The Dukan Diet Plan – Doing it the Dukan Way

So I have been on and supported a number of friends through the Dukan Diet Plan and I have to say it’s a really great diet IF you stick to it.  I think that this is true of a lot of diets but in all of the ones I have tried this is one of the ones where adherence is really really vital.

Here’s how it works in layman’s terms (There are long and complex explanations elsewhere but this is how we understood it).  Your body puts on the most weight from carbohydrates and comes to rely on them very heavily.  The things you crave most commonly when you have cravings are usually carb based.  If, therefore you can give up carbs for a period of time almost completely then you will lose a lot of weight.

This principal and more are explained in the the Dukan Diet book and if you are going on the diet then it’s a good idea to pick this up and read it cover to cover, understanding the precise reasons why the diet works and what the principals behind it really helped all of us stick to it, understand it and work our way through it.

Here’s how the Dukan Diet plan works

First off you do some simple calculations of how much weight you want to lose.  The book gives you a plan of how long that will take, and tells you how long you will need to do each stage for.  This is really useful as it means that from the very start you have a plan, a structure and a ‘layout’ of what to expect.  You know how long you are going to be on the diet for as well, which is quite encouraging.

The Dukan Diet Phases

The first phase of the diet lasts a few days and for those days you eat nothing but protein.  That’s right.  Nothing.  You can eat as much as you like but you have to stick to it and only it.  Actually that’s not strictly true because Dukan has researched it all rather thoroughly and says that every day of the diet you need to have a certain amount of (very minimal) carbs and you are encouraged to have oatbran ‘pancakes’ (galetes) which he teaches you how to make.  Learn to love these because they are your friend and in fact very versatile in how they can be used.   You are allowed most forms of protein although some are prohibited (listed in full in the book) – basically the Dukan Diet Plan allows you eat low fat protein a lot.  I ended up eating a massive amount of chicken and some wafer thin ham slices (no fat).  It helps a great deal to have lots of this as snacks available so at any point you feel hunger pangs you can instantly access these to take the hunger away.  You also drink a LOT of water (which is a running feature) and always important is good quality sleep when losing weight.

Stage two has two options.  Either you do X days of protein only, followed by X days of protein with some vegetables or you do one day on veg, one day off.  I personally MUCH preferred the second option as the first became very repetitive.  There are, again, various forms of vegetables you can’t have (peas for example) but in general you can eat a lot of veg with your meat.  This stage of the diet lasts a long time, the longest of all the stages and is what you should get used to.  More of this below.

Stage three begins to reintroduce some carbs back into your diet (you are allowed a small portion per day) and one meal a week you can eat what you like.  This is called the celebration meal.  One day a week you.  This stage can be hard after you have done stage two for some time and is the stage where most people fail in my experience, so be strong and plan this well.  Eat celebration meals but eat them sensibly.

There are hundreds of Dukan Diet recipes available online and in the Dukan Diet recipe book and many of them are excellent (Look for Dukan Fried Chicken which is a fantastic blend of spices) and Dukan scotch eggs, both of which are divine.

My biggest piece of advice for the diet is to plan well and plan variety.  Don’t eat the same thing every day, that way leads to boredom and then failure.  Have a range of spices you can use and be sure to season your food interestingly.  Have condiments and make the most of them (mustard is wonderful as are gherkins for really making food more interesting on this diet), eat different types of food and you can really have a lot of different meals which keeps this diet fresh and easy to follow.  Good luck with the Dukan Diet plan, enjoy the food you eat and you’ll see the pounds fall away.
There are, of course, many other diet plans out there on how to lose weight fast but the Dukan Diet plan is, for me, one of the more enjoyable ones available.

What our Paleolithic “Cavemen” Ancestors had for Dinner

Paleo diet food is essentially exactly the food that our ancestors evolved to eat due to the existing circumstances that prevailed for thousands of years before the use of agricultural practises.

If we conjour up an image of the quintessential caveman of the Paleolithic period, what he looked like and how he spent his day, it might be a scene from “One Million Years B.C.” with Raquel Welch wearing designer fur but it’s likely to be a less stylised version with a lot of clubbing, grime and uncivilised behaviour. (The dinosaur age ended about 55 million years before what were to become humans left the chimp line).

But humans where living on the first diet, the paleo food diet, a healthy diet and were beautifully adapted to live from whatever environment they found themselves in, moving on to the next place when the local food source became used up.

This meant a diet of whatever was “locally available”, which is now the mantra of all the current crop of so-called celebrity chefs. The paleo diet food list was made up of nuts, fruit, berries and edible plants supplemented by the catching and eating of the available protein in the form of hunted animals.

This was before it all got complicated with farming grain and the domestication of livestock which came about around 10,000 years ago.

It takes thousands of years for an animal’s genes such as ours to adapt to the change in living patterns such as nutrition and we have seen a rate of change in our lifestyles and eating habits that has increased exponentially.

So what is paleo diet food and what does it allow us to eat so that we can stay within our evolutionary programming? Paleolithic man didn’t have sheep, goats or cattle waiting in the field to be milked so no milk, cheese or butter; he had no fields of corn swaying in the breeze so no bread, biscuits or cake (oh no!) but what he did have was the stamina and ability to not only roam the land searching for food sources but also the fitness and energy to hunt down and kill paleolithic animals.

Obviously the diet didn’t do Raquel any harm. Paleo diet food consists of a very similar diet to that of paleolithic man which fundamentally means fruit and vegetables, nuts and berries, meat, fish and eggs.
The meat should be lean with little or no more than 7% fat and come from pasture fed animals with no added hormones.

As well as the obvious lean cuts of cow, sheep and pig, poultry such as chicken and game can be used in the Paleo diet making sure that the game meat is from the breast. Offal is a great source of protein and cuts like liver is very low in fat.

The Paleo diet is an evolutionary climax to man’s nutritional needs even today as the body has become adept at taking in the nutrients efficiently and processing the many excellent vitamins and minerals. With the weight towards fresh fruit and vegetables and lean meat the body processes the foodstuff at a steady pace thereby maintaining a stable blood sugar level as well as keeping your appetite controlled so that you don’t “pig out”.

Maybe we will adapt to our current largely SAD (standard American diet) of high fat, high sugar and high processed everything in many thousands of years but for the moment it’s probably best to eat what and how our body needs now – the Paleo Diet food or the “Caveman Diet”.

Some people have been extolling the virtues of the green tea weight loss diet so what does it all mean?

In addition to its fat-busting make-up, green tea may also prevent the absorption of fat from nutrients into the body. Green tea inhibits the appetite and helps to govern blood sugar amounts, the two of which are excellent for weight loss.

The active ingredient in green tea (and not black tea) that we’re interested in is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and this combined with the naturally occurring caffeine may give green tea its effective fat-melting and calorie-burning properties.

EGCG has an abundance of anti-oxidants, something we recognise immediately as a good thing and studies have shown some evidence that this component of green tea could be useful in the fight against cancer and even AIDS.

Caffeine consumed solely, or in other drinks, does not end up in the same degree of weight loss potency as it does with green tea, however.
Green tea, also known as Camellia Sinesis, comes popularly from East Asia and most of us think it synonymous with China and Japan, but it is now also grown in other parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Green tea has for centuries been taken as a social tradition for pleasure and medicinally in the Far East. In China and India in particular it has been used medicinally to treat digestion problems, mental health and as a healing for wounds.

If you have a lot of fat or adipose tissue cells, you may want to first see your medical practitioner or nutritionist to produce an exercise plan (yes, I know but it has to be done), a complimentary diet, and maybe also look at the possible list of supplements to include in your diet with CLA being at the top of the list.

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), is very helpful in general weight loss situations as it breaks down and flushes out the excess adipose or fatty tissue and taken in conjunction with green tea, weight loss efficiency is further enhanced as the green tea element increases your metabolism which, in theory is a recipe for success in the battle against the bulge.

In addition to certain meat and diary products there is loads of dietary supplements that contain CLA, and you can use them as well.

The University of Toronto carried out a study that concluded only positive results for taking CLA and green tea together. The results found that taking one cup of green tea and measures of CLA hugely increased the well-being and fitness of the study group.

The work was carried out for 3 months, and almost 75% lost weight or didn’t put any on. It’s worth checking with the doctor to make sure that using this combination will have no side effects or negatively impact your health if you’re Green tea is an extraction of the Camellia Sinsensis leaf from which also come other tea varieties such as oolong.

The process of extracting or producing the green tea results in only a negligible amount of the good stuff, EGCG lost to the process.

It has been taken across the board for weight loss and for many other health related reasons. When the question is asked whether green tea is actually a useful tool in the armoury to fight weight-loss research carried out by the National Institute of Health shows outcomes are varied, and further study is required to confirm the effectiveness of the constituent in green tea.

Some say the element in green tea most culpable for much of the perceived weight loss is caffeine. One portion of green tea normally has approximately 50 mgs of caffeine (equal to roughly a half-cup of coffee). However, caffeine is inherent at much higher quantities in the green tea extract pills that are out there in the marketplace.

Experts of alternative medicine say that green tea distillations have differing amounts of caffeine levels. A green tea capsule can have 100 to 700 mgs of caffeine in each tablet which is the same as between 1 and 7 coffees.

Caffeine is a stimulant and so may be responsible for increased energy levels, often reputed to be the evidence of better health, at the expense of possible after effects such as irritability, anxiety and insomnia.

The Camellia Sinensis, green tea, distillations that contain large amounts of caffeine would probably have a diuretic effect and so increased urinating and further weight loss through the reduction of water in the body.
A lot of people have had good success with the green tea weight loss diet but  there is no firm evidence for the extent of the benefits for individuals.

The best way to approach your new and undoubtedly the best weight loss program is to do it slow and steady letting your body burn the fat at the pace to which is most suited. A technique used to get the most out of your best weight loss program for quick weight loss while is to include some light exercise every day for at least 30 minutes.

There are many weight loss meal plans out there and with the different issues of different diets, it is no wonder that some people fail to get the results that they want with a quick healthy weight loss program. Fasting to lose weight is based on the most fundamental principal of weight loss. Weight loss occurs when your thermal equilibrium becomes negative that is to say when your body is outputting more energy than it is inputting by way of calorific intake.

The body will use it’s store of fat or muscle reserves gradually leading to the much anticipated loss of weight. The best weight loss program is the one that promises to get rid of fat quickly, speed up your metabolism, and overhaul your body. From a positive point of view weight loss means health, physical fitness, a reduction of the body mass index (BMI) and a feeling of overall well-being but weight loss means an overall loss of fluid, body fat as well as lean mass, namely bone mineral elements, muscle, tendons and other connective tissue.

What the Best Weight Loss Program Can do for YOU!

The number one rule in weight loss is to avoid foods that are high in processed sugars, which contribute to increased body mass and are detrimental to your overall health. Intentional weight loss is, in most cases, achieved with the help of diets since cutting down on foods is generally more achievable than making a major change in your lifestyle, although losing weight is generally associated with some adjustment to your lifestyle vices, or taking up an active sport.

It doesn’t matter what type of diet that you are on even the best weight loss diet program works in the short term and with the same amount of weight loss. The healthiest and best weight loss program is one that consists of a balanced diet and moderate physical activity. If you are fasting for more than a week, take note of your daily weight loss numbers before adding a light workout. Weigh yourself weekly to see how your weight goes up and down initially.

Many of weight loss meals will take less than 5 minutes to prepare and eat so I’m afraid there won’t be much in the way of expended calories while preparing the food.

It is not uncommon for some people who are currently at their ideal body weight to seek even more weight loss in order to improve athletic performance or meet the needed weight category for participation in a sport. If you are determined to use a fast and the best weight loss program, you need write down a weight loss plan and make sure you stick to it. Decide what it is you want to accomplish, if you decide you have to try a very fast form of weight loss, consult your medical professional first especially if you are on any type of medication and if you are planning a particular intense form of training after having a less active lifestyle for an extended period of time.

Normally fast weight loss is not the healthiest thing to do, nor is it the easiest thing to do never the less being overweight let alone obese is much more dangerous for your health. There are other methods of weight loss such as drugs and supplements that suppress the appetite, inhibit fat absorption, or reduce stomach volume. Don’t forget losing weight in the form of reduced fat and lean body mass is one thing but fluid loss can be brought on by illness such as diabetes.

So Tell me What IS the Best Weight Loss Program in Town?

Weight loss failures can happen because the long term commitment needed for even the best weight loss program can’t be endured for the full term required let alone the commitment for the exercise components of weight loss. You need to be able to commit to the weight loss goals that you have set yourself for a reasonable period of time.