My Dukan Diet: The Process

The Dukan Diet was formulated by Dr. Pierre Dukan in France. The website takes you through a questionnaire that requires multiple kinds of information in a quick, easy format. Its results take into account your height, weight, gender, age, family history, bone structure, etc. This information goes in, and the website tells you what your "true weight" is. True weight is a goal that should be reasonable, based on the criteria you provided.

The Dukan Diet is a four phase process. The idea is to help you kickstart weight loss, drop the weight, then not gain it back. Here are the phases:

• Attack Phase - In the Attack Phase, you're permitted only proteins (meats & selected non-fat dairy), and a little oat bran each day. The length of the Attack Phase is determined within the website's algorithm that takes into account how easy it is for you to lose weight, the number of diets you've been on, etc. My original Attack Phase was 7 days. My mom's was 5. My dad's was 3. My best girl friend's was a whopping 12. This phase kicks your body into weight-loss gear.
• Cruise Phase - The Cruise Phase adds vegetables back into your diet. (Not all vegetables, though.) Alternating days you get either a PP (Protein day, just like in the Attack Phase) or a PV (Attack day plus veggies) day. Every day you get a little oat bran, too. This phase takes the weight off slowly enough to not put your body into shock, but quickly enough that you don't lose heart.
• Consolidation Phase - The Consolidation Phase begins when you reach your true weight (the website lays out how long they estimate it will take you to go through each phase), and lasts 5 days for each pound lost. This phase begins reintegrating foods back into your diet. You get bread, fruit and cheese, again. You get one celebration meal per week, then two, which include anything you want (including alcohol, dessert, fat, oil, pasta, whatever) but only one serving of each. No seconds. There are a few more expansions during this phase, too, but having not reached it, yet, I don't have them memorized. Consolidating the weight loss keeps your body at the established goal weight, while gradually reintegrating you into societal norms. At this point, it gets easier to eat out with friends, attend parties, etc, because your options open up, some.
• Stabilization Phase - The Stabilization Phase begins when you've completed the consolidation phase. In this phase you are permitted to eat anything you like, six days per week. The rules are:  you do one day every week (preferably the same day, each week) of the Attack diet, to keep your body on track; you eat anything you like the other 6 days, but no second servings--take as much as you want in the first serving, but don't go back; and you never take an elevator or escalator again. (In theory, anyway. I've found that some places it's awfully hard to avoid.) This phase continues indefinitely, and serves to keep you at your established, consolidated new normal weight. 

While you're working through this, you are to walk every day. Nothing more strenuous is encouraged. You are to eat your oat bran (1 1/2  to 3 tablespoons, depending on phase) every day. You are to never take an elevator or escalator, ever again. (Like I said earlier, in theory...)

So this is my super-abbreviated rundown of the Dukan Diet. My doctor is in favor of it for me, because it's working to get my health in order, while nothing else has. You need to talk to your doctor before you attempt it. I'm not a licensed medical practitioner, nor do I provide health or weight loss advice. All I do is make observations about the efficacy of what I do for my own body.  

More soon on how things are going for me...

Much love.
LL~