The diet, which was invented and improved by a nutritionist from France, Pierre Dukan, is one of the most popular in the world. And this is completely deserved, because it has been developed for more than thirty years. It all started when in 1975, Pierre Dukan saw a patient with severe obesity, whom he wanted to help not only lose weight, but also consolidate the result of losing weight for life. Thus, his diet was developed and changed over many years, and at the beginning of 2000 the whole world saw his book called “I Can’t Lose Weight,” which collected all the developments over many years. You can learn everything about the Dukan diet in detail from this article.
What it is
More than a hundred years ago, Soviet nutritionist Mikhail Pevzner developed 15 dietary tables for all occasions: the first - for recently operated patients, the ninth - for diabetics, the fifteenth - for everyone. Those suffering from gastritis were advised to give up fresh bread, dairy products and fiber-rich vegetables. It was believed that such nutrition protects against exacerbations and progression of the disease. But at the beginning of the 2000s, Australian scientists proved that the cause of gastritis is the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and you need to work with it, and not with the amount of cucumbers in the diet. For this, a group of researchers were given the Nobel Prize.
The remaining Pevzner tables were officially removed from the recommendations in 2003. They were considered ineffective: the table fit the average model of the disease. She did not take into account the specific clinical manifestations of each patient and concomitant pathologies. Instead of tables, they offered diets based on energy composition and a gentle diet.
First stage "Attack"
The first stage of the diet can be considered the most difficult. You will need to mentally set yourself up for success, and your body will need to adapt to a new diet. The “Attack” phase motivates and gives confidence, as you will lose significant weight thanks to protein foods.
At the first stage, you will need to prepare dishes only from protein products. Vegetable protein should be excluded, as it contains quite a lot of carbohydrates. A prerequisite for this stage is that you will need to consume 1.5 tablespoons of oat bran every day.
Below is a list of protein products from which you can create your menu for the first phase “Attack”. You can eat whenever you want and as much as you want.
- Eggs. No more than 2 pieces per day. You can cook egg whites as much as you want and in unlimited quantities.
- All lean meats. Veal, beef, chicken, beef liver, lean ham, rabbit meat, beef tongue. Everything except pork and lamb.
- Seafood. All lean fish, caviar, crayfish, squid, mussels.
- Low-fat dairy products. Cottage cheese, milk, kefir, fermented baked milk, yoghurts without flavorings or additives.
From the listed products, create a menu of dishes that you will prepare and divide them into several meals.
How does it work
People learned to control weight through diet long before social networks. Before the women's costume revolution, which began with the light hand of Coco Chanel, ladies wore corsets that were difficult to wear at the dinner table. Next - the famous advice of Maya Plisetskaya, explaining the sophistication of the prima ballerina's form, then - the era of shaping, fitness and glossy magazines with hundreds of diets. They were built on different principles: some demonized certain foods, others required counting points, calories or “BJU”, others offered a ready-made diet without any particular logic in selecting ingredients.
For example, the Dukan protein diet, popular in the early 2010s. A famous French doctor decided that the culprit of excess weight was carbohydrates, and suggested reducing their amount in the diet to the minimum necessary. Two books about the Dukan diet were published in Russia - one explained its principle, the other offered recipes. The girls created groups on social networks, shared recipes for protein cakes and casseroles, lost weight and rejoiced at the results, but not for long. In France, they conducted a survey and proved that 80% of adherents of the Dukan diet gain extra pounds back in four years.
During the cult of anorexia, extreme diets were popular. For example, drinking, when you can only eat liquid food and drinks. Or chocolate, in which the entire daily diet is a hundred-gram chocolate bar. There is also a more stringent option - the ABC diet, which promises to lead to a 30-kilogram ideal in 50 days of eating 50-200 kcal or starving.
Nowadays a healthy lifestyle is in fashion, and they offer “healthy” ways to achieve a beautiful figure. For example, with the help of proper nutrition or PP - a diet scheme in which foods and dishes are divided into “good” and “bad”. Or, for example, a keto diet, when a person eats a lot of fatty foods and few carbohydrates. If a person still indulges in candy and cakes, fitness bloggers and media suggest intermittent fasting - eat whatever and as much as you want, but for a certain number of hours. There are several hourly interval schemes, but they give a short-term effect and, with constant use, disrupt metabolism.
Dr. Pierre Dukan
French nutritionist. In 2000, the book “I Can’t Lose Weight” was published, which quickly became a bestseller. Since then, the diet has been used by tens of millions of people.
Pierre Dukan, creator of the diet
Dr. Dukan's diet is worth your time. However, be sure to make sure that you have no contraindications.
As a trainer, I think that the diet clearly lacks high-quality, moderate and targeted physical activity.
Be healthy! And if you decide to use the Dukan diet, do it conscientiously and bring the matter to a victorious conclusion on the first try.
The article was prepared based on materials from the books of Pierre Dukan.
Why diet doesn't work in the long run
There are a lot of positive reviews on diets on social networks, but few go into detail. English-language Instagram is rich in “before and after” photographs, where 150-kilogram women turn into miniature ladies. The authors of such publications write that the secret to losing weight is the keto diet or any other special diet that, by luck, you can buy from them. But they don’t say that, for example, before starting the keto diet, they underwent gastric banding - an operation that in some developed countries is performed free of charge with insurance.
“The benefits of the keto diet have been discussed for a long time at Harvard Medical School, and so far the opinion is unanimous: it can only be recommended for children with certain forms of epilepsy. It has been proven that with a low carbohydrate and high fat intake, seizures are less likely to occur. In all other cases, this diet is harmful,” says GMS Clinic nutritionist Svetlana Artemova, “A sudden refusal of carbohydrates is fraught with serious disorders. A person needs at least 120 grams per day. It’s better in the form of grains.”
A diet with a sharp restriction of proteins, fats or carbohydrates inevitably leads to breakdown. If you do not stop unhealthy attempts to lose weight, you can develop an eating disorder and obesity - this was proven by a five-year observation of girls and boys. Teenage girls still form groups, create chat rooms and support each other on their path to painful slimness.
“No diet has been shown to be effective in the long term. This is a provocateur of eating disorders, says Marina Garmash, a child psychiatrist at the Fantasy clinic. - In almost all cases, after 3 years, the weight returned to its previous figures, or even increased. All diets with strict calorie restriction, as well as mono-diets, significantly limit the usual diet in terms of calorie content, variety and nutrition. The danger is that a person is not programmed for mono-nutrition: he needs different food groups every day. Such diets can reduce weight, but at the expense of cutting carbohydrates. This leads to fluid loss and a minus on the scale. But as soon as a person returns to his previous diet, the weight instantly returns, but the dietary experience will provoke overeating, worsen contact with one’s body and the ability to recognize feelings of hunger and satiety. Addiction to diets can “exacerbate” chronic diseases. For example, from the gastrointestinal tract or genitourinary system.”
This is what happened to Anna from Novosibirsk. After a caustic remark from a classmate, she went on a diet. After going through several crash-diet cycles, she lost several kilograms, but didn’t stop there. Even when her loved ones sounded the alarm, Anna continued to lose weight until she reached a critically low weight. The result is major health problems and infertility.
Dividing food into “good” and “bad” is unscientific: the body does not care where it gets its energy from. The demonization of sugar is also based on the personal opinion of some nutritionists and fitness trainers. A study was conducted in Australia and found that sugar consumption has recently decreased, but the number of obese people is steadily increasing. This phenomenon was called the Australian paradox. Scientists have found that the main culprit in obesity is not sugar, but overeating.
“Modern scientific data do not recognize the existence of food dependence of the human body on any specific food nutrients and foods. We can talk about dependence on food in general and on the very process of eating it. A person experiences a subjective addiction to food as part of a complex process of activation of the reward system,” explains Marina Garmash. “The demonization of sugar and its restrictions ultimately lead to its excess consumption with subsequent feelings of guilt, which in turn serves as a risk for the onset of an eating disorder.” .
Smartphone applications[edit | edit code]
The applications are developed for smartphones and are freely available for download on the Play market; most of the described applications have a paid connection. List of the main applications dedicated to the Dukan diet based on Android:
- Du-diet Lite. Dukan Hudelka
- Dukan diet
- Ducan's diet. Recipes, products
- Dukan Diets
- Ducan's diet. All about losing weight
Du-diet Lite[edit | edit code]
Du-diet Lite app logo
Main features
- Building a precise diet sequence based on your data with individual fine tuning.
- Diet Tips and Reminders
- A graph of your results in a visual form and saving the results. Will help you stick to your diet and achieve better results.
- More than 500 excellent and proven recipes adapted to the Dukan diet. The recipes use products that are easy to find in the supermarket.
- Shopping list with the ability to add ingredients from recipes! Make a convenient shopping list for every day. Plan your diet several days in advance.
- Diet calendar with a convenient updated interface. Now in one click you can update your weight information, start a walk timer, and add information about your water consumption.
- You will not confuse whether today is a protein day or a protein-vegetable day. Information is shown on the calendar and on the main screen of the application.
- Water and walk meter. You will not forget to drink the required amount of fluid per day, and the application will also remind you of the need for a walk and set the right time, according to the stage of the diet.
- Colorful and clear infographic reminder on all stages of the diet. Explains the most important principles in a clear manner.
- Lots of useful tips and tricks.
Dukan diet[edit | edit code]
Dukan Diet app logo
Main functions
- Correct Weight Calculator;
- Diet diary: control of weight, physical activity and mood;
- Recommendations after diet failure;
- List of Allowed Products with tips;
- 500 exclusive recipes (in-app purchase);
- Selecting the alternation rhythm from 1-1 to 5-5;
- Reminders with recommendations for the day, about a walk, about entering data;
- Recording chest/waist/hip circumferences in the Diary;
- Ability to change target diet weight;
- Ability to take notes in the Diary.
Ducan's diet. Recipes, products[edit | edit code]
The developers do not indicate the main functions in the application description, only introductory information about the principles of weight loss according to Dukan.
Dukan diet[edit | edit code]
The developers do not indicate the main functions in the application description, only introductory information about the principles of weight loss according to Dukan.
Ducan's diet. All about losing weight[edit | edit code]
The developers do not indicate the main functions in the application description, only introductory information about the principles of weight loss according to Dukan. High score compared to previous applications.
When is a diet needed?
For certain diseases. For example, the DASH diet has been proven to be beneficial for hypertensive patients. This is a diet rich in fresh vegetables, grains and fruits, while it is low in animal fats and salt. This style of eating reduces blood pressure and reduces the risk of cardiovascular accidents by 13%. And if you add physical activity, you can also lose weight.
The diet is followed by people with disorders of the absorption of various substances. For example, celiac disease - gluten intolerance. They avoid foods rich in gluten - wheat, rye, sausages, canned food, some sauces and yogurts. Those who suffer from galactosemia - milk lactose intolerance - also have to limit themselves. Both conditions are detected in a laboratory through a blood test ordered by a doctor.
How to lose weight correctly
The cause of excess weight is overeating. To lose weight, just eat less and move more. All successful cases of weight loss are based on this principle. Adequate calorie restriction is enough to lose weight. A calculator will help you find out your daily requirement.
“If a person is not obese, then a calorie deficit and a balanced diet are sufficient. It is important not to overdo it: sharp restriction can lead to weight gain. “Fast” carbohydrates must be present in the diet, says Svetlana Artemova, “For example, before a workout or when you need to quickly make up for glucose deficiency. If a person is obese, the doctor finds out the cause and prescribes treatment. He chooses a convenient eating pattern that a person will adhere to throughout his life, because obesity is a chronic incurable disease.”
The body doesn’t care where the energy comes from - from a hamburger or chicken with buckwheat. At the same time, complex carbohydrates from cereals and high-quality animal proteins provide a feeling of fullness for several hours and energy. Here's the trap: foods rich in fats and carbohydrates confuse the brain's satiety system, forcing you to eat more cakes and ice cream. You can’t ban them, you just need to eat them in moderation.
Sometimes it's not about the excess weight, but about body image. Many girls of normal build want to lose weight in order to become extremely thin or “dry” to the point of definition and a thin waist, like those of popular bloggers and models. At the same time, they forget that the unrealistic figure of a media personality is most likely the result of Photoshop, a scalpel in the competent hand of a surgeon, or congenital slimness, which is almost impossible to achieve in a healthy way. For fitness models, the body is a source of income, the maintenance of which requires all resources.
“There are no healthy ways to lose weight below normal, and diets don’t work. A girl with overvalued ideas for losing weight will most likely develop an eating disorder,” says Marina Garmash. “To prevent this from happening, we need psychotherapeutic work aimed at correct self-perception.”
An ordinary person does not need to endure hardship and work out in the gym seven times a week. It is enough to eat within normal calorie limits and move actively throughout the day.
Second stage “Alternation”
At the second stage, just like at the first, the body loses weight, but not so intense. The duration of the second phase must be calculated based on your individual weight, and use the table above.
At the “Alternation” stage, you will need to alternate protein days with protein and vegetable days, at a ratio of 5 to 5 or 1 to 1. For example, one day is protein, the next is vegetables with proteins. Or five days of protein, the next five with the addition of vegetables.
The menu for the second stage is the same as the first, you just need to add vegetables. You can use the following vegetables: green beans, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini (read more about the zucchini diet here), eggplant, spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, cabbage, radishes, celery and others. Vegetables that contain a lot of starch are prohibited: potatoes, corn, legumes and others.
Vegetables are best eaten raw in salads, or boiled, stewed and steamed. It is also necessary to take two tablespoons of oat bran throughout the entire stage.
