" I see dead vegetables"

I made it to phase 2 of the Dukan diet, also known as, the "cruise" phase.  This is the phase that follows the "attack"one which consists of cutting out everything but protein rich foods.  It's not too hard to do as long as you never ever run out of chicken.  What this phase does is shock the body into shedding excess water (long story but it has something to do with body chemistry) and pulling energy directly from a food that not only takes calories to digest but provides energy more directly to the cells than other food groups.  Let's see if I can explain this.  There are essentially 3 types of food groups: proteins, carbs and lipids.  For every 100 calories of proteins, the body uses 30 to turn the protein into energy which means if you ate 1500 calories in a day you're only actually ingesting 1050 calories as the remaining 450 have been used in digestion.  The numbers aren't quite as appealing for carbs and lipids which sucks of course.  If only it took the body as much of an effort to digest chocolate.

It's very clever really.  I should add that there is a rationale other than simple weight-loss here.  Dr. Dukan was looking for a diet that had almost immediate results enough to keep a clinically obese patient engaged.  After this initial phase he then ensured the diet became more balanced (you alternate protein only days with ones where veggies are allowed).  At this stage - your body still gets that shock to the system but you're no longer having imaginary conversations with broccoli.

This second phase basically goes on for as long as it takes you to lose the desired amount of weight.  Or of course until you lose the will to live.  For me, I've estimated a week to 9 days before this happens  - hell I made it almost 3 years in Canada - I CAN DO THIS!

I'll tell you about how you're supposed to keep the weight off later.  Of course the irony of this all is that I forgot to weigh myself at the start of this crazy trip - mainly because like most things I do - I was motivated more by a sense of adventure than planning.

Vegetable Porn