The Dukan Diet (18 page)

There are two ways of feeling satisfied from food: the mechanical satisfaction that you get from filling your stomach; and the real satiety that comes after the food has been digested and gets into your bloodstream and then to your brain. People who eat very quickly have to rely on filling their stomachs to calm their appetite. This may require enormous quantities of food, which explains why they feel sleepy and bloated after meals.

On the other hand, a person who eats slowly and chews carefully is allowing time to feel satisfied. Such a person starts to feel full halfway through a meal and often turns down dessert.

I realize that it is difficult to totally change this type of firmly rooted behavior. I also know how exasperating it can be if you are a hare to have to eat alongside a tortoise.

Accept the idea that a measure as simple as this can make a real difference. Be aware too that deliberately slowing down the speed at which you swallow is much easier than it seems. The effort involved in deliberately making sure you chew every mouthful slowly only lasts a few days before it becomes automatic and eventually a habit.

On this subject, I have a story about one of my patients. An Indian gentleman who was once obese lost his weight by following the advice of a guru in a New Delhi ashram who said: “At each meal, eat and chew as you would normally, but just when you are about to swallow, push the
food back to the front of your mouth and chew it for a second time. In two years you will be back at your normal weight again.”

No one knows exactly where this idea started, but people seem to have the notion that if you want to lose weight, you should not drink when you eat. This is completely absurd. Drinking at mealtimes is good for three sound reasons:

During the Consolidation phase—the transition between the weight loss period and the Permanent Stabilization phase—the diet opens the door to a number of additional food choices and two celebration meals along with the commonsense recommendation “Never take seconds.”

Anyone who wants to lose weight is well advised to follow this one rule, which most naturally thin people do spontaneously. Serve yourself
a large portion at the start of the meal, knowing that there will be no seconds. You will eat with a better appetite. and you can take your time. As soon as you feel tempted to ask for more, you are on dangerous ground. Put your plate down and think about the next course.

What could be easier? Drink when you eat, chew properly so that you can concentrate on all the flavors in your mouth, and never take a second helping of the same dish. These rules are simple, and effective when applied at the table, the very spot where your high-risk eating habits, which are in part responsible for your extra pounds in the first place, hold sway.

These instructions, which you can depend on, act like beacons on the road to stabilization. They continually confirm the significance, the scope, and the permanence of this huge challenge, which is to live comfortably and to eat for the rest of your life, 6 days out of 7, just like everybody else.

Especially today, it has become difficult to achieve and maintain a normal weight without some special method.

As I write these lines, in the headquarters and laboratories of the largest food-manufacturing companies there are marketing geniuses, professional psychologists, and experts on the deeper motives of human behavior all working quietly away on snacks of various shapes and colors, with slogans and advertising campaigns that are so sophisticated that resisting their temptation is virtually impossible.

In other laboratories, equally expert researchers and technicians are working away to discover and promote methods and appliances whose innovative features aim to reduce even further the human body’s activity and movement in order to present us with products that, according to your point of view, either relieve us from or deprive us of a whole array of practical activities and the calories they would be helping us burn up.

This is all to say that, apart from professional athletes, people living in an elite consumer society have great difficulty in regulating their body weight, yet culturally and socially it has become incorrect to be overweight, both for health reasons and because of the prevailing cultural stereotype that to be attractive you must be thin.

I designed my program so that its basic structure could be easily understood. The only parameters given have been for the length of dieting and the amount of weight to be lost. Now it is time to see how this can evolve and be adapted for different ages and stages in our lives.

In just one generation, television, computer games, and the Internet have glued our children to the television and the computer screen as they consume an array of candy and salty, fatty snacks with irresistible flavors promoted by equally irresistible commercials.

The epidemic of North American obesity started in the 1960s and took hold of the youth of that generation. Today those overweight children have become today’s fat moms and dads, and the United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world.

Pediatricians in my country have already noted the first signs of this cultural invasion. The rate of childhood obesity in Europe is increasing as children adopt American fast food, pizza, ice cream, sodas, candy bars, popcorn, and sugary breakfast cereals, combined with “computer game immobility.”

As far as the overweight child is concerned, we should make a distinction between preventive measures for children from families prone to obesity, who very early on show signs of becoming overweight, and curative measures for those children most at risk from our consumer culture. It is important that parents be both well informed and firm, and never forget that when dealing with overweight children, preventive measures reap the most rewards. Once children become overweight, they will have to deal with weight control problems for the rest of their life.

Generally the child at risk for obesity has overweight and easygoing parents, is inactive, loves food, has a big appetite, and is chubby from the outset.

There is certainly no question of starting any child on a diet, especially not one as structured as my program. However, help must be given to parents who want to help their child avoid being an overweight adult.

Our advice is clear and simple:

• Absolutely avoid potato chips, processed snacks, and nuts such as peanuts and pistachios.
  
• Never purchase processed foods for children that are high in sugar and fat.
  
• Reduce by one-half or by two-thirds the fats (oil, butter, cream) used in sauces and dressings.
  

With these few pieces of advice, elementary but effective in the long term, the greatest dangers will be avoided. The child’s future health, both physical and psychological, is at stake.

An aware and responsible parent will serve as little fast or processed food as possible, and will reserve candy, cake, cookies, and ice cream for birthdays or special occasions. Parents can draw on their inventiveness to reduce the oil in salad dressings and the butter on pasta and bread and in sauces for meat, fish, and poultry dishes. (See the recipes for
sauces, mayonnaise, and dressings
.)

When dealing with a child under age ten who is becoming overweight, parents should adopt a relaxed approach, aiming to stabilize the child’s weight at this point so that the nutritional demands for the child’s natural growth will use up the extra pounds. To achieve this end, apply the aforementioned measures regarding snacks, processed foods, and sauces
and dressings for three months to correct the balance of fats and sugar in the child’s diet.

If the child’s weight continues to go up regardless of these measures, use the Consolidation phase in my program, with its 2 celebration meals but without the protein Thursdays, which are too extreme for a child of this age.

If the child is over age 10 and is by constitution overweight, you can now try to gradually reduce these extra pounds. Start with the whole Consolidation phase as before, using the day of proteins to keep on track, but with the addition of vegetables. The aim here is to enable children to lose weight without force or frustration, knowing that they have the great advantage of their growing bodies, which will use up this extra weight for their natural growth.

In normal circumstances, adolescence is the time when boys are least likely to become overweight, as it is a time of rapid growth and lots of activity, when burning up energy neutralizes any weight gain.

However, it is not the same for adolescent girls, who go through a period of hormonal instability reflected in irregular menstrual periods and weight gain concentrated in the thighs, hips, or knees. As their bodies change, girls often become emotionally hypersensitive and obsessed with being thin.

• If a girl simply tends to be a bit chubby during this stage of irregular periods and noticeable premenstrual syndrome, you should consult your doctor, who can estimate the maturity of her bone structure and how much more growth her body is likely to undergo.
  
• If the girl is still growing, my Consolidation phase is best
  suited for this situation and is usually enough to get her weight under control, provided it is followed correctly and includes protein Thursdays.
  
• If the girl has finished growing, or if she has not lost enough weight following the Consolidation phase, get her to follow the Cruise phase. However, instead of alternating days of pure protein with days of proteins and vegetables, she will have proteins and vegetables every day.
  
• Should the girl’s weight gain get worse, from age 17 she may follow the full adult Cruise phase, using the 1/1 rhythm—that is, pure proteins one day, then proteins + vegetables the next—until she reaches her True Weight, taking her age into account. Her goal must not be some self-selected weight termed as an ideal weight. Not only is this unrealistic, but it will put her at risk for making her body used to a diet that is too restrictive during adolescence.
  

If after age 18, a girl is definitely overweight, has regular periods, and has no eating disorders such as bulimia or compulsive eating, she should follow my program without modification, beginning with 3 to 5 days of the Attack phase, then moving to the Cruise phase, with an alternating rhythm of 1 day of pure proteins followed by 1 day of pure proteins + vegetables.

For adolescent girls, it is even more crucial to consolidate the target weight with the Consolidation phase, then move on to the Permanent Stabilization phase.

The new low-dosage contraceptive minipills have considerably reduced the risk of weight gain associated with earlier birth control pills.

Nevertheless, whatever dosage is used, the first months of taking a contraceptive pill are a time when women put on weight, and for anyone who has never had to watch what they eat, it is often difficult to get rid of these pounds. The tendency to gain weight gradually lessens over 3 or 4 months, a short period during which it is wise to take a few precautions.

If you have a personal or family predisposition to putting on weight or are using a high-dose contraceptive pill, a simple and effective method of preventing weight gain is to use my Permanent Stabilization phase. If this does not work or does not produce the desired results, follow the complete Consolidation phase with protein Thursdays.

• If you are not very overweight, start with the 1/1 version of the Cruise phase—1 day of pure proteins followed by 1 day of pure proteins + vegetables—until you get back down to your normal weight. Then follow the Consolidation phase, 5 days for every pound lost, followed by the Permanent Stabilization phase for at least 4 months so that you do not run the risk of regaining the lost weight right away.
  
• If you are very overweight, follow the entire program, through all the stages, sticking to protein Thursdays for 1 year.