My failure on the Dukan Diet

10 days til holiday. PANIC! I want to lose weight quickly (I’m about a stone heavier than I’d be in my ideal world), and not look too blobby in a bikini. As anyone who knows me, or follows my incessant tweets about the food in my life, a diet probably isn’t the easiest thing for me to follow. However, having heard friends talk about the Dukan Diet, and after reading a number of articles on it, primarily the Daily Hate one, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I’m no expert, but the basic summary I took from what I read is that it’s a low-carb, low-sugar, low-fat diet, and it’s split into 4 phases – Attack, Cruise, Consolidation, and Stabilisation.

As I was after a quick hit, I was going to concentrate on the Attack phase, which is a meat and fat-free dairy phase. This can be done for between 2 and 10 days to jolt your body into burning fat off, before you move onto the Cruise phase, where you can introduce vegetables (supposedly on a one day protein, one day veg/protein rotation) as long as they’re low-sugar and not starchy.

Day 1 started off well, with scrambled egg (no butter or milk) for breakfast. But then had no lunch, as I couldn’t bring myself to eat smoked mackerel or salmon from M&S out of the packet at my desk. Should have planned ahead more! I went food shopping as soon as I got home, and decided to get a whole chicken to roast, so it could make a few meals in advance. However, this meant eating dinner at 10.50pm by the time I’d shopped and cooked – doh. It was good though :)

Day 2 also started well, I now had the ingredients for the essential controlled dose of carbs/fibre that Dr Dukan recommends, and made an oat bran galette. I was running late for work, so ate this hot from the frying pan, running down the road to the train station. It wasn’t a great taste experience! For lunch, my colleague suggested I hit our work canteen and plunder the sandwich counter for ingredients I could eat on their own sans bread (boo!). So I ended up with some chicken, a boiled egg, and some smoked salmon. Interesting combo! I also had a vanilla Muller Light. Apparently fat free yogurt is allowed, however not fruit flavoured. There’s a fair bit of debate online about whether flavoured yogurt full-stop is allowed, as they tend to have sugar in them whether or not they’re fat-free. Whatever. I was bored and hungry… Dinner was lumps of left-over chicken. Woo.

Day 3 (Friday) was more of the same, but I made the galette more exciting with the addition of fat-free fromage frais, and some slices of smoked salmon. Lunch was more sandwich fillings, and dinner was NANDO’S! Mmmm, peri peri chicken. Not sure if peri peri sauce is allowed, but never mind.

I also made it through the weekend, thank you Flavour of India for your chicken tikka and king prawn tandoori, and thank you Yo Sushi for your salmon sashimi and crayfish salad. I started the Cruise phase at this point, so the salad accompaniments at the Indian and Yo were a real treat. Hurrah!

This whole experience was done without any alcohol or sugary drinks – just water and diet Coke (which I don’t even really like, but it seems like a treat when you’re restricting your options on this diet).

So Monday. I got on the scales, and I’d lost 3 pounds. Woop de doo. I can lose 3 pounds by eating smaller portions and moving my arse a bit more. Disheartened! And frankly fed up of eating protein, drinking chemically-laden drinks, and not errr, shifting the proceeds, as it were….! So by the time I got to work, I thought ‘bugger it’, and ate a Haribo crocodile, swiftly followed by a mini dark chocolate Toblerone. Honestly, it was uber-mini - never seen one so small! But that’s not important right now. I was off the wagon.

I decided not to give in completely, and would continue to avoid carbs, and keep up the water/calorie-free drinks, but not obsess about whether the dressing was full of sugar, or if peas were classed as evil by Monsieur Dukan. So lunch was a salad. Followed by a Crunchie, and a packet of mini Creme Eggs. ARGH I’M SO USELESS! Dinner was 7 cheese biscuits with Emmental and mayonnaise (low fat – ha!), 16 Party Ring biscuits, and I seem to be halfway down another Crunchie?

WHATEVER.

:-)