Call me your very own guinea pig if you like, but I'm giving the Dukan Diet a go. I have a history with dieting which mirrors my history with spending and giving up smoking. I gave up smoking three times before I finally just gave up. I would abstain for years and then have a 'fuck this' moment and start drinking, or smoking, or spending money or in recent years......eating! I am now at the two year point of not spending money and by now I would usually feel 'hard done by' and start spending. I am not as cold turkey as I once was and allow myself new clothes, or new shoes but in moderation. I'm the same with wine, I gave up for years at a time and then found another 'fuck this' moment and in true Brit style found an excuse to get totally ratted! Like the spending, I don't do that any more and haven't done so for many years.
I have lost a considerable amount of weight twice before. Once I did it by getting divorced, (I know the old joke .....I lost fifteen stone of ugly fat!) as I was so stressed that I simply didn't eat and when Dearly Beloved and I first got together, I was a size 10. I stayed that weight for quite a while and then made my way back up to a size 16. In 2005, I embarked on the Weight Watchers programme and lost three stone and went all the way down to 10 stone and a size 10 again, and at 5'10"...that's no mean feat. The only way I kept the weight off was to restrict calories to 17 points a day and if any of you know the old Weight Watchers system, that's about a thousand calories a day; it was infact an ultra low calorie diet. Your body goes into starvation mode, which means the moment you start eating again, you pile on pound after pound after pound; and I did!
The Dukan diet is based on burning your own carbohydrates as you don't eat any. I know what you're thinking......is this Atkins #2? In a way, it is, but this is low fat. It also spooks your body's metabolism as you don't stick to the same eating patterns but you alternate them. You do in fact become ketonic, which you manage with two to three litres of water a day. It also regulates your blood sugars and I don't crave food. You see, I'm normally always hungry, my body has no 'full' feeling. You could wake me up in the middle of the night, unwrap haddock, chips and mushy peas and by the time the aroma of vinegar touched my nose, I could happily eat the lot. So, this is how it works. I spent 5 days on pure proteins and then five days on proteins and very low carb veggies such as lettuce or onion. I get the few carbs I need from the low fat dairy products I eat.
You saw yesterday that I'm experimenting with Quark. Today, I made myself a two egg omelette, which I flavoured with some finely diced and fried onion, then I poured the eggs over the top. I ate that with some of the quark which I flavoured with garlic and parsley. I'm now on a 72 day programme of alternating days of pure protein (as I have today) with days of protein and vegetables.
It's easier to tell you what I don't eat. I don't eat any starch, bread, potatoes, high fat cheese, any fruit as it full of sugar. After the 72 days, or how ever long it takes me to get to my target weight, then I'll blog again about the next stage of my weight loss. The website has the basic www.dukandiet.co.uk and you can of course get the book, my library has several copies and I'm reading one at the moment. All the recipes are adaptation of classic French recipes, lots of chasseur, hollandaise, au poive ect. I will admit, it's expensive but I buy meat when it's reduced and low fat cheeses when they are on offer. The most frugal part of the diet is the fact that by regulating blood sugars, (this is similar to the diet that diabetics are put on too) I don't feel hungry between meals. I sat through a three hour meeting and people had sweets and biscuits and were obviously peckish after work and were happily munching away on them. I ate some sliced meat with cottage cheese for lunch and didn't feel any need to eat again until 7pm this evening. Usually, I would have eaten anything insight including the pet dog when I got home.
I'm just stunned with not feeling hungry. I went through the lowest depression ever when I followed the Weight Watchers plan as I was always hungry. I'm not hungry and I'm not picking. I hope to go on and lose a pound a week from here after. I'm off out for my nightly walk with my dogs and the only difference is that I've doubled the distance. They seem happy enough on it!
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| Me, 2006., at size 12, this for me is a normal size and where I hope to get back to, however, I'll settle for anything smaller than a size 16! Wish me luck. |
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