EatingWell Promises You’ll Lose Weight with This Soup

I didn’t know this was a “thing,” but apparently it is: Weight Watchers has a recipe for this garden-vegetable soup—simply referred to as “The Soup” in hushed, reverent tones at WW meetings—that scores of WW adherents swear helped them lose weight. We’re talking 15, 20, even 30 pounds. Too good to be true? That’s what I thought. But when I asked a Weight-Watchers-apologist friend of mine if she’d ever heard of “The Soup” before and her reply was, “I’ve never made it but people are obsessed with it,” well, I guess I had my answer.

EatingWell magazine offers its own riff on the beloved Weight Watchers soup in this month’s issue, and from what I’m hearing, it’s a pretty close match. The contributing editor who came up with it, Joyce Hendley, said she first heard of the soup at a Weight Watchers meeting and developed this recipe as a close approximation. The reason it’s so magical for weight loss? It’s positively chockfull of vegetables—green pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, green beans and spinach—and it includes kidney beans, which means it’s brimming with fill-you-up fiber. Besides, it clocks in at only 169 calories per serving, so that’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Two other good things to note about this recipe: one batch makes 10 servings (hello, two weeks of lunches), and a single serving shakes out to cost about $2.50. Sure beats the $14 I shelled out today for a salad and smoothie.

Check out EatingWell’s recipe for Veggistrone soup here.

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