What is the Dukan Diet?

The Dukan diet was born in France when a French doctor placed his meat eating friend on a high protein diet to lose weight. This diet was so successful for his friend that he fine tuned it, making it the diet we now know as the Dukan diet. Particularly in the beginning this is a high protein diet with an emphasis placed on pure protein days, not just throughout the diet, but once a week for life!

How Does the Dukan diet work?

The great thing about the Dukan diet is that it is not a FAD in terms of special equipment, out of the ordinary eating requirements or starvation. On the contrary, its main focus and ultimate goal is to achieve a healthy weight through a well balanced diet, the only long lasting approach to take. So then, what makes the Dukan diet special?

It is not so much the food that makes the Dukan diet so successful, but the way it solidifies healthy eating habits into the minds of dieters. At the end of the day healthy eating is the way to lose weight properly and the only “diet” to truly stand the test of time.

Does the Dukan Diet Really Work?

How does the Dukan diet achieve this rewiring of the brain? It utilizes a number of phases which gradually introduce the foods that will ultimately result in a healthy diet. This is a diet made up of good core foods and much less of the bad foods. Sounds pretty simple right, nothing new?

The key to the Dukan diet is the way in which the phases work to introduce eating in a manner that the body and mind are able to adapt, bypassing a lot of the struggles that dieters usually face when dieting.

Time to take a look at the Dukan Diet Plan

Dukan Diet Plan

Dukan Diet Attack Phase - 1st Phase
The first phase is called the Attack Phase made up of pure protein days. This means that for 2-7 days, a dieter will eat as much as they from a range of protein-rich foods. This phase kick starts some serious and rapid weight loss with 7 pounds lost inside a week not unusual.

Proteins are filling and low calorie compared to many other foods.

Dukan Diet Cruise Phase - 2nd Phase
In the second phase dieters introduce unlimited amounts of vegetables with their lean meats and fish. This happens alternatively with days that are pure protein days.  Proteins one day, followed by proteins and vegetables the next day and so forth.

Dukan Diet Stabilization Phase - 3rd Phase
The third phase adds fruit, cheese and starchy foods and celebration meals. The celebration meals include foods that you would not expect on a diet such as cake etc. In this phase these types of foods are actually encouraged as they are seen as very important components of a long lasting healthy diet.

Sticking with the Consolidation phase for 5 days for every 1 pound lost so far during the Dukan diet cements the new way of eating into the mind of the dieter.  The goal of this phase is to avoid the pitfalls associated with rebound dieting.

Cruise Phase  - 4th and final life long Phase
So now that the weight has stabilized how do we maintain it? The Dukan diet subscribes to the one pure protein day each week. What does this mean? It means exactly what it says.  All it asks of the dieter is that once a week, pure protein is eaten. No vegetables, fruit, starches, diary, just protein.

The way of the Dukan Diet has been popular in France for quite some time with the pure protein day a staple amongst many.

Is Dukan and Atkins the same?

No they certainly are not. Then how are the Dukan and Atkins diet different? Well unlike the Dukan Diet, Atkins not only allows, but even encourages dieters to eat as much fat as they like. The Dukan diet does not in anyway give dieters the go ahead to eating as much fat as they would like, instead, discouraging it, as it should.

Dukan Diet Side Effects

Clearly one of the side effects of the Dukan diet is rapid weight loss. There are guidelines to how long one should stay on each phase of the diet depending on how much weight they wish to lose.  The good thing about the Dukan diet is that the weight loss is rapid to begin with, but levels off to a healthier rate before being maintained.

Dukan Diet Menu

The category of proteins can encompass many foods and recipes, so rather then give sample diet plans, we will instead list examples of the types of foods that will be incorporated into pure protein meals. This is a limited list, but also just a general list of foods which are used in a larger variety of dishes.

• Coffee Tea with Skim Milk
• Cottage Cheese
• Fat free Yoghurt
• Turkey
• Chicken
• Low fat ham
• Eggs
• Oat bran
• Steak
• Shrimp
• Salmon
• Crab
• Crab sticks
• Fish
• Prawns