Several people have asked me to give them more information on my diet.

It isn’t all that radical really - eat less and move more!

But, for those who want more, the fine details...

Why did we decide to diet?

James and I both knew we had steadily gained weight over the last few years.

We had both been slim when we were married and in our first few years of marriage. Six babies in 9 years meant that I didn’t manage to lose weight between each pregnancy, and so it just accumulated. In the last year or 2, we had both gained even more weight  - for me, it was now over 20 kgs since getting married at 22!

But as always, willpower is needed.

We can all moan about how fat we are, but we need something (or someone) to give us a mental push into that “I am going to ACTUALLY lose weight” zone.

For us it was some friends from church.

They had been dieting for a couple of months. We always sit in front of them in church, and for some reason, this particular Sunday (October 31st), we actually NOTICED that they had lost weight (duh!). Like 10kgs!

“Wow - how did you DO that??”

“We did the Dukan diet”

And that was all it took for us to google Dukan diets and read up on how it all works.

We started that night.

How did we do it?

As we discovered by googling Dukan and reading all we could find, this diet is broken into 4 stages. The idea is to move through each of the 4 stages, as goals are reached.

Stage 1 - a protein only diet.

This for us, lasted 5 days. During this time we could only eat protein and non-fat dairy.

We decided that it would work best if we needed to change as little as possible from our regular eating habits. My normal breakfast was yoghurt and fruit/muesli. So, I switched to non-fat yoghurt. Dukan requires an amount of oat-bran to be eaten each day (one tablespoon in the first stage). So, I added a tspn to my yoghurt, and that was breakfast(and still is - with an extra tbspn of oat bran).

James often had eggs (and sometimes bacon) for breakfast. On a Dukan diet, eggs and bacon is  a good breakfast! Just watch the fat content - lean bacon only. You can also make an omelette with eggs and oat bran (and bacon if you like).

Lunch was (and often still is) either a tin (or 2 or 3 - Dukan does not restrict the QUANTITY of food, just the type) of flavoured tuna or 2-3 cooked chicken legs (minus the skin). James loves seafood, so he would sometimes have stir fried mixed seafood on protein only days for lunch. Or a chunk of smoked salmon bought on special. Yum.

Dinner that first week was tricky to get used to. A steak (with a yummy pepper sauce made with extra-light Philly cream cheese), chicken cooked in a yummy sauce, Vietnamese beef.  Meatball soup (yummy!!). As long as it is protein only, then it is good to eat. And as much as you like (you are not supposed to be hungry on this diet - and we rarely were. Just that first week or 2 when all we could think about was food!!). Eggs too. And herbs/spices.

Dessert. Yes, we have had dessert EVERY night since we started! Mostly Nestle diet desserts. Or now, sometimes Weight Watchers ice creams or similar. Eating dessert every night has given us something to look forward to and kept us motivated to keep going.

Snacks. Not so much those first few weeks. We drank lots of water which kept hunger pains down during the gaps between meals when we could think of nothing else except food! Sugarless chewing gum and mints helped too. Also, drinking Coke Zero.

We each lost 3 kgs these first 5 days. Now THAT is motivating!!

Exercise. We started walking together each weekday morning for around 20-30 minutes. It just about killed us at first, we over the weeks we got fitter and eventually started a running programme called Couch 2 5k. We are still doing this 3x week. Who would have thought??

Stage 2 - protein only/ protein + veggies.

This next phase lasts as long as it takes to lose the goal amount of weight. For me, I lost 10 kgs in 9 weeks. Then I moved to Stage 3.

Basically, we alternated days so that we had one day of protein only as in Stage 1, and then 1 day of protein plus veggies.

My breakfast stayed the same each morning (still working on not changing things too drastically to keep on track). James’ pretty much has stayed the same too, with occasional adding in of mushrooms or capsicum etc.

Lunch I added meat plus veggies (every second day) - I made up a big Bolognese sauce and froze in batches to eat every 2nd day. I also might have meat/tuna/fish/chicken and salad. Pumpkin soup. Stir fried pumpkin and bacon with rocket (yum!).

NO carbs! That means no bread, pasta, rice, or potatoes. At all.

This was very hard at first. My body (and mind) really REALLY craved these carbs, and I truly did NOT believe I would ever become used to not eating them every day. But I was wrong. After a couple of months, not only did I not crave carbs, but was not really interested in eating them-even when I moved into the next Stage and COULD actually eat them sometimes!

Dinner. Again, we just alternated.

Often we could eat the same as the kids on protein+veggie days, just minus the carbs (so meat/chicken/fish and veggies/salad).

We needed to cook MORE meat that we used to, because we found that we needed to eat 300 grams of meat each in order to feel full (on protein+veggie days, that came down to 200gs).

Once we got into this pattern, it was not very hard to keep it up. I even lost weight over the Christmas weekend (half a kilo!). AND I cheated a little ;-)

We started out weighing ourselves every day. This was VERY encouraging that first week when we were losing weight every day. After a few weeks, though, our weight did go up and down a little each day, so I went to weighing on Monday mornings. This way, the weight jump each week was very noticeable and encouraging. I lost around 1.5 kilos/week.

After a total of 9 weeks, I had lost my 10 kgs and started the next Stage...

Stage 3.

During this stage, I can eat protein+veggies every day (woo hoo!). I can also add some carbs (small serving of rice/pasta etc every few days). We are not being quite as strict with this stage, but we have continued to lose weight - for me, another 5 kgs.

Also, we have added in nuts (yummy for snacks) and beans.

Protein Day. One day/week is Protein Day. This means protein only (like in Stages 1&2). It is quite do-able, because it is only for ONE day! Tomorrow we can eat ‘normally’ again! For us this is Thursday. It is Grill Night in our house, so we all have the same thing, but the kids get veggies and carbs. And we don’t. It works.

We are to stay on Stage 3 until we have passed the number of weeks per half kilo lost during Stage 2. For me this is 20 weeks. I will finish Stage 3 around the end of May (just when we are heading overseas!).

I still find that I am not hungry between meals. And my self control in refusing yummy cakes and biscuits offered to me has been rather amazing! I truly TRULY don’t crave all those yummies like I did before.

Stage 4.

The last stage. You can pretty much eat whatever you like. I suspect this won’t be hard - I feel like I am already doing this. The only rule is that Protein Thursday remains. I think that is do-able! That Protein Only day just seems to keep the body from craving carbs and gaining weight. I think if you had a really big food-feast one day, you could follow it up with a protein-only day to make up for it.

What did we think about the Dukan Diet?

We have found a SIMPLE diet to keep to.

Not always easy (especially in the first few weeks - we did have days when it was hard).

But definitely simple. Just a few simple rules.

We liked that we could eat as much as liked, whenever we liked. Some diets restrict portions or frequency. This diet did neither - eat whenever you like, as much as you like, just stick to the foods for that day.

We did cheat a little - but we still lost weight, so it didn’t bother us at all.

We started out drinking low fat milk, but soon gave up and went back to full cream milk. We figured the little bit on coffee was not going to have an impact on the diet. And it didn’t.

We had dessert every night without fail. Usually at night when the kids had gone to bed.

We had a glass of wine with dinner from time to time.

I choose low-fat when I can, and lean meat.

Yesterday, I bagged up all the skirts that I could no longer wear because they were too big. What a great feeling! I don’t think I have EVER done that before! I even have jeans and shirts I can’t wear. And my SHOES fit better! If you had told me this before we started, I would not have believed you :-)

Would I recommend it?

Yes. I do think that ANY diet will work providing you are determined to stick to it. For whatever reason, this diet was one that WE felt we could stick to. And we did. And it worked!

It might not be the diet for everyone, but I suspect that for most people, if they actually stuck to it, they would see it work for them.

Some of my friends were inspired to do it too. Some of them have done brilliantly! Some of them had good intentions, but found it hard to stick to. I understand that :-)

I would encourage them to give it another go - even if in a moderated form (like 1 x protein day/week or no carbs every 2nd day etc).

One friend diets no carbs every second day, and is losing weight.

I probably should add that everyone needs to do their own research to decide if it is the healthiest option for them.

We are all responsible for our own choices...

I think if you are not particularly overweight, then you may not need to do this diet. It probably would works more dramatically the more overweight you are.

But maybe not - I am NOT a diet expert!

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask :-)