Weight Loss Vegetable Soup — 🍅🥕🥦Trying to shed some pounds or simply want to eat healthier? Try this easy, flavorful soup that’s ready in 30 minutes and loaded with veggies! Very filling and hearty!
Table of Contents
Healthy Vegetable Soup Recipe
How are those New Year’s resolutions going? This low-calorie soup will help anyone who’s fallen off the wagon, or who never got on the wagon, get back on.
It may not be a magic bullet for weight loss, but it’s a good start. I use this vegetable soup as a way to incorporate many of the ingredients I’d put on a salad – such as tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, broccoli – but into soup form!
I appreciate warm soups much more than cold salads during the winter. The soup was so hot it kept steaming up my camera lens.
I love how healthy I feel with this filling, satisfying veggie soup that’s easy and ready in about 30 minutes. It’s naturally vegan and gluten-free. There’s texture and flavor galore. We could eat it every day and not tire of it especially when it’s chilly outside!
It’s loaded with healthy, hearty vegetables and is naturally low in calories and sodium while being high in fiber and nutrients.
What’s in Vegetable Soup?
To make this weight loss soup recipe, you’ll need:
- Olive oil
- Vidalia onion
- Celery
- Garlic
- Green cabbage
- Bell peppers
- Green beans
- Carrots
- Mushrooms
- Vegetable broth
- Diced tomatoes
- Herbs and spices
- Broccoli
- Zucchini
- Salt and pepper
- Lemon juice
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Vegetable Soup
Sauté the celery and onion in an oiled stockpot until softened. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant.
Add in the cabbage, peppers, carrots, green beans, and mushrooms, and sauté until the vegetables begin to soften. Next, add in the vegetable broth, diced tomatoes, herbs, and spices.
Add in the broccoli, zucchini, and lemon juice last and cook just until they’re crisp-tender. Then, dish up the veggie soup and enjoy.
Here’s a video showing how to make vegetable soup:
what to serve with healthy soup
Can I Freeze Vegetable Soup?
Yes, this low-calorie vegetable soup can be frozen for up to 6 months.
Can I Make This in a CrockPot?
If you made this healthy vegetable soup recipe in the CrockPot, I fear that everything would turn into a mushy mess. If timing is an issue for you, I would wait to make this on the stove when you have time and then reheat for dinner or lunch by the bowlful throughout the week.
Tips for Making the Best Vegetable Soup
- If you want to bump up the protein, adding edamame or a can of beans such as garbanzo, cannellini, or kidney are all great. You can also add shredded leftover chicken or turkey.
- This vegetable soup recipe is a great soup to clean out your produce drawer with. Mix and match with the veggies and herbs you have on hand and enjoy.
- The ingredient list is on the longer side, but if you don’t have something, don’t like something, or want to use something else instead, go for it.
Weight Loss Vegetable Soup
Video
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 cups sweet Vidalia or yellow onion, peeled and diced small (about 1 large onion)
- 1 cup celery, diced small (about 2 stalks)
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
- 4 cups green cabbage, sliced into thin ribbons (about 1/4 to 1/2 head depending on size)
- 1 medium/large red bell pepper, seeded, trimmed, and diced small
- 1 medium/large yellow or orange bell pepper, seeded, trimmed, and diced small
- 1 cup carrots, peeled, trimmed, and sliced thin (about 1 1/2 large carrots)
- 1 cup green beans, trimmed into 1-inch pieces (I prefer fresh but frozen may be substituted)
- 1 cup sliced mushrooms, baby portobello, white, or your favorite
- 64 ounces 8 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
- one 15-ounce can petite-diced tomatoes, I use low-sodium
- 1 ½ cups edamame, (OR one 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, cannellini, or kidney beans, drained and rinsed; I use low-sodium beans)
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
- pinch cayenne pepper, optional and to taste
- 2 to 3 teaspoons salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
- 3 cups broccoli florets
- 2 cups zucchini, diced small (about 1 1/2 large zucchini)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice, optional (brightens up the flavor)
Instructions
- To a large Dutch oven or stockpot, add the oil, onion, celery, and sauté over medium-high heat for about 7 minutes, or until vegetables begin to soften. Stir intermittently.
- Add the garlic and sauté for another 1 to 2 minutes. Stir intermittently.
- Add the cabbage, peppers, carrots, green beans, mushrooms, and sauté for another 5 minutes, or until vegetables begin to soften. Stir intermittently.
- Add the vegetable broth, diced tomatoes, optional beans or edamame, bay leaves, cumin, oregano, thyme, rosemary, optional cayenne, salt, pepper, and bring to a boil. Allow mixture to boil gently for about 5 minutes.
- Add the broccoli, zucchini, optional lemon juice, and boil 3 to 5 minutes, or until broccoli and zucchini are crisp-tender. Remove bay leaves.
- Taste soup and add additional salt, pepper, or herbs, to taste. Amount of salt will vary based on how salty the brand of vegetable broth used is, how salty the canned tomatoes and optional beans are, and personal preference. At any time while making the soup, if the overall liquid level is lower than you like and you prefer more broth, adding a cup or two of water is okay, noting you can always adjust the salt and seasoning levels. Serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Recipe is not intended as medical advice nor will it guarantee weight loss. I am not a registered dietician and am simply sharing a recipe I enjoy. As always, use common sense.
Recipe originally published January 20, 2016 and republished January 15, 2020 with updated text.
Hi!! Can i sub in frozen veggies like frozen broccoli?
They will be mushier than fresh but as long as you know that and that they could fall apart a bit in the broth, it should be fine.
how can 1 serving be 126kcal?
You are welcome to calculate by hand. This is what the software I use told me the values are.
Wt loss veg soup:
10 servings. Each serving approximately 152 calories but Approx how many oz per serving do you think? ( I need to figure out for diet food log I’m doing every day).
I’d guess about 8. You could always make it, portion it out into containers, and then you’d know for sure what you’re working with.
I love this soup!
Thanks, Debbie! I love it too – it’s got so much great flavor and textures!
Easy to make, very tasty and very filling
I keep coming back to this recipe when I feel vegetable deprived (often) cuz it’s so delicious — but is there a feasible way to try and halve the recipe without wasting a bunch of veggies or canned tomatoes? It just makes such a huge batch and I cook for one…
Yes I would just halve things down the middle. It’s a very flexible recipe so I wouldn’t worry too much if you use slightly more/less that half the called-for amount.
For those concerned about salt, most soups are loaded with it if you didn’t already know that. Common sense tells me to use low sodium everything in this recipe, especially any canned veggies and broth. Rinse your canned vegetables to remove some of the sodium, although they sell LOW SODIUM canned goods IF you didn’t already know that. There’s a plethora of options at the grocery store. Keep up the great work Averie!
For those concerned about salt, most soups are loaded with it if you didn’t already know that. Common sense tells me to use low sodium everything in this recipe, especially any canned veggies and broth. Rinse your canned vegetables to remove some of the sodium, although they sell LOW SODIUM canned goods IF you didn’t already know that. There’s a plethora of options at the grocery store. Keep up the great work Averie!
Thanks for the 5 star review and thanks for your advice to others regarding salt! I say this often, in other posts, but not everyone reads every single thing, and sometimes I feel like a broken record, so I don’t repeat it all, and it’s nice to have someone else say it too :)
And yes for anyone who didn’t already know, the reason most (all) commercially prepared, canned, or restaurant soups taste good is because they’re loaded with salt!
Hi Averie,
Love your recipes!Would like to make weight loss vegetable soup.According to nutritional info The sodium content is over 5000 mg.Does it really contain 5000 mg per serving?
I addressed this already right underneath the stats if you want to reread that.
Thank you for your quick response.Thought maybe Sodium content was a typo.I did read your statement below the nutritional info but thought even if printed info was exaggerated sodium content would have been still quite high .
Just wanted to check as ingredients you use don’t seem to justify such a high sodium content.
Hey Avery, this looks good.
How about the Instant Pot? What do you typically do to convert your recipes to be done there?
Thank you!
Yoga with Gail
Since this is a recipe that cooks in 25 mins on the stove, there’s not much more you can do to speed that up haha and I recommend making on the stove.
I am not a big Instant Pot person. I have one but don’t use it too much. I think of IP recipes as meat, beans that need to cook, etc. but for a quick little stovetop soup, just make it stovetop.
I think my son n daughter in law would love this soup but what could she switch out for the cabbage, mushrooms and the zucchini with also neither one of them can have onions as it upsets their stomached way too much. If u could help me out with this I would greatly appreciate it. She is also on the Weight Watchers diet so this could help her out a lot.
Thanks
Merry
Wonderful – hope they enjoy it!
Is the nutrition info correct? 459 calories per SERVING?
I updated the stats and I do think they are a bit artificially high but it’s a computer generated program and I don’t have time to calculate this by hand but feel free and then post with your findings!
Great combination of veggies and herbs! My kids typically hate cabbage in soup, but they loved this soup. Thanks, Averie!
Great combination of veggies and herbs! My kids typically hate cabbage in soup, but they loved this soup. Thanks, Averie!
Thanks for the 5 star review and great to hear that even the kids are good with the cabbage in this soup and that they loved it overall!
Hey Averie, I was wondering if you have heard of this weight loss program before?
https://rebrand.ly/wei It looks like a great program to help people lose weight.
I was just looking for some options before I made my decision.
By the way, I love the content you have been posting lately!
Wow, this was great! With all those veggies, I was just hoping it would be tolerable so I could get my daily veggies in super easy (I hate vegetables!). But this was delicious. I did half beef broth and half veggie broth, but this was so very yummy. Growing up we used to put ketchup in beef broth soup, so I put a small squirt in my bowl about halfway through eating it and it gave it a new and wonderful flavor as well (but maybe less of the healthiness). Thanks so much for this recipe! Easy to make!
Thanks for the 5 star review and glad this was delicious even though you hate vegetables! And if all it took was a squirt of ketchup to make it even better, no problem is what I say!