The Dukan Diet (5 page)

I had the opportunity to review sixty cases of patients suffering from either gout or uric acid kidney stones. They followed a protein-rich diet and also agreed to drink 3 quarts of water a day. Those who were already following treatment continued with it; the others, who were not on a treatment plan, did not add any medication. During the diet there was not a single case of uric acid levels rising; in fact a third of the patients saw their levels go down.

It is therefore essential when following a protein-rich diet to keep drinking water, especially during the protein-only phase. This is an opportune moment to deal with the accusations leveled against proteins by those who spread the idea that protein-rich foods can strain and even damage the kidneys. These same people have stated that even water can be toxic for the kidneys if you drink 1½ quarts per day. In thirty-five years of working with my diet and its unrestricted protein intake and insisting that my patients must drink at least 1½ quarts of water per day, I have never had a problem with a patient. I have even worked with thirty patients who, despite having only one kidney, lost weight without having any change in their renal markers. Apart from the usual prophets of doom, there are also jealous and troublemaking people—in particular, people who could do with losing weight themselves but lack the will to
do so—who try to stop others from having a go. To such people I say, Come and join us, and let’s drink a glass of water together!

Let’s highlight some of the fundamental principles of a good weight loss diet:

• Fats are the number one enemy
  . Without doubt, fat both from animals and plants is the greatest enemy for anyone about to embark on a weight loss diet. Even before you start considering the fat content in meat or fish, just adding up the calories from the fat in cooking oil, sauces, marinades, dips, butter, and cream, as well as the fat found in cheese and sausages, is enough for fat to be awarded the prize for the highest source of calories. An effective, consistent diet therefore must start by reducing or eliminating fatty foods. You cannot lose your own fat by eating fat from other sources!
  
• Animal fats pose a risk for the cardiovascular system
  . You must also realize that animal fats alone contain cholesterol and triglycerides. Animal fats need to be reduced if there is any likelihood of cardiovascular risk or high cholesterol.
  
• Simple carbohydrates are enemy number two
  . For anyone wanting to lose weight, simple carbohydrates are their other enemy. I’m not speaking of the slow sugars found in whole grains or legumes, but of simple sugars like table sugar, which are assimilated quickly and trigger the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin which in turn increases appetite and fat storage. Simple sugars are delicious to snack on, but their sweet taste can make you forget just how high their calorie concentration is.
  
• Proteins have a moderate caloric value
  . Proteins have only 4 calories per gram.
  
• The calories in proteins cannot be completely assimilated
  . Those foods richest in proteins, like meat or fish, are interwoven with connective tissue and are therefore very resistant to digestion, which means they are not completely assimilated. For overweight people, who by definition are great calorie assimilators, able to get the most out of anything they eat, this is manna from heaven, as it means they cannot extract all the calories in proteins.
  
• It takes energy to digest and assimilate proteins
  . If we subtract the energy needed for digesting proteins from the energy that protein foods contribute, 30 percent of their calories is saved, far more than with all other foods.
  
• 2 to 3 ounces of pure protein are needed daily
  . Never go on a diet with fewer than 2 or 3 ounces of pure protein per day as it will rob you of muscle tissue and make your skin dull.
  
• Drinking 1½ quarts of water a day eliminates protein’s waste products
  . Do not worry about uric acid, protein’s natural waste product. You will eliminate it entirely by drinking 1½ quarts of water a day.
  
• Proteins keep you from feeling hungry
  . Remember that the more slowly a food is assimilated, the longer it takes for you to feel hungry again. Sweet foods are absorbed and assimilated the most rapidly, then fatty foods, and, after them, proteins. Those of you who constantly have food on your mind can draw your own conclusions.
  

The Dukan Diet program is made up of four successive diets, designed so that they guide overweight people to their desired weight and keep them there. These four diets, which gradually include more foods, have been specially devised to accomplish the following, in chronological order:

• With the first diet, a lightning start and an intense and stimulating weight loss
  
• With the second diet, a steady, regular weight loss that takes you straight to your desired weight, your own True Weight
  
• With the third diet, consolidation of this newly achieved but still unstable weight, lasting for a fixed period of time—5 days for every pound lost
  
• With the fourth diet, permanent stabilization of your achieved weight, in return for three simple, concrete, guiding, extremely effective but non-negotiable measures to be followed for the rest of your life: protein Thursdays, no more elevators or escalators, and 3 tablespoons of oat bran a day
  

Each of the four diets has a specific effect and a particular mission to accomplish, but all four draw their force and their graduated impact from using pure proteins: pure proteins only during the Attack phase; proteins combined with vegetables during the Cruise phase; proteins in a more varied diet during the Consolidation phase, and, finally, 1 pure protein day a week again in the Stabilization phase.

The Attack phase gets its jump start by using the protein diet in its purest form for an average of 2 to 7 days, depending on the individual.

Alternating pure proteins with proteins and vegetables gives power and rhythm to the Cruise phase, which leads you straight to your desired weight.

The Consolidation phase is the period of transition between hard-line dieting and a return to normal eating.

And finally, in the Stabilization phase, the pure protein diet, followed for just 1 day a week for the rest of your life, guarantees permanent stabilization of your weight. In exchange for this occasional effort, for the other 6 days of the week you will be able to eat without guilt or any particular restriction.

How does the pure protein diet work? All will be explained in this chapter.

Where do you find pure proteins? Proteins form the fabric of living matter, both animal and vegetable, so they are found in most known foods. But to develop its unique action and full potential, the protein diet has to be composed of elements as close as possible to pure protein. In practice, other than egg whites, no food is this pure.

Whatever their protein content, vegetables are still too rich in carbohydrates. This includes all cereals, legumes, and starchy foods, and even soybeans. Though known for their protein quality, soybeans are too fatty and rich in carbohydrates.

Some animal proteins are also too high in fat. This is the case with pork, mutton and lamb, some poultry, such as duck and goose, and some cuts of beef and veal.

There are, however, a certain number of foods of animal origin that, without attaining the level of pure protein, come close to it and will be the main players in the Dukan Diet.

• Lean cuts of beef, no ribs, spare ribs, and cuts used for braising or stewing
  
• Lean cuts of veal
  
• Lean cuts of pork
  
• Game, such as venison, and some exotic meats, such as ostrich
  
• Poultry, except for domestic duck and goose
  
• All fish, including oily fish, whose fat helps protect the heart and arteries so they can be included here
  
• All other seafood
  
• Eggs, even though the small amount of fat in the yolk taints the purity of the egg white
  
• Nonfat dairy products. Though very rich in protein and totally fat-free, they may, nevertheless, contain a small amount of lactose, a natural milk sugar found in milk, just as fructose is found in fruit. They can, however, remain in the Dukan Diet’s strike force because they have little lactose but lots of taste.
  

The Purity of Proteins Reduces the Calories They Provide
Every animal species feeds on foods made up of a mixture of the only three known food groups: proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. But for each species, there is a specific ideal proportion for these three food groups. For humans, the proportion is 5–3–2—that is, 5 parts carbohydrates, 3 parts fats, and 2 parts proteins, a composition close to that of mother’s milk.

It is when our food intake matches this “golden proportion” that calories are most efficiently assimilated in the small intestine so that it is easy to put on weight.

On the other hand, all you have to do is change this proportion and the calories are not absorbed as well and the energy from the foods is reduced. Theoretically, the most radical modification conceivable, which would reduce most drastically the calories absorbed, would be to restrict our food intake to a single food group.

In practice, even though this approach has been tried out in the United States with carbohydrates (the Beverly Hills Diet allowed unlimited quantities of exotic fruits) or fats (the Eskimo diet), it is hard to eat only sugars or fats, and doing so has serious repercussions for our health. Too much sugar allows diabetes to develop easily, and too much fat, apart from our inevitable disgust, would pose a major risk to the cardiovascular system. Furthermore, proteins are essential for life and if the body does not get them it raids its own muscle for them.

If we are to eat from one single food group, the only possibility is lean proteins—a satisfactory solution as far as taste is concerned. It also avoids the risk of clogging up the arteries, and by definition it excludes protein deficiency.

When you manage to introduce a diet limited to protein foods, the body cannot use all the calories contained in the food. The body takes the proteins needed for survival and for the vital maintenance of its organs (muscles, blood cells, skin, hair, nails), and it makes poor and scant use of the other calories provided.

Assimilating Proteins Burns Up a Lot of Calories
To understand the second property of proteins that makes the Dukan Diet so effective, you need to familiarize yourself with the idea of the specific dynamic action (SDA) of foods. The SDA of a food represents the effort or energy that the body has to use to break down the food until it is reduced to its basic unit, which is the only form in which it can enter the bloodstream. How much work this involves depends on the food’s consistency and its molecular structure.

When you eat 100 calories of white sugar, the work the body must do
to absorb it burns up only 7 calories, so 93 usable calories remain. Thus the SDA for carbohydrates is 7 percent.

When you eat 100 calories of butter or oil, assimilating them is a bit more laborious. The body burns 12 calories in absorbing them, leaving only 88 usable calories. Thus the SDA of fats is 12 percent.

Finally, to assimilate 100 calories of pure protein—egg whites, lean fish, or nonfat cottage cheese—the task is enormous. This is because protein is composed of an aggregate of very long chains of molecules whose basic links, amino acids, are connected to each other by a strong bond that requires a lot more work to be broken down. It takes 30 calories just to assimilate the proteins, leaving only 70 usable calories. Thus the SDA of proteins is 30 percent.

Assimilating proteins makes the body work hard and is responsible for producing heat and raising our body temperature, which is why swimming in cold water after eating a protein-rich meal is inadvisable, for the change in internal body temperature can result in immersion hypothermia.

This characteristic of proteins, annoying for anyone desperate for a swim, is a blessing for overweight people who are usually so good at absorbing calories. It means they can save calories painlessly and eat more comfortably without any immediate penalty.

At the end of the day, after eating 1,500 calories worth of proteins, a substantial intake, only 1,050 calories remain after digestion. This is one of the Dukan Diet’s keys and one of the reasons why it is so effective. But that’s not all.

Pure Proteins Reduce Your Appetite
Eating sweet foods or fats does create a superficial feeling of satiety, all too soon swept away by the return of hunger. Recent studies have proved that snacking on sweet or fatty foods does not delay your urge to eat again or reduce the quantities eaten at the next meal. On the other hand, snacking on proteins does delay your urge for your next meal and does reduce the amount that you then eat. What is more, eating only protein foods produces ketones, powerful natural appetite suppressants that are responsible for a lasting feeling of
satiety. After 2 or 3 days on a pure protein diet, hunger disappears completely, and you can follow the Dukan Diet without the natural threat that weighs down most other diets: hunger.

Pure Proteins Fight Edema and Water Retention
Certain diets or foods are known as being “hydrophilic”—that is, they encourage water retention and the bloating this causes. This is the case for mostly vegetable diets, rich in fruits, vegetables, and mineral salts. Protein-rich diets are the exact opposite. They are known to promote elimination through urine and, as such, provide a welcome purge or “drying out” for tissues gorged with water, which is a particular problem during the premenstrual cycle or during perimenopause.

The Attack diet, made up exclusively of pure proteins, best gets rid of water. This is particularly advantageous for women. When a man gains weight, it is mostly because he overeats and stores his surplus calories in the form of fat. For a woman, how she puts on weight is often more complex and bound up with water retention, which prevents diets from working properly.