Here's the good news about the Dukan Diet: You're going to lose weight. The bad news is you could get the same results just by skipping the Dukan Diet and just cutting your calories way back. This diet relies on a drastic reduction in calories while skimping on basic nutrition. Even the recommended daily multivitamin can't make up for the loss of the basic building blocks of nutrition that you won't be getting on this diet.
Here is how the Dukan Diet plan works. The diet is broken down into three phases. In phase one, the goal is rapid weight loss with only protein allowed. You stay on this phase for 10 days and you should expect to lose up to 7 pounds just in the first 5 days. This is known as the "Attack" phase supposedly because it attacks your fat. Unfortunately, you'll feel like you're the one who's under attack.
The plan under phase one of the diet is eat a diet completely made up of protein. Eat all you want of lean or low-fat meat, chicken, fish, eggs and soy. No lamb or pork is allowed because of the relatively high fat content. You are also required to drink at least 1.5 liters or water and supplement with a tablespoon of oat bran. Even though you can eat all you want of the protein in phase one, this is considered to be the hardest phase of the diet. Within a short time you feel the deprivation of not being able to eat any carbohydrates and another piece of steak just doesn't do anything to satisfy your appetite.
The second phase lasts a lot longer and depends on how much weight you want to lose The goal here is to lose 2 pounds per week. In phase 3 the plan becomes less restrictive and you are not expected to lose any weight. The goal is to stay in this phase for five days for every pound that you've lost. According to the book, this will reinforce the weight loss and prevent weight from coming back. Phase 4 is the maintenance stage of the plan. The promise here is that if you stick to the weekly an all-protein day with exercise you should be able to keep your weight at the stable level.
The Dukan Diet warns you up front that there will be some unpleasant side effects. Apart from the sharp hunger pangs during phase one, you can expect constipation, constant feelings of fatigue, bad breath and dry mouth. Common sense tells you that these are not the hallmarks of a healthy diet. If you changed gas stations and your car suddenly started to belch noxious fumes you wouldn't take that as a sign that your car was on the way to becoming a high-performance vehicle. You shouldn't expect it from your body either.
There is no doubt that this extremely restrictive diet will help you lose weight but sticking to it is a different matter. The elimination of entire groups of healthy food and the unpleasant side effects makes The Dukan Diet an unrealistic and unhealthy way to lose weight. Fad diets like this are impossible to actually stick to. Until you change your diet to consist of high-nutrition, low-calorie foods you will continue to experience the yo-yo effect that this diet is guaranteed to give you.
John Fleming
Health Correspondent
http://www.healthyliving411.com
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