Sacred Heart Diet

So, I've seen this diet around for a while, and I've decided to make it into the first one I test for the site. I have seen various recipes that all call for similar ingredients, and have devised my own recipe from the examples noted, but tailored to my own tastes.

Also known as the GM diet, the Sacred Heart diet apparently comes from a hospital by the same name who puts overweight patients through the eating cycle before heart surgery to establish a total weight loss of around 10 or 15 pounds. I highly doubt that this is true. But hey, I'm not here to find out where the diet came from, I'm here to find out if it works.

So, here are the rules of the diet.

1. You must eat the soup (recipe below) along with the assigned complimentary foods for each day.
2. You must drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, and may have any of the other following beverages: black coffee, cranberry juice, skim milk.
3. This diet does not allow alcohol or carbonated beverages (including diet coke, or whatever your usual pop fix is.) and during no point in the diet can you eat bread, sweets, or fried food.

And here is the meal plan.

Day 1: Soup + fruit. Eat as much soup, and as much fruit as you'd like. Any fruit at all, with the exception of bananas.
Day 2: Soup + vegetables. Today you will switch fruits for veggies. The diet notes that this should include one baked potato at dinner time.
Day 3: Soup + fruits + vegetables. Have any fruits and veggies that you'd like today, but no potato, and still no banana.
Day 4: Soup + bananas + milk. Eat as many bananas today as you want, and make sure to drink lots of milk.
Day 5: Soup + beef + tomatoes. Beef calls for 10 - 20 oz of beef. Which is about 1 - 2 steaks, or 2 - 3 hamburgers' worth. Also, a can of tomatoes.
Day 6: Soup + beef + vegetables. Same as Day 5, except you may eat other veggies than tomato. Any veggie with the exception of potato.
Day 7: Soup + brown rice + vegetables. You may also have a different fruit juice today, instead of or in addition to, the cranberry.

Finally, here is the soup recipe.

The original recipe seems to be posted differently on each website that I read. But there are some things which appear in most, or all of the recipes. All of them called for 2 to 4 packets of soup mix. Most websites said onion, but I have seen chicken noodle as well. I went with onion, because noodles are carbs, and this diet doesn't seem to want those included. Onions, green peppers and tomatoes were the other key ingredients that kept popping up. Numbers varied, but 2 - 4 of each seems to be agreed upon. Other than that, a variety of other vegetables (usually "negative-calorie" types, and never starchy types, like potato or dry beans) and in some, an additional method of soup flavoring, such as broths, herbs and spices.

Here's the recipe that I chose:

2 packets onion soup mix
1 can beef broth
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can peas
1 can whole baby corn
1 can baby carrots
2 green peppers
2 onions

What I did:
First I filled a big pot with about 6 cups of water. I boiled the fresh veggies (green pepper and onions) until they were soft. Then I added all the canned veggies. After that, when I made sure my water to veggie ratio was okay, and I had enough room left in my pot, I poured in my broth, and the 2 packets of soup flavoring. I boiled it all for a few minutes, and then turned the stove down and let the pot simmer until everything was soft.

Results of this was a nice light vegetable soup. Tastes almost like the store bought kind. It's definitely got more flavor than I had thought. I sprinkled in a very slight amount of chili curry powder to flavor a bit more.

Sources:
http://www.everydiet.org/sacred_heart_diet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Diet