Dukan Diet Review

Dukan Diet Book

How does the Dukan diet work?

The Dukan diet is a diet plan originally conceived of by a French nutritionist named Pierre Dukan. It is a protein based diet that goes in four phases: Attack, Cruise, Consolidate and Stabilize.

The idea is to lose weight without starving yourself, using expensive pills and gimmicks and with basic exercising like walking/marching every day.

The main site allows you to track your progress, tells you what your ideal goal could be, and offers a range of tools and support for your use during your diet program.

The main Dukan diet plan consists of four parts:

Attack: In this one to five day phase (it depends on how much weight you want to lose), you will only be eating protein rich foods in low quantities. The idea is to kickstart your diet, but not to go overboard and end up bored or starving yourself.

Cruise: In this phase, you will add veggies back to your diet, but still alternate with pure protein days. Although you should see rapid weight loss in the first phase, it is this phase the goal is to reach your ‘true weight’ (or goal weight).

Consolidation: This is a strict period because it’s when you are most likely to gain the weight back. It is when you slowly add back small amounts of forbidden foods, two ‘celebratory meals’ a week and still have at least one pure protein meal.

Stabilization: This is just the rest of your life where you will be eating healthy and exercising regularly. It is well advised that you eat three tablespoons of oat bran a day, exercise, and have one ‘attack phase’ day a week.

Pros & Benefits

  • Protein rich diet is good for muscle building which also helps to burn more fat
  • Encourages eating properly without the use of commercial gimmicks, pills, diet shakes or anything else expensive or fiddly
  • Fairly straightforward
  • No starving or fasting, no portion control or calorie counting
  • A solid track record for success
  • It’s a lifestyle diet plan rather than a flash diet
  • Early success in weight loss helps to encourage continued dieting

Cons & Dukan Diet Side Effects

  • A protein rich diet can contribute to high cholesterol, gout, and constipation; make sure to only stay on the Attack phase for a few days and eat oat bran regularly
  • Definitely not suitable for vegans or vegetarians!
  • You may suffer ‘induction flu’; that is, withdrawal symptoms from not eating carbs for a long time (fortunately only lasts a couple of days)
  • Ketosis; a side effect of burning your own body fat is a metallic mouth taste, bad breath and if it goes for too long, kidney damage
  • More expensive since meat is pricey
  • Can cause nutritional deficiencies; make sure that once you’re through the attack phase, that you reintroduce a wide range of fruits and vegetables.

Ingredients

This is a high protein, low carb diet, so you may as well get used to eating a lot of meat; particularly poultry, seafood, and lean red meat as well as eggs. The first five or so days (the attack phase) will be all protein, so settle in!

Later on, you’ll be allowed to add more veggies and then more fruit and back to a bit of carbs and other foods. You can always have herbs, spices, and a few condiments like a bit of mustard for flavouring.

Administration, Diet & Exercise

As noted above, the Dukan diet plan follows four phases: Attack, Cruise, Consolidate and stabilize. The idea is to start on a high protein stage and then slowly reintegrate the rest of your diet back while maintaining at least one day a week of pure protein.

It is not an easy diet to follow because of the heavy restrictions and you’d better be ready for some cranky days! You may also want to consider joining the online group or at least doing some planning for dukan diet recipes (particularly the dukan diet recipes attack lists) beforehand so you’re not tempted to go onto carbs before you’re allowed to.

The Dukan diet also advises daily exercise, again, depending on your phase. In the Attack phase, you should try to do twenty minutes of walking or marching a day, thirty minutes in the cruise and consolidate and then at least twenty minutes a day after that. While Dr. Dukan claims that you only need to walk or march, it may also be advisable to do some weight lifting so that you can actually use all that protein for muscle building!

Conclusion

The problem with any diet which is based on eating one kind of food over all others is that it is very hard to stick to and it’s very easy to become nutritionally deficient and the Dukan diet is no different. While a protein rich diet can be highly beneficial-particularly for those seeking to build muscle-this may not be the ideal diet for everyone.

You can get very fast weight loss and a chance at building something that will last a lifetime, but as always, you need to stick with the plan and stay firm. It is very important to talk to your doctor as well and make sure that you won’t harm yourself on this diet; some people just shouldn’t live on pure protein if they have health concerns.

However, the Dukan diet has enjoyed a great deal of success with many people and so it is worth trying for yourself if you want to lose weight and not limit yourself to strange gimmicks or fasting.

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