Life with the Dukan Diet.

For those not familiar with the Dukan Diet, here's a little summary.

It is a 4-phase diet designed to help you lose weight, and then to keep it off.  It teaches you good lifelong habits, not just how to quickly shed pounds. It appealed to me when my sister mentioned it because it is somewhat similar to the 20/20 lifestyles plan that my friends Leslie and Parul are doing, and they have been shedding pounds like crazy and feeling awesome!

The Dukan Diet is focused around eating proteins, and cutting out fats, sugars, carbs and starches.  It sounds very restrictive - and it IS. It has to be, to keep you focused, but over time it introduces you to more options.

Here is the basic idea of the 4-phase Dukan Diet plan. I'll keep it simple because you can read about this elsewhere online in detail if you care!

Phase One: Attack Phase

For 2-7 days, you can only eat proteins. Lean meats, eggs, and nonfait dairy in moderation.  This is the most hardcore part of the Dukan Diet and was challenging, especially thinking ahead to have lunches ready for work! It is designed to help you start shedding quick pounds from water-weight, etc. A shotgun start to the process.

Phase Two: Cruise Phase

All of the attack phase foods are OK.  In addition, every other day, you can introduce foods from the OK list. These specifically are veggies - but no starchy ones such as potatoes, non-green-beans, and also no corn, limited carrots, etc due to sugar content.  In practice, I have not gone every other day.. I have done multiple cruise days in a row due to boredom over eating only meat + eggs, but I do keep the protein days in place as often as possible.

This phase continues until you reach your target weight. For me, that will be 220 pounds - and the guideline suggests I won't be seeing that until sometime in May or June.  Hah, we'll see - I want to get there sooner. :)

Technically, I shouldn't be eating tomatoes during phase 2 since they are of course, a fruit.  Sorry, I got to have me some tomatoes. ;)

Phase Three: Consolidation Phase

This phase is designed to keep you on track AFTER the weight loss, to help you keep it off.  The idea is that your body has just lost a lot of weight - and if you stray from the diet, it is going to be looking to add it back on!  This phase helps you get your body used to being at your goal weight.  It adds in a little bread, fruit and cheese (yay!) - one weekly serving of carbs like a psata and lets you have 'celebration' meals occasionally.. whatever you want, in moderation, without guilt. No taking second portions.  This phase lasts for quite a while, several days per pound you lost. For me, it'll be something like a year!

Phase Four: Stabilization Phase

The final phase of this diet is for the rest of your life, ideally.  By now, you have lost your extra weight and developed healthier food habits and exercise habits.  You can go back to eating as you please in this phase - but every Thursday, you have to do the attack phase diet - one day of pure proteins.  The idea is by now, you are not going to go back to a 5000 calorie a day diet.. you are trained to be healthy.

During all stages:

You must have oat-bran every day. Starting with 1.5 tbsp in attack and up to 2 tbsp. in the further phases. I eat mine mixed with Ciobani fat-free greek yogurt. I just pretend I'm in the matrix, rofl.  Remember - fruit is a no no, so plain yogurt or flavored only!  Vital to all stages of the diet - drink 1.5 liters of water minimum per day.  This is to help flush toxins from your kidneys while eating so much protein.

I am allowed any herbs while cooking, and seasonings in moderation. There are plenty of low or no-salt options there.  I can also use pickles as a garnish on protein-only days, but small amounts. 

Exercise wise, the diet is all about walking. 20 minutes per day in phase one, 30 per day in the later phases.  If you hit a weight loss plateu, you just temporarily rewind to an earlier phase and up your walking to 60 minutes per day until you achieve progress again.

For me - I walk 30 minutes per workday on breaks already. I have been adding evening walks to that almost every day with Dawn, and soon I will be adding gym time back in.  I'm going above and beyond, so it is going to speed my weight loss a little.

The Dukan diet predicts rapid initial weight loss in phase 1 and slightly into phase 2 - but that after that, it is normal and healthy on the diet to lose about 1-2 pounds per week, or 4-8 pounds per month.  It does not sound like much but even at the lowest rate, that means sticking to the diet for 6 months would help you shed 24 pounds. At the 2/week rate - 48!  I'm guessing when I hit my personal stride with exercise, I will see about 3-5 pounds per week.