG.
  
  

Don't Be a Hero

• Nearly every soup diet couples the basic soup with an eating plan for each day you're on the diet. These plans are frequently restrictive: bananas and milk one day, all brown rice the next. Although it may be tempting to see if you can live on the soup alone and increase your weight-loss potential, these foods are there for a reason. They help give you some additional nutrients, keep your blood sugar up and keep your calorie count at a level where your metabolism doesn't shut down completely. Further, while they don't exactly make the diet healthy, they do make it a little more palatable. Not only are you playing games with your health when you leave out the extras, but you also increase the chances that you're going to find yourself on the chocolate cookie binge diet three days into your soup plan.