The Dukan Diet, by Bay Area Inbound
Posted by Laurie Monahan on Tue, Jun 26, 2012 @ 03:31 PM
I'm on the Dukan Diet, which my friend recommended because it worked well for her and quickly. It's the diet Lady Kate Duchess of xxx that married Prince Charles last year used before she took her engagement pictures.
Basically, you eat nothing but lean protien for a week. Nothing but. No Vegis, Fruits, Grains, Nothing else. The idea is you send your body immediately into ketosis by starving it of sugar. Most of your body will break down it's own fatty acids to feed itself, but your heart and brain depend on the liver to break down fat into sugar to keep them going in this process called Ketosis.
Then, somewhere between 3 and 10 days, depending on your weight loss goals you start incorporating vegis into your diet every other day. You should be losing a pound every 3 days. The 3rd stage, you start incorporating other starchy foods like fruit, whole grains and other in moderation (according to the guidelines). Finally in stage 4, you get to eat normally, but in moderation, and you go back on the diet one day a week, where you only eat lean protiens. And you are supposed to be able to maintain your target weight forever this way.
I tried the South Beach Diet about 5 years ago and lost 10 pounds before a vacation. In that diet you cut out simple carbs like bread, but you can eat all the complex carbs like vegis that you want within reason.
You can order the Dukan Diet book online and you can read some of the pages online to see if it interests you. As a vegetarian, since I don't eat lean meats, and it won't let you eat soya or nuts, I'm pretty much stuck eating 2 eggs a day and non-fat dairy like yogurt and cottage cheese and tofu for dinner. I use a few drops of Stevia to sweeten the non-fat yogurt. No sauces like ketchup because they have sugar in them.
It's different from the Atkins diet (used by 25 million people) because it also cuts out the fats. You are also supposed to drink up to 1 1/2 liters of water a day and exercise for 20 minutes a day and always use the stairs, never the elevator. No problem there for me, I exercise at least an hour a day. You are supposed to eat 2 or 3 Tablespoons of oat bran a day throughout.
I have to say, all that protien keeps you from being overly hungry and you're supposed to be able to eat all you want of non-fat protiens, but I'm trying to keep it light. I can't comment on how safe the diet is, but I will move onto the 2nd stage with vegis sooner rather than later, just because I worry about it.
Hoping this works as well for me as it did my friend and for Kate. I'm doing this because I really need to and because I'm going on vacation at the end of the summer with my family for 8 days and all we do is water sports all day, so don't want to be chubby in a bathing suit all day. I'm sharing this so you can do it with me if you want to.
I was kind of laughing because I told my husband that lady Kate used this diet and he said, she doesn't look like the kind of person who needed a diet. (Yeah, that's kind of the point.) I was in Hawaii when I was 16-years-old and I told this guy I met swimming in the ocean that I just lost 30 lbs, and he told me later he was expecting me to be fat when I got out of the water. It's funny how people think sometimes.
Have you tried the Dukan diet? Did it work for you?
sources: wikipedia and The Dukan Diet Online
