The cucumber diet is great for quick weight loss. This is a diet from the “express” category. The effect occurs almost instantly.
It is quite possible to get in shape in 10 days. Some managed to lose a kilogram a day.
It is especially good in the summer during the season of fresh vegetables. But even in winter, she will come to the rescue and help out if you need to “urgently fit into” your favorite dress.
True, this diet has its pitfalls, and to avoid them, you need to carefully study all aspects of the cucumber diet for successful weight loss.
Conceptual idea
Cucumber is 95% water, and the remaining 5% is pure fiber, a substance that can accelerate metabolism and normalize digestive processes in the shortest possible time. Due to the composition of the vegetable, a person does not have to consume huge amounts of liquid recommended in other diets. All the necessary water will enter the body along with the cucumber.
The diuretic effect of the product rids the body of excess fluid, as a result of which swelling disappears and “stagnant” water leaves. Fiber, in turn, cleanses the body of harmful toxins and waste, and activates healthy intestinal function. The benefits of the cucumber diet are tangible, but it is not suitable for everyone.
By composition
Cucumbers, as sources of water and fiber, can be combined in dietary nutrition with different types of foods. First of all, these are fruits, berries or vegetables, as well as proteins - milk, meat, eggs. The presence of such a variety of diet allows you to choose a diet that suits your taste - cabbage, tomato, watermelon, kefir or protein-cucumber.
Cucumber-cabbage
By eating cucumbers and cabbage, you can get rid of 5-7 extra pounds in a week, while improving your appearance.
To make the cucumber-cabbage diet more varied, you can combine several types of cabbage (white, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts), although the lowest calorie of them is white cabbage, containing only 20 kcal.
Considering that the energy value of a cucumber is even lower - 15 kcal, then as a result of eating only these two vegetables, the body will spend more energy on digesting food than it receives. Therefore, the result of such a technique becomes noticeable literally after 2-3 days, because up to 1.5 kg of excess weight can be lost every day.
According to the rules, you can eat 1 kg of cucumbers and 1 kg of cabbage in one day. Although, if necessary, this amount can be increased, since the calorie content of the diet will remain virtually unchanged. You can take both vegetables as you wish, but the greatest effectiveness can be achieved by alternating them according to the following scheme:
- breakfast - cabbage;
- lunch – cabbage, cucumbers;
- lunch - cabbage;
- afternoon snack – cabbage, cucumbers;
- dinner - cabbage;
- at 20 o'clock - no more than 2 cucumbers.
When combining vegetables, you can prepare a salad from them, seasoning it with lemon juice, and for a second breakfast add 1 tsp. olive oil. You are allowed to follow this diet for 7–10 days, then you need to take a break for 1–2 months, after which the course can be repeated.
Cucumber-tomato
Cucumbers and tomatoes belong to the category of foods that are excellent for weight loss, since they consist of a large amount of water and fiber, which makes them very low in calories (15 and 18 kcal per 100 g, respectively). In addition, both vegetables have a whole range of beneficial properties that promote weight loss.
At its core, the cucumber-tomato diet is based on daily eating only salads from these vegetables, as well as following a drinking regime that includes at least 1.5 liters of clean water. There are no restrictions on the size of portions - you need to consume permitted foods until you are slightly satiated.
The most strict short-term version of this technique is designed for 5 days, during which you can lose about 5 extra pounds. An example menu looks like this:
- breakfast - salad of the indicated vegetables with herbs, seasoned with lemon juice with 1 tsp. olive oil;
- lunch – cucumber juice;
- lunch - a similar salad, but with natural yogurt dressing, fresh tomato sauce;
- afternoon snack – tomatoes with herbs;
- dinner - the same salad only with herbs and lemon juice without oil.
The big advantage of such a diet is its benefits for the body along with its high efficiency.
You need to choose the duration of the diet yourself, focusing on your well-being, results, or weight loss goals.
If you only need to slightly adjust your figure, you should not resort to a too strict diet option. It is enough to include these salads in your daily menu, replacing unhealthy foods with them, or arrange fasting days on a similar diet.
Watermelon-cucumber
Watermelons and cucumbers have a very similar composition - they contain more than 90% water, a lot of fiber, as well as minerals, folic acid, vitamins, pectins, and other beneficial substances. These products speed up metabolic processes, improve digestion, normalize intestinal motility, and promote fluid removal, which makes it much easier to lose weight.
The watermelon-cucumber diet has several options, each of which is equally effective, so you can choose it based on your own preferences. You can lose weight using these products according to the following schemes:
Eat 1 kg of cucumbers and watermelon pulp daily, alternating their intake throughout the day, and also drink 1.5 liters of clean water.
Arrange “cucumber” and “watermelon” days alternately, consuming the corresponding products in the following quantities:
- cucumbers – unlimited;
- watermelons - at the rate of 1 kg of pulp for every 10 kg of its weight.
You can adhere to such a nutrition system for 2 to 14 days, depending on individual tolerance and the necessary weight loss. On average, 1 kg will be lost in 1 day.
Considering the diet is too limited and there is no protein in it, during this time you should avoid physical activity or sports training, and also take vitamin and mineral complexes. You should also take into account the diuretic effect of both products, which is why it is better to follow such a diet on weekends.
Kefir-cucumber
Losing weight with cucumbers and kefir is one of the most famous and popular, as it allows you to achieve the desired results in the shortest possible time. Weight loss is very active, but unlike other strict diets, it is not too harmful to health, thanks to the beneficial properties of each of the two products. Both of them are components of a healthy diet, do not supply the body with excess calories, and have a beneficial effect on the functions of the digestive system. Kefir improves intestinal microflora, creates a mild laxative effect, and cucumber provides a diuretic effect. Therefore, the kefir-cucumber diet allows you to quickly lose weight, while simultaneously cleansing the body of all harmful substances.
Depending on the amount of extra pounds or your goals, you can adhere to this method of losing weight for 2-7 days. It is not recommended to eat cucumbers and kefir alone for longer, as muscle tissue will begin to burn.
The rules of this diet allow the daily consumption of 2 kg of vegetables with 1 liter of fermented milk drink. Additionally, you need to drink at least 1.5 liters of water, since the body will have an urgent need for it.
Both products participating in the diet can be taken separately, simultaneously, or combined in one dish, using the following options:
- eat cucumbers in slices, washing them down with kefir or alternating separate meals throughout the day;
- cut the cucumber salad with herbs and lemon juice, and then consume as in the previous version;
- make a smoothie by blending both products together with herbs or cinnamon;
- prepare cold soup - add greens to finely chopped cucumbers, then pour in kefir.
In this case, it is necessary to follow fractional meals, eating food 5-6 times, so as not to experience a strong feeling of hunger or not to eat too much.
Like any strict diet, the cucumber-kefir diet exposes the body to stress, not supplying it with all the necessary substances. Therefore, during this period it is necessary to avoid excessive physical activity, including going to the gym. During this diet, you can lose about 1–1.5 kg daily. But even if you haven’t achieved the desired result, you can repeat it only after 2–3 months.
Protein-cucumber
The advantages of combining animal proteins with cucumbers in one menu are that the former are able to saturate the body, preventing the appearance of a strong feeling of hunger, and the latter are able to remove liquid from it along with all harmful substances. The basis of the diet is cucumbers (at least 1 kg), lean meats or fish, and a small amount of vegetables for salad.
Sample menu:
- breakfast – salad (cucumbers, herbs, green onions, lemon juice), 1 boiled egg;
- lunch - cucumbers;
- lunch – salad (cucumbers, cabbage, lemon juice), 100 g of boiled chicken breast, a slice of bread;
- afternoon snack – cucumbers;
- dinner – salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, green bell peppers, 1 tsp olive oil).
You also need to drink 1.5 liters of water, herbal or green tea. Salt, sugar, and other additives are completely excluded.
You can stick to this diet for 7-14 days. If necessary, the diet can be repeated after a month, as the body gets used to the lack of nutrition, stops burning fat, and begins to save reserves. The range of weight loss for the specified period is 5–10 kg.
Contraindications
The cucumber diet is contraindicated for people who suffer from problems with the kidneys, liver, and also have chronic diseases of the digestive system. The ban includes diabetics, for whom the diet can pose a mortal danger. Also, the weight loss technique is not suitable for professional athletes, since training while following it is strictly prohibited.
Such a system can become dangerous for pregnant women and nursing mothers, since the vitamins contained in a meager diet are completely insufficient for the child. By the way, the diet is also contraindicated for children, so it can only be followed by persons who have reached the age of majority without diseases of vital organs!
Permitted and prohibited products
This weight loss technique refers to mono-diets, which obviously implies numerous restrictions in terms of other products. The menu will include:
- Hard varieties of cheese;
- Cottage cheese;
- Chicken eggs (no more than 1 piece per day);
- Whole grain bread with bran;
- Chicken, beef and turkey;
- Citrus fruits for snacking;
- Vegetables rich in fiber.
Heavy foods with a lot of calories are prohibited:
- White bread;
- White rice;
- Alcohol and carbonated drinks;
- Salt and sugar;
- Canned foods;
- Sauces;
- Confectionery.
You've lost weight: what's next?
After any such program, you can’t just go ahead and start eating as before. To prevent all efforts from going down the drain, you should permanently moderate your appetite, exercise, count calories, and avoid starchy foods and sweets.
A diet based on cucumbers is not healthy and balanced. Doctors do not recommend such express programs. Yes, the weight is really dropping rapidly. But the catch is that it’s not fat that goes away, but water, intestinal accumulations and muscle tissue. And as soon as the diet normalizes, the kilograms will begin to arrive.
To avoid this, you will need to adjust to a healthy diet. So isn’t it better to immediately start losing weight with a proper diet, where cucumbers play an important, but not at all leading, role?
Menu for seven days
The diet will be detailed for 7 days in advance. It is strongly recommended to prepare yourself in advance for serious restrictions, as well as a modified meal schedule.
Day | Breakfast | Dinner | Afternoon snack | Dinner |
Monday | 2 fresh cucumbers, a slice of bread with hard cheese (or 150 g of cottage cheese instead of bread) | 2 cucumbers and a serving of vegetable soup | 1 grapefruit | Cucumber salad with bell peppers, basil, radishes, parsley and dill |
Tuesday | Identical to Monday | 100 g boiled beef tenderloin, salad of cucumbers, radishes, parsley and dill | 1 green apple | Identical to Monday |
Wednesday | Identical to Monday | 100 g steamed fish, 100 g brown rice, 2 cucumbers | A glass of low-fat drinking yogurt or kefir | Identical to Monday |
Thursday | Identical to Monday | 100 g buckwheat with a sandwich of bread and hard cheese, 2 fresh cucumbers | 1 grapefruit | Identical to Monday |
Friday | Identical to Monday | 100 g oatmeal with 100 g chicken fillet (it is better to use breast) Also eat 2 cucumbers | 1 grapefruit | Identical to Monday |
Saturday | Identical to Monday | A serving of vegetable soup with cucumber salad | A glass of low-fat kefir or yogurt | Identical to Monday |
Sunday | Identical to Monday | 100 g buckwheat with a small piece of boiled beef, 2 cucumbers | 1 grapefruit | Identical to Monday |
Note! If you don’t like grapefruits, you can replace them with a regular orange or 2 tangerines.
Sour citrus fruits such as lemons or limes are not recommended due to the increased acidity of the product.
Celebrities
The effectiveness of losing weight with the help of cucumbers is confirmed by their incredible popularity among the stars of Russian show business. The most famous pop divas have successfully lost weight by eating these vegetables and combining them with other healthy foods. The most popular are the weight loss methods of Alla Pugacheva, Anastasia Stotskaya, and Ksenia Borodina.
Alla Pugacheva
The pop diva is very fond of kefir diets, which she most often combines with a cucumber diet. The duration of such methods usually does not exceed 5 days, during which it is possible to get rid of 1.5 kg of excess weight daily.
The essence of dietary nutrition is to take 1.5 liters of kefir, from which a drink is prepared in the morning for the whole day, and according to a special recipe:
- 1.5 liters of lactic acid drink is mixed with grated cucumbers and herbs - dill, cilantro, parsley, arugula, green onions;
- The mixture is whipped with a blender.
The finished cocktail should be consumed throughout the day - 1 glass every 2 hours.
The second version of Alla Pugacheva’s cucumber diet is designed for 10 days and weight loss of up to 8 kg.
Sample menu:
- breakfast (12:00) – coffee without additives, cucumber salad with any greens and 1 tsp. olive oil or 1 tbsp. l. natural yogurt;
- lunch (16:00) – salad according to a similar recipe;
- dinner (19:00) – 2 cucumbers, grapefruit or apple.
You can switch to a similar diet no more often than once every 2 months, and also arrange fasting days once a week.
Read more: Alla Pugacheva’s diet
Greek diet of Aphrodite from Anastasia Stotskaya
Among the residents of Greece, a very popular weight loss system based on cucumbers and goat cheese with the beautiful name “Aphrodite’s diet”. In Russia, it was brought into fashion by singer Anastasia Stotskaya, who lost 12 kg in 2 weeks using this method.
Goat cheese is not only rich in vitamins, minerals, and acids, but also contains less lactose than traditional cow cheese. Therefore, when consumed, less insulin is produced, which promotes the formation of fat deposits, which, in combination with cucumbers, gives very high weight loss efficiency.
According to the rules, you need to eat 1 kg of cucumbers and 0.5 kg of goat cheese per day according to one of the following schemes:
- alternating food intake every hour;
- eating a salad of these two ingredients 5 times a day.
It is recommended to prepare the salad according to the following recipe:
- chop 0.3 kg of cucumbers;
- add 1 tbsp. l. soft cottage cheese;
- season with 1 tsp. olive oil;
- cut 0.1 kg goat cheese into cubes:
- put them on top;
- sprinkle with herbs.
To endure a very limited diet for several days, you need to have good health and great willpower. In other cases, it is better to use this technique as a fasting day before an important event.
The benefits of the Aphrodite diet include not only weight loss, but also improvement of appearance - it rejuvenates, improves complexion, condition of hair and nails.
Advantages and disadvantages
Advantages:
- The main advantage is the extremely low cost of products included in the weekly diet;
- Natural and safe cleansing of the body from waste and toxins
- Metabolism is normalized, the cosmetic condition of the skin improves;
- The breakdown of poisons in the body, since cucumber juice is a natural adsorbent that can help a person with poisoning.
Flaws:
- Due to insufficient food, a person may experience a serious feeling of hunger, which provokes weakness and dizziness;
- Lack of long-term results. Without adjusting your diet, excess weight can return within 1-2 weeks.
Advice from nutritionists: how to make the cucumber diet as effective as possible
Of course, the result of the diet can be more or less successful, depending on the individual characteristics of the body of the person losing weight. Nutritionists admit that the cucumber diet is one of the mildest and most gentle in terms of negative health effects. It is suitable for almost everyone, as it involves frequent meals and an overall low daily caloric intake. If you want to experiment with the protein version of the cucumber diet, you will have to stock up on protein in order to fully satisfy the body’s need for amino acids and protein.
If you exercise in parallel with proper nutrition, the weight will go away faster, and your figure will acquire an attractive, slender shape. If possible, you should purchase a gym membership and visit it regularly. When this becomes a habit, the risk of obesity will be minimized.
When you reach your goal weight, you should still exercise and be physically active in order to enjoy health and excellent appearance for a long time. You can’t neglect training and proper nutrition - otherwise the excess weight will return soon. It is worth remembering that while following a diet and increased physical activity, consuming plenty of fluid is very important. The best solution would be still water, as well as green tea and natural fruit and vegetable juices. It is better to give up alcoholic drinks forever. Drinking fluids has a beneficial effect on metabolism and the removal of toxins from the body.
When losing weight, changing your eating habits and lifestyle is very important. Care must be taken to ensure adequate energy consumption. Returning to bad habits or dieting too strictly tends to cause a yo-yo effect, that is, weight gain again after losing it.
Physical activity
While following the cucumber diet, avoid any physical activity. The foods on the menu do not contain enough nutrients to support the human muscular skeleton. The energy consumed from foods is designed only for basic human activity during the day, so training can lead to a general deterioration in the condition, and even fainting!
You can return to your usual training regime only after a proper exit from the diet, so as not to put unnecessary stress on your own body.
Quitting the diet
The cucumber diet does not promise long-term results, but you can significantly prolong it by properly restoring your usual diet. Within a week, cucumbers become so boring that you want to completely exclude them from your menu, but you shouldn’t do this. A decrease in the amount of product consumed occurs within 2 weeks by 10-20% daily. Using approximately the same formula, you can restore the volume of food portions so that the weight does not return.
Abrupt refusal of a dietary product entails a number of consequences:
- Acute pain in the stomach;
- Constipation;
- Deterioration in health.
A person experiences such symptoms due to an immediate change in diet types. The digestive organs must gradually get used to rough food, replacing easily digestible food.
Carbohydrates, proteins and fats as the basis of the daily diet
The daily diet of a healthy person is based on the “three pillars” - proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Mono-diets, as a rule, promote the absorption of one nutrient. As a result, this leads to metabolic disorders, and even if weight loss occurs at a rapid pace at first, it later stops, and after returning to a normal diet, a person can gain even more weight than what he had before starting the diet. The cucumber diet menu for weight loss does not provide for a complete rejection of any of the nutrients. Therefore, this technique allows you to maintain vigor, health and high performance:
- Proteins are necessary for the human body, since it is the amino acids into which this nutrient is broken down during digestion that make up muscle tissue, hair, skin, nails, etc. Proteins are found in large quantities in meat, offal, dairy products, eggs, seafood .
- Carbohydrates are a source of energy. Cucumbers consist almost entirely of cucumbers and water. If a person refuses to consume carbohydrates, he feels weak, apathy increases, performance decreases, and drowsiness appears, which was unusual before.
- Fats are also a source of energy. It is better to exclude animal fats from the diet completely, but butter, nuts, and red fish are rich in healthy fats, so you should definitely include these foods in your diet even if you are losing weight and needing a diet.
A cucumber diet for weight loss for 3 days, which involves eating cucumbers alone, is a mono-diet, the use of which can be harmful to health. This is a real test for the body, because it will be almost completely deprived of proteins and fats. The cucumber diet menu, which is presented below, is balanced; you can last about a month on such a diet without harm to your health and well-being. At the same time, you don’t have to worry about possible depletion and lack of amino acids.
How many kilograms can you lose on a cucumber diet in a week? Judging by people's reviews, this figure fluctuates around two to five kilograms. The final result depends on gender, age, the presence or absence of physical activity, and the individual characteristics of the body of the person losing weight. But there will be a plumb line in any case.