We are leaving for the Caribbean in a month. My gf is 5 pounds over her “ideal bikini weight”. I could stand to lose a few stone as well (whatever a stone is).
She has suggested, and we have started, the Dukan Diet. It is a Protein Sparing Modified Fast that involves eating lean meats (protein), oat bran, and water for the first phase. From their it gets a bit more involved.
Several people whose opinions I generally trust have been saying good things about the concept. After three days I am averaging two pounds loss per day. (I tend to be competitive and have been working out as well, trying to beat my gf).
I don’t need to know anything about it, but if it involves less calories than you usually eat, it will cause a weight loss. If you eat less long enough you will lose all the weight you want to.
The Wikipedia article seems to say that while it works, it’s something that doctors don’t recommend to anyone not in immediate health danger from their weight.
For whatever its worth, years ago I lost a ton of weight doing an Atkins type diet. The weight, 80 pounds, pretty much fell off in a very short period of time. I put it all back on as soon as I stopped doing the diet. For me at least, slow, steady weight loss seems to work better.
I realize that. However, since this diet does not involve counting (or even knowing) calories, I was just wondering how it could be assumed that lean meat would automatically be low calorie.
I have a friend who just started phase 2 of a PSMF diet. He lost over 150 lbs. in I think maybe 10 months. But, he had about 200-250 to lose. He did this through The Cleveland Clinic under the care of a doctor.
Phase 2 has him now slowly re-introducing some carbs into his diet. Not sure how many calories now.
But this was a 400+ pound man under the supervision of a doctor with a years-long goal for weight loss.
The basic idea is to eat less and skew the body’s metabolic pathways to burn fat, sparing protein (muscle).
It will work fine to lose weight. It’s unlikely, however that you are losing two pounds of fat a day. A pound of fat is over 3500 kcals (Calories) and I doubt you are burning 7,000 kcals in excess of what you are taking in.
A full discussion of the benefits and limitations for any given weight-loss program is beyond the scope of a brief reply. In general, the sort of approach you two are using is most useful for a short-term tune to look better at the beach. It’s unlikely to work (and probably unhealthful) as a life-long eating routine.
I am not dehydrated (if anything I worry about the huge volume of water I am drinking). I realize that this is a short term thing, unlikely to work as a life long diet, although the Dukan method does have four stages designed to continue once weight loss has been achieved.
Last night after working in the barn, feeding horses etc I got on the treadmill for a while, so I am burning more calories each day then I usually do.
Well, protein has 4 calories per gram while fat has 9 calories per gram. Lean meat is protein (and water) with minimal fat, so it stands to reason it’s lower calorie.
Carbs are also 4 calories per gram, so you could eat the same amount of pure sugar as pure protein and come out the same, calorie-wise. Obviously there are some metabolic / nutritional reasons why that’s a Very Bad Idea.
As I understand it, high protein / low carbs (and oat bran is pure carbs but a lot of them are in the form of fiber which is essentially not digested so doesn’t count) causes some degree of diuresis. So that 2 pounds a day is the “honeymoon” phase of any reducing diet - you’re peeing the weight off - and it won’t continue.
Beyond that, I don’t know enough about the plan to comment on its merits.
I assume there are at least some guidelines for portion size, right? not “eat all the chicken breast you want”? Of course, because of the lower calorie density, it’d be hard to eat enough lean meat and oat bran to NOT lose weight. Weight Watchers even has (had?) a plan where you could eat unlimited foods from a somewhat restricted list (chicken breast was on that list as were most veggies).
But I’m eating enough meat to (more or less) not be hungry! It just seems a bit “mysterious” to me. Though when you are sitting there eating steak and wishing for a baked potato…
Well, chicken breast only has 112 calories per 4oz serving. So even if you sat down and ate a full pound of skinless chicken breast (which most people would not be able to do without feeling sick, by the way) it’s like 450 calories. Which if you ate that 3x/day is a 1300 calories for the day which is LOW enough to lose weight, even if you are a petite sedentary female over 35 – and if you are active, male and in your 20s you will start feeling quite unwell at that calories level before long. Bearing in mind most people would not be able to eat 1 lb of chicken 3x/day, and would actually eat around 8oz at most in a sitting.
It isn’t mysterious, Lean meat doesn’t have a lot of calories, and it’s very filling, so you can’t eat that much before feeling full.
That sounds like the WW “Core” program which is what I did when I started several years ago. It’s not “unlimited” but there’s very little bookkeeping (which is what appealed to me). You were supposed to start thinking about how full you are on a scale from 1-5, where 1 is “starving” and 5 is “I’m going to explode” and then try and stay at about 3. The list of foods is pretty much what you would expect (fruits and veggies, whole grains, lean protein, nonfat dairy, easy on the fats and sugars) - nothing complicated, nothing nasty or overly restrictive.
I found the first couple of weeks to be a bit tough and from that point on it was very simple. I lost 40lbs in less than a year IIRC, and I’ve kept it off for 3-4 years now.
Water retention is complicated. As I understand it, the salinity of your blood has to be in a very specific range for you to live, and so your body is constantly holding or letting go of water to keep that range. When you cut out a bunch of carbs, it shifts your body’s chemistry in some way that leads to needing less water to keep the ideal salinity. So it’s not something that drinking more or less will change: your body now needs a lower baseline of water, and will dump or retain as needed to keep it there.
As far as burning calories goes, understand that running a marathon burns in the neighborhood of 2600 calories. It would take three marathons in a day to burn off two pounds of actual fat.
That’s great! But keep in mind it’s mostly water weight. People report the same types of loss on Weight Watchers (I lost over 15 in the first two weeks) but things will slow down considerably after that. As long as this is something you can maintain for a long time it will continue to work. The initial phase is the easiest.
Well done! I did Dukan in the fall and lost significant weight (well, I was running regularly as well). I did attack phase for five days, IIRC. I found that I was never hungry, although after a couple of months, I tired of chicken, chicken, chicken, NF cottage cheese, NF yogurt and salads every other day. I went off during the holidays because I feel that holidays are for indulging–and indulge I did! Gained about 8 lbs in 7 weeks! :eek: But that weight gain only represents a bit over a third of what I lost on Dukan.
I’ll need to go back on it as soon as I can get a decent grocery trip done. The nice thing about my success with Dukan is that I’m not concerned at all that I won’t lose the weight I’ve gained over the holidays.
Most importantly, I felt fantastic, physically and mentally, the entire time I was on it.
