The Dukan Diet: Want to stay slim forever? Eat whatever you want - except on Thursdays.

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Over the past two days, the Mail has introduced the Dukan Diet - a revolutionary slimming plan that has taken France by storm. It promises fast, effective weight loss, followed by an eating plan that ensures you stay slim while, incredibly, allowing you to enjoy unlimited quantities of delicious food.
Yesterday, Dr Pierre Dukan detailed the first two phases of the diet. Today, he explains how, once you've reached your target weight, you can keep the pounds off for ever.

Revolutionary: You can eat whatever you want on the Dukan diet

When you do finally reach the slimline target weight of your dreams you certainly deserve a few of the indulgences you've been denying yourself for so long - a congratulations to yourself for doing so well.
But be warned - this new slimline self does not 'belong' to you quite yet.
A body that is losing weight has one sole objective: to recover all the fat it has lost as soon as possible. It will trigger hunger pangs and sharpen your appetite, reduce your energy consumption, taking you into a kind of hibernation (you may feel unduly tired or cold) and it becomes ruthlessly efficient at assimilating the calories from your food. Each morsel is sifted through and everything possible is absorbed.
These factors combine to transform the overweight body that has just slimmed down into a calorie sponge, which makes you very vulnerable to piling the pounds back on again.
This is why diets so often fail in the long term.
To combat this, the third stage of the Dukan Diet - the Consolidation Phase - provides a crucially important period of transition between hardline dieting and a return to normal eating.
Clinical evidence shows that the high-risk period for regaining weight after a diet lasts about five days for every pound lost (that's a month for every six to seven pounds, and 100 days for a loss of 18-20lb).
But don't despair, if you have badly missed steak and kidney pie, a spicy curry, or if you have been longing to finish your meal with a real dessert, your time has come to indulge again.
In the Consolidation Phase you follow a more open diet, but one which is not yet free from all constraints. Nourishing yourself is not just about taking in enough calories to survive; it is also, more importantly, about enjoying eating as part of that process.
It is now time to reintroduce this biological pleasure, this vital reward which was taken away from you while you were losing weight.
CONSOLIDATION PHASE

• Eat as much protein and vegetables (together) each day as you want without any restriction on quantity, time of day or combination.
• Add one serving of fruit per day (avoid high-sugar bananas, grapes, cherries, dried fruits and high-fat nuts)
• Enjoy two slices of wholemeal bread per day, spread with fat-reduced butter
• Have one serving (40g or 1.5oz) of hard cheese per day (but avoid blue cheese, soft cheese or goat's cheese)
• Factor in one serving of 'starchy foods' per week in the first half of your Consolidation Phase, increasing to two servings per week in the second half. This includes pasta (225g or 8oz serving in tomato, not creamy, sauce and with no oil), couscous/polenta (225g or 8oz cooked in stock, not butter or oil), lentils, beans, chickpeas, rice (ideally brown) and potatoes (but only occasionally and without butter).
• Broaden your meat repertoire to include any quantity of lamb, roast pork and ham (remove all fat first) once or twice a week
• Let your hair down and plan and enjoy one celebration meal a week in the first half of the Consolidation Phase, increasing to two in the second half. In this meal you really can eat whatever you want - and you should choose something you've missed during the weight-loss period.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU SLIP UP

When you embark on the Dukan Diet, it is very important to follow the rules absolutely to the letter during the Attack Phase. This phase sets you into orbit; it is short and has to be done in one single go without any deviation.
As soon as you get into the Cruise Phase (where you alternate protein only and protein and vegetable days), lapses from the diet such as social commitments and dining out are often unavoidable.
Keep them to a minimum and try to reduce any damage by feeding yourself with protein-rich foods and vegetables wherever you go.
If you go overboard at any time, don't panic, just get back on track where you left off. If, at any time during Cruise, you find your weight-loss tailing off, or if during Consolidation and Stabilisation the weight creeps back, try these emergency tactics:

• Four days back on Attack
• Restrict salt intake (to reduce the risk of water retention)
• Upping water intake to 2 litres per day (to flush through the kidneys)
• Get more sleep
• Above all walk for 60 minutes a day for four days. This sudden dose of exercise will confuse the body and jolt it out of stagnation.

But there are two important conditions - NEVER have second helpings of the same dish and NEVER eat two celebration meals in a row (if you splurge on Tuesday night, at Wednesday's breakfast the success of your diet is on the line). Have one of each: one starter, one main, one dessert and one glass of wine, all in a reasonable quantity but only once.

• Keep one pure protein day per week - say, Thursdays. This is your insurance policy against gaining weight.
• Take 2tbsp of oat bran per day (as a pancake or sprinkled on food)
• Walk 25 minutes per day (longer if you enjoy it and have time)

STABILISATION

The secret of staying slim forever

When you have successfully completed the consolidation stage of the diet (five days for every 1lb you lost in the earlier Attack and Cruise stages) you are ready for the fourth and final stage of the Dukan diet.
Your new slimline body will have given up its extreme reactivity, wanting to extract every last calorie from everything you eat, and your metabolism will be calmer.
But experience shows the likelihood of regaining weight will remain if you do not incorporate into your lifestyle a number of habits specifically designed to deal with this risk.
The Stabilisation Stage of the Dukan Diet offers permanent slenderness in return for four simple, extremely effective but nonnegotiable measures that you should follow for the rest of your life.
Stabilisation rules
Go back to eating whatever you like, but continue to use the basic rules of the Consolidation Phase as a safety platform (eat unlimited protein and vegetables, one piece of fruit a day, two slices of wholemeal bread, a portion of cheese, two starchy foods and two celebration meals a week).
Keep this in mind as your point of healthy-diet reference, and use it as your safety back-up if you are under threat of regaining weight.
Pick one day a week - for the rest of your life - when you eat nothing but protein. This is the key that allows you to eat normally for the other six days of the week without putting any weight back on. (Drink at least two litres of water to flush the digestive system and reduce its craving for food)
Make a vow to walk (briskly) for 20 minutes every day, and never take a lift or step on an escalator. Going up or down the stairs makes the body's largest muscles contract and, in a short time, uses up considerable calories.
Increase your daily oat bran intake to 3tbsp and stick to it for life.

THE POWER OF EXERCISE

Exercise is not just an add-on to the Dukan Diet, it has a genuine role to play and is just as important as dieting in this fight against weight problems.
We all know that being active burns up calories, however, for most of us exercise is a chore to be avoided.
But for anyone who wants to lose weight it should be your most powerful ally and friend. The more active you are, the less you need to limit what you eat and the less you'll suffer.

Exercise allows you to more easily absorb any wild dietary lapses or moments of madness (a 20-minute walk effectively neutralises three squares of chocolate or a therapeutic glass of wine) thereby lessening their impact and your feelings of guilt.
Exercise also triggers endorphins, chemical mediators produced in the central nervous system that give us a feeling of exhilaration. Through this chemical process, exercise reduces the equally neurological need to find solace in eating.
Finding pleasure in being active while burning up the calories is THE best way to protect your weight loss.

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