The Dukan diet is one of the most popular diets in France, having been constructed by Dr Pierre Dukan, who sought to find a solution to losing weight for his patients. His now bestselling method is published as the Dukan diet book, describes his method for losing weight. The diet is composed of four different phases – the attack phase, the cruise phase, the consolidation phase, and the stabilization phase that gives fast and sustained weight loss.
What is the Dukan Diet Attack Phase?
The attack phase is the kick start phase where you can enjoy a rapid weight loss of several pounds within a week. This phase involves changing your diet markedly, only mainly eating protein rich foods and avoiding carbohydrates. This phase may be reminiscent of other diets such as the Atkins diet in excluding carbohydrates, but there is no doubt that it is effective. Unlike the Atkins diet though, the attack phase is a short term method of reducing weight until a more manageable and healthier diet takes over to maintain the weight loss.
The attack phase lasts around only 5-10 days in total, and this short amount of time of dieting on protein rich foods is not going to affect your long term health. The main point of this phase is to lose much of your bodies glycogen reserves, so that any future weight loss is targeting the fat on your body – which is where the long term weight loss takes place. It also makes sure that you start to change your eating habits towards a more sustainable, weight loss plan for the future.
Dukan Diet Foods for The Attack Phase
The Dukan diet book, recommends particular Dukan diet foods during the first few days on the diet. The allowed foods list on this short term attack phase part of the diet include:
- Lean beef
- Lean chicken (excluding skin)
- Turkey (excluding skin)
- Fish
- Eggs – maximum of 2-3 per day because of the high cholesterol content in the egg yolks
- Low fat dairy products – milk, cottage cheese, low fat and fat free yogurt (not the fruit kind)
A multivitamin is recommended as you are not taking any fresh fruit or vegetables in this phase. Beef, fish, eggs and diary actually contain much your necessary vitamins, so you needn’t worry about being malnourished. Eating these foods can feel slightly boring even for a short period, and you may crave carbohydrates – pastas and rice, but it is important to stay disciplined and stick to it to get the best effects. You may get some slight side effects such as bad breath – but it is a sign that the diet is working. When you start to burn your own bodies fat reserves rather than what you eat, you can start to get bad breath, that will go away once you are in the next phase of the diet. To get over the boredom of eating the same kind of thing you can try some of the more popular dukan diet attack phase recipes out there.
Some of the better recipes include a turkey ham and poached egg breakfast, salmon fish cakes, baked fish, and stuffed chicken legs. You should not have a problem in finding delicious recipes that will help you lose weight.
The Dukan Diet attack phase is quite aggressive in that you can’t eat anything you like, however the things that you can eat are generally favored by most people anyway. After completing the attack phase one can go back to a more balanced but healthier diet, without the need for multivitamin supplements.
