This article gives pertinent information about Dukan Diet and its side-effects

mediaimage
Pierre Dukan, a French doctor and nutritionist, challenged with the case of obesity started to look for alternative ways in curing the illness. After 20 years of thorough research he published in the year 2000, a book called, “Je ne sais pas maigrir” or translated as, “I don’t know how to get slimmer.” It gained the best-seller in France after a year it has been published.
It was made a hit in UK when Kate Middleton, now the duchess of Cambridge, tried the Dukan Diet before her marriage to the beloved Prince William, she reportedly claimed a loss of two dress sizes. It also allegedly claimed to help five million French. The book is also gaining fame in the US in the year 2011 when actress/singer, Jennifer Lopez, lost pounds after her pregnancy by following this diet.
Dukan Diet: What is it? How does this work?
Dukan Diet is similar to the famous Atkins diet. Atkins and Dukan are much alike in terms of non-intake of carbs initially and do not require portion control or counting calorie consumptions. In Atkins, it requires net carbohydrate intakes and unlike Dukan, it suggests a daily intake of oats, increase water consumption and 20 minutes of everyday brisk walking. Dukan Diet adopts four phases namely: Attack, Cruise, Consolidation and Stabilization.
Four Phases of the Dukan Diet
Attack: In this starter phase, the dieter is only allowed take protein rich foods that are exquisitely low in fat. Dr. Dukan provided 72-item list of foods to be eaten, it excludes pork, lamb, poultry products and cheeses. Food should always be cooked but without adding any fat to it, it best to cook in grilling or roasting. It also requires you to eat 1 ½ tbsp. oat bran & 1.5 liters of water per day. This phase should be followed around 2-7 days or more. Results from this initial phase within 5 days may result in 4-7 lbs. loss. This phase promotes quick loss of weight since it is strictly based on a protein-only diet.
Cruise: Cruise, the second to the fourth phase of the Dukan diet scheme. During this phase dieters who were only allowed to eat protein-only foods can now alternate a 28-items of non-starchy vegetables. They may take attack phase diet for today and take non-starchy veggie diet for tomorrow, and so this phase must go on by alternating these two types of diet each day. This phase may last long enough as much as you want by reaching your desired weight and assuring 2 pounds per week loss.
Consolidation: As one achieves the desired weight, one has to go the next phase called Consolidation, this is the maintenance phase of this diet scheme where you have to prevent putting back excess pounds. The plan in this phase is less strict compared to the first two phases. During this phase you are permitted to eat protein-only and veggie diet along with a piece of low-sugar fruit, 2 slices of whole grain bread and a portion of hard cheese. In this phase you are allowed to have 1-2 serving of starchy foods and one celebration meal per week. The phase of consolidation does not expect to loss off pounds but rather it is steadily the maintenance process.
Stabilization: Stabilization is the final phase and a life-long phase of the diet scheme. In here maintenance of the life-changing diet may be a challenging and tempting. During this portion of the scheme, one is already permitted to allow any food intake that a person wants and by also sticking to the diet rule in the consolidation phase. As Pierre Dukan suggest, that staying on the phase 1 rule once a week and eat whatever you like for the rest of the week lowers the chances of regaining weight.
Pros and Cons of Dukan Diet
Pros: The fast results of this diet scheme is beneficially rewarding and motivating. It allows you to have protein and veggie meal plan diets and does not require you to count off your calorie intakes.
Cons: It is highly restrictive and can exclude healthy foods. Dieters can experience side-effects such as symptoms of headaches, nausea, lethargy, irritable and loss of concentration. Dieters may acquire halitosis (bad breath), metallic tasting mouth and strong smell in their urines. For those people who have problems with their kidneys and liver are not advised to follow this diet plan. It is not also recommended for pregnant and nursing mothers.

Views and Opinions by Health Experts on the Dukan Diet
There are lots of critics in this diet plan. Due to the restrictive type scheme of this diet, some fruits, grains and nuts which are healthy and have high amounts of vitamins and minerals that are vital to the nutrition of the body are eliminated. Keri Gans of American Dietetic Association, said that the lost amount of multivitamins that should be acquired from those restricted foods are not compensated in the Dukan diet. Experts have also criticized that experiencing such side-effects may not be healthy at all.

When it comes to weight loss creativity and innovation, body fat wonders never cease to amaze you. Consider that now, both your taste preferences and palette can delve into freshly prepared, highly effective, and even completely delicious meals delivered right to your home via weight loss diet plan health food delivery services.
Essentially, what you have here is weight loss diet plan health food delivery services for body fat reduction support. This is a creative health food delivery services solution that solves at least one of four major obstacles most dieters face in the quest for a better body.

Common weight loss diet plan obstacles include the following:

Lack of Know-How – (Solution): Professional chefs, coupled with and supported by the bona fide expertise of nutritionists, bodybuilding, weight management, and personal trainers, help make it a lot easier for you to take part in successful and effective health food diet plan achievement by eating foods that taste good, as well as supporting negative energy balance needed to lose body fat.

Lack of Money – (Solution): There is much controversy and debate over whether or not being in great shape with maximized performance ability is truly costly, or merely a basic sacrifice that one chooses to make in order to attain more self-satisfying, long-term, weight loss diet plan success. Perhaps you notice that typical junk foods don’t really cost you much. Yet, they also leave you high and dry in terms of healthy meal diet plan weight loss support. Probably, like other things worthwhile in this life we live, items that provide consistent, reliable service come with a slightly higher ticket price. Yet, weight loss diet plan food delivery services strongly appear to keep your financial outlay at reasonable minimums. Lack of cash need stop no one from attaining the level of fitness they highly desire and truly work to achieve. Less of the bad things and more of the good remains part of a smart, highly recommended, professional health food delivery strategy. Weight loss diet planning is not about money; it’s about awareness, commitment, and dedication. Lack of Motivation – (Solution): For many, it’s hard to get started on almost any weight loss diet plan at all. Even for some, simply getting up in the morning proves a chore in itself. Yet, a good weight loss diet plan remains an essential part of the body fat reduction process. Without such advance body fat planning or strategy, you leave yourself wide open to yo-yo dieting behavior. That is, you try one weigh loss approach for a while, it fails you; then you return to where you started, feeling frustrated and doubtful about your ability to attaint consistent and lasting body fat results. Viable healthy meal food delivery services augment your drive to achieve weight loss results by providing your body with not only physical fuel in the way of food energy, but also helps you release your mental powers with added focus on losing weight. Liking gaining an extra, customized, personalized, or specialized tool to cut excess fat away from your body… diet meal plan food delivery gives you extra options and more alternatives to healthy eating behavior.

Lack of Time – (Solution): To lose body weight effectively, it is important that you be able to concentrate and focus on the daily chores you constantly face. Time management contributes to peace of mind and reducing undue stress, which is counterproductive to weight loss achievement.

Probably the greatest fact you can take home with you, in regard to diet meal planning and health food delivery, is this: Convenience need no longer be a stumbling block to your body fat success. Imagine the power of having professional, caring, educated, and specialized experts affordably prepare your meals CORRECTLY, virtually each and every day, so that you can be as free as possible to reach body fat and weight loss goals effectively, safely, reliably, enjoyably, and in good taste, too.

Being successful at weight loss will almost always require that you do at least three things with as much accuracy and precision as possible. You must keep your health food or weight loss diet plan, plus:

1. Maintain a daily negative energy balance.

2. Monitor your input and output, carefully keeping accurate records of your progress and failures, too. (Yes, record failures too, so that you can fix them and avoid future repetition.)

3. Challenge and engage your body with gradually increasing, higher energy action of intentionally longer durations. (This is how you build and develop maximum endurance, energy, power, stamina, and strength.)

Adding weight loss diet plan food delivery services to your above action plan propels body fat reduction success rates to optimized attainment levels. Take a good look at weight loss diet plan health food delivery services in the mindset of losing body fat with additional commitment and reachable body fat goal support. Without proper health food diet plan eating habits, even the best exerciser struggles with losing weight because it’s practically all about calories. Exercise can only increase calories out, depending upon your level of fitness and the intensity at which you can stand to operate.

Yet, with or without exercise, health food delivery diet planning virtually always scores points for you in body fat achievement because the everlasting body fat equation remains true:

ENERGY IN (that’s the food you eat), minus ENERGY-OUT (that’s the exercise you do), equals ENERGY BALANCE (that’s the amount you weigh right now). In a nutshell, if your health food weight loss diet plan remains simple, effective, and delicious, then you can stick with it and get the results and rewards you desire or attempt to reach. Easy or not, health food diet planning is necessary, and weight loss diet plan food delivery services can help you with this challenging task.

The Atkins’ diet has been a craze for a couple of decades. Here’s how you can gain from it.

mediaimage
All of you who are reading this article right now have definitely been on a diet at some point or the other of your lives. The battle of the bulge is an ongoing problem and we are always on the lookout for various means to win this war.

Along with exercise, our diet and nutrition also plays an important role in reducing our weight. Hence, this obsession persists in all of us to undertake some form of dieting. But going on a diet is definitely not an easy thing. What to eat and what to stay away from is always a perennial problem.

One of my friends told me that she ate the normal menu which she cooked for the family, but her weight loss recipe is “portion control.” This is a really simple diet plan. In this plan, you cut down on the portion of food you consume. For example, if you usually have two pieces of toast for breakfast, you should eat only one piece. If you normally eat two cups of rice for lunch, cut it down to one cup. In this way, you are automatically reducing your calorie intake by half.

Another popular method of dieting is to stop all intake of fatty foods and sugar. In this diet, you cut down on your oil, butter and ghee intake which automatically reduces your fat deposits.

While I was leafing through a magazine, I read about one of our Hollywood celebrities following the Atkins’ diet. This immediately aroused my curiosity about the diet. Though I have heard about the diet many times, I had no inside knowledge about it. So, I immediately set to work on it and found out certain basic facts’ about the Atkins diet which I want to share with my readers.

The Atkins’ diet made its first appearance in 1972 and was invented by its namesake, Dr Atkins. According to him, this method enables us to lose weight by inducing a change in metabolism. Our body burns both fat and carbohydrates to provide energy. If we reduce the intake of carbohydrates significantly, our body starts burning only fat to provide energy. This method is called “lipolysis”, which in turn induces ketosis. In ketosis, our body burns fat as fuel. Atkins also felt that ketosis will affect insulin production which will result in less fat being formed. And, once your body enters ketosis, your cravings for carbohydrates will reduce significantly which, in turn, will reduce your body weight.

The major difference between Atkins’ diet and other types of diet is that, while most diets restrict calorie, intake, the Atkins’ plan encourages us to eat more. While most of the diets recommend low fat, high carbohydrate intake, Atkins’ does just the opposite. Instead of carbohydrate and sugar, this diet wants us to consume plenty of fat and protein.

The core principle of the Atkins’ diet is that, by limiting carbohydrates, our body is forced to burn its stored fat, rather than carbs for fuel.

The Atkins’ diet has a four carbohydrates stage plan induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. With the help of these four stages, you can reduce as well as maintain your weight throughout your life.

Induction – phase 1: This phase lasts for two weeks, by the end of which you can obtain significant results. Another point is that, in this diet plan you can begin at any of the phase. But it is recommended to start with induction. As you cut back on your carbohydrates significantly in this phase, you will jump start your weight loss programme. In this phase, only 20 gm of carbohydrates are allowed and hence your weight loss is significant. As you drastically cut down on carbohydrates your body shifts into high gear and starts burning fat. This takes about 48 hours to occur and you may feel hungry and irritated for the first three-four days. But don’t worry, as soon as your fat starts getting converted to fuel, you will feel fit as a fiddle. Induction will strengthen your immune system and also improve our long-term health.

Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) phase 2: In this phase, the weight loss pace slows down as you add nutrient-rich carbohydrates to your diet. During this period, you will boost your body’s ability to burn fats as well as understand your body better. You will find the right amount of carbohydrates which you can consume and still lose weight. Your body will also prepare itself for permanent weight management. The amount of carbohydrates which you can eat is increased to 25 gm per day for the first week and increased in five gm instalment for the next few weeks. If your weight loss is significant, you can increase your carbohydrate intake. A person has to be on OWL till he or she is within three-five kg of their goal weight.

Pre-maintenance – (phase 3): Pre-maintenance is a practice run for lifetime maintenance. In this phase, you are fast approaching your target. As long as you continue to lose weight, you can increase your weekly allotment of carbohydrates by another 10 gm. You will be in this phase till you reach your goal and stay on it for one month. The ultimate goal here is to achieve a state of balance called Atkins’ Carbohydrate Equilibrium (ACE). The ACE is your individual level of carbohydrate intake wherein you neither gain nor lose weight.

Lifetime maintenance phase 4: In this phase, you have to focus on your individual ACE and strive to stay within two kg of your ideal weight for the rest of your life. By following a sensible eating plan, you gain energy, better health and confidence in yourself.

By following these four phases, you not only achieve your dream weight but are also able to maintain it throughout your life. You can learn more about this diet by reading the book, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. But, as with any other diet, this plan also has its pros and cons. The good point is that this diet recommends exercise as a vital part of the weight loss programme. Another point to be noted is that you cannot start on carbohydrates after you lose weight as this will result in your gaining back all that you have lost.

Medical experts advise that people who have gout, kidney problems, diabetes or are pregnant women should not follow this diet plan. As this diet is very stringent, do consult your doctor/dietician for proper advice.

Your dietician will provide you with a proper menu chart as to what should be eaten, in what quantities, etc, based on your eating habits and general lifestyle.

Happy dieting and hoping to see slimmer and fitter readers.