An Eskra woman, who has lost 3 lbs following a cabbage soup diet she read about in a magazine, has revealed the extent of her misery since the start of her mammoth weight-loss plan. Speaking from her home in Cormore, Elsa Marlowe admitted that although the weight has dropped off her, the stench coming from her every orifice was unbearable for family and friends.

“It was great to start off with. Before this, I couldn’t have looked at a cake for more than three seconds and it was in my gob. All of it. My husband was always trying to get me to take up some kind of dieting fads. He even had an alarm system on the fridge which he activated between the hours of 12am and 6am. I set it off 2-3 times a night. It was then that I tried the cabbage diet. Initially it was tough. The smell of cabbage soup is bad at the best of times but I was drinking a litre of it every hour. It works though.”

Marlowe’s breakfast

Marlowe began to notice a putrid smell seeping from her pores and her sweat was a kind of green colour. The final straw occurred when her husband built a shed out the back for him and the rest of the family to live in.

“I knew it was affecting them. The children would play out in the rain instead of watching TV with me. I just couldn’t give up though. I weighed myself after 21 days of only devouring the cabbage soup and I’d lost a pound. A POUND! I was delighted and from then on I was hooked. I’ve stopped going to the Town Pub because the barman intimated that I was upsetting the regulars. I have my own office at work which is handy but I’ve noticed all the plants have died. My clothes also seem to smell of nothing but boiled cabbage.”

Marlowe says she’ll continue to use the diet until another couple of pounds have fallen off her, before breaking wind. She has also been barred from entering Clogher.