Health Check - to check it really works

Having been on the Dukan Diet plan for a while - in fact reaching the stage soon where I will be unfettered by rules six days a week - I thought it was time to make sure all was well.

I saw my doctor and she pointed out that I should have a blood test since it had been a while since my cholesterol levels were checked. (Last time was a few years back and then my LDLs were on the high side). The high protein element of the Dukan Diet ("all that meat" as some people falsely lament) has resulted in criticism that the plan can force cholesterol levels up.

My blood test results showed that I am in good health, my cholesterol, blood sugars etc were all fine. indeed my cholesterol levels have dropped since I was last checked. Now that my weight is in the normal range and I intend to keep it that way, my risk of heart disease has gone to normal levels. 

A quick aside. We are all mortal. Even those who take good care of themselves can get sick. Poor diet and obesity increase the risks. Good diet and a healthy weight reduce the risks. There is still a risk, but that is life. Smokers often defend themselves by saying even non smokers get cancer. This is true, because it is impossible to eliminate all possibilities of illness. But why increase the chances? Smokers and fat people have considerably more health problems than non smokers and slim people. 

Live well and live long! After my visit to the doctor I am more confident that I have made the right decisions to succeed in that goal!

Always lots of positives to losing weight. Trouser belts!

I have a habit of harping on about how pleased I am with myself after losing so much weight. Occasionally I feel guilty about this, but why should I? If you have lost a lot of weight, you have done something to be proud of.


I've written similar posts before. There are benefits to losing weight, big and small, that you would not have expected when you decided to do it. You will have had a list of reasons that made you decide to do it, but when you reach your target you should examine your life and note the changes you might not have expected.


Today for me it's trouser belts. 

I have a number of belts and had a very satisfactory session some time ago shortening them. My belts were mostly too good to get rid of when they became loose on their last hole, and I discovered that it is better to shorten the belt than to punch additional holes. I have two reasons for this. Firstly, shortening the belt felt more like a statement that I wouldn't need a longer belt again. Secondly there is an aesthetic consideration; cutting extra holes just means you get a longer flap of leather hanging out of the buckle. Most belts can be shortened easily, provided you can remove the buckle. You have to cut the belt at the buckle end, not the curved tongue. If the buckle doesn't come off, then you can't shorten the belt neatly, unless you have it done professionally. 

There is a further choice: buy new belts!


This made me think about belts. As a fat person I needed belts. They kept my trousers up as they went around my belly, or got caught under it. They stopped the waistband of my trousers rolling over. Without a belt, my trousers were clinging precariously to the tapering slope of my body. Without a tight grip, they would tend to slide down.


It occurred to me that I never used to wear belts back in my early twenties and before in my teens. I didn't need them because my body did not conspire against my trousers! I don't need the belt now either! I choose to put a belt on because I think it looks better. 


Actually, this is not quite true. I occasionally need a belt because I have kept trousers that are really too big around the waist, but are too good for me to discard. I cinch in that big waistband around my normal waist. I don't need a belt provided the trousers are the right size!


Looking for all the positives to losing weight is inspiring and will help you to stay committed to keeping your svelte new shape.


Why don't you send me your own thoughts on this? What have you gained by losing weight?

End of a phase in sight

I realised I haven't posted for a while. Sorry to anyone checking my blog regularly!

As you know I'm working my way through the third phase of the Dukan Diet and I'm now a couple of weeks from the end. It's the sort of point when you can start to think that you could just skip to the next phase. After all what difference will it make? 

The difference it will make is that it will show indiscipline. It will demonstrate a lack of control. Sad to say, but anyone who has been seriously overweight for any length of time, got into that position because of indiscipline and no self-control. Losing weight and staying at the correct weight is as much about taking charge and being in control as it is about shedding the pounds. 

I have been on this programme for over seven months. My weight reached my target way back in mid-October, as I've told you all. Since then every day when I look at the scales I have been gratified to see stability. I am in the process of relearning how to eat properly.

It is true that at this stage I may well have learnt all there is to learn and I could move on now and skip the final weeks of this consolidation stage. But what would I be telling myself if I did that? I would be saying that it's OK to cut corners. If I can cut a few corners now, then I can probably do the same later on. Then if that's OK, maybe a few more. That is the beginning of the slide down to where I was before I started.

The truth is this programme is not difficult to follow. It is not too constraining. I'm not hungry and I eat well. We have dinner parties, I enjoy deserts and a few glasses of wine. In fact there is very little that I want to eat that I can't enjoy during the course of a week. 

The key, I believe, is learning to think about food, which helps you to appreciate it better. You learn to appreciate how good the food is and what it does. The point to sticking to a plan is to teach yourself that you can stick to a plan! You are not a quitter and at the same time you can enjoy your life and your food. 

You also learn that if you've eaten enough today, why not save the treat which tempts you to another day? You will appreciate it more tomorrow than if you stuff it on top of everything else you've eaten today. That is the discipline which will keep you slim and enjoying your food. 

Alcohol and weight loss

Dr Dukan recently posted on the subject of alcohol on his UK website. He was explaining why he decided on an approach to alcohol and why he decided there was no reason to modify this advice for his UK followers.

Alcohol is highly calorific. Notwithstanding the social and health problems attributed to alcohol in the UK at the moment I think in fact people drink far less than they did in the past. For many years alcoholic drinks - mainly beer in the case of the UK - fulfilled two roles. The first was they provided the only safe drink as our early towns polluted their water supplies. Even before we understood sterility, the brewing process and the alcohol itself destroyed the microbes which brought water-borne disease to those communities. 

The second great function was to provide calories. Beer can be viewed as liquid bread and the calories in it meant it was an essential element in an often inadequate diet. It is hardly surprising that governments quickly saw the potential and taxed and regulated this vital foodstuff!

As we have seen before it is only in recent times that we have had the luxury of diets which provide us with too many calories leading to the weight problems I and many others have struggled with. 

Dr Dukan advises that when losing weight you should cut alcoholic drinks from your diet. Two reasons for this. First of all is the calories they provide. Although there is evidence that moderate consumption of certain drinks provides protection from heart disease, there is very little nutrition in alcohol or the drinks it is a part of. 

The main nutritional element is calories, and calories which are readily available. Dr Dukan says they will become fat straight away. My first reaction to this was one of disbelief. I think you need to qualify it. If your calories from alcohol are not consumed straight away, they will quickly form fat because they are so easily extracted. 

Certain foods do cause fat to be laid down more readily than others. Corn provides a form of fructose which is very popular with the food industry and sweetens many products; soft drinks, baked products etc. It is the same source of sugar which producers of foie gras noted years ago cause the fat to build up in the liver and create the fatty delicacy which is in effect the result of a liver disease. Doctors have noted the same effect in children's livers who consume excessive amounts of processed foods containing corn syrup.

I can therefore accept the possibility that the body will turn excess calories form alcohol more quickly to fat. There is another problem with alcohol and that is the effect of alcohol on our minds. Drink gets you drunk and when you are under the influence of alcohol your resolve weakens. You are more likely to eat things which are not part of your diet. Alcohol also effects your hydration.

So while you are in the weight loss phases of your diet, follow Dr Dukan's advice and don't drink alcohol. You can drink (sensibly) during the Consolidation phase and obviously when you get to the stabilisation phase. Remember that alcohol is a source of calories, the calories per gram of alcohol is about as high as any other food and the body can metabolise these calories easily. When you reestablish your regular eating habits, I hope you can enjoy a drink if that is your pleasure. Please remember that alcohol should be on the list of luxury, non-essential foods that you should treat yourself with. Do not overdo it!  

Good News when you reach your target weight

The time arrives when you look at the scales and you see that you have got to the weight you aimed at when you started losing weight. I remember it well. While I had been very positive all the time I was progressing to that target, actually getting there gave me a sense of achievement that ranks with the other big ones in life; getting a driving licence; graduating; getting my first job, or first promotion. It is a life-changing, empowering achievement. You will feel great and you should enjoy that feeling because you have earned it. It is your hard work, with the support of those around you, which has brought you to this point.

There are two important considerations as you reach this milestone. The first one is to accept the achievement and stop. Many people think, having got this far, that they should build a safety margin or should aim straight away for something else. Do not do this. You set out with a goal in sight. do not start moving the finishing line. The weight you aimed at should have been your "ideal weight", based on your physique and your diet history. If you start aiming at something else now, you will set yourself up for failure. Be proud of what you have done and consolidate that.

The second consideration is to ensure your work is not undone straight away. Many diet programmes leave you at this point with congratulations but without giving you a clear path to follow. The result is that a lot of slimmers put back the weight - and often a bit more - and find they are once more overweight, demoralised and looking for another way to shed the fat. 

The Dukan Diet offers a continuing programme to first of all ensure you don't pile it all back on and secondly show you how to carry on with your life and your new weight. Phase three of the diet is the Consolidation Phase. This sets out some more rules enabling you to eat more, eat a more varied diet and get used to this for an extended period before going onto living as a slim person.

The first big change is that instead of alternating between protein and vegetable and protein days, you only have one day a week as a protein only day. The other six are based on the vegetable and protein days. What you can eat is expanded by allowing measured portions of starchy food, fruit, cheese and even some "celebration meals" when pretty much anything goes. Read the book, or check the website for full details of exactly what you can eat. Or send me a comment asking for more information! I'm happy to help if that's what my readers want.

I've been following this phase for the past four months. I still have a month and a half to go. The phase lasts a long time, ten days for every kilo lost (work on five days for every pound if you use the imperial/traditional measures). This sounds like a long time, but the reality is that it is quite easy to follow this phase and it seems like there's a lot to eat after having lived under the discipline of the first two phases.

It takes some bravery to start to eat more. Part of you will be very scared to put your achievements at risk by eating more, especially the foods that you avoided because they are the sources of the calories that put you in the place you were. This phase is not about losing weight, so it is entirely logical that you will eat more to maintain your weight. Up to now you have been eating less than you need so that you consumed your stored fat.

The truth is that the restricted diet you have been following to slim down could only be a temporary phase. Good health relies on a varied and balanced diet, providing nutrition from all food groups. Balance is the key and reestablishing a good balance is what you are setting out to do. The starchy high calorie foods were the source of the fat, this is true: your eating habits and the lack of balance in your diet were the real cause of the problem. Following the rules, eating the expanded range of food in this controlled way will help you to establish the good habits for the rest of your life.

Remember to enjoy your food and really savour it. Remember to stop eating when you have had enough! If you are eating a couple of slices of bread, you will probably want a bit less of the other things you ate. When you have your celebration meals, remember the rule of not taking second helpings. Develop those good habits which you can take forward.

Remember the exercise. Enjoy your daily walk. Don't forget the oat bran. Remember to keep drinking water and that often when you fancy a snack, you are probably thirsty, so have a glass of water and see if you still want to eat something.

I'll tell you some more about this phase and how it unfolds, including some more graphs of my weight record, over the next few days. 

Lose weight without the drama

In my last post I included a graph showing just how steady and rapid my loss of weight had been as I followed the Dukan Diet. I have to say one of the problems with recounting this story is that there is very little in the way of a story to tell. for a good story you need conflict, challenge, obstacles to overcome. My diet experience had none of that.

I could have been very lucky. I don't expect that everyone has quite such an easy time or such significant and rapid success. 

Have a look at my last post and look at the graph again. It is not a perfectly straight line. Whatever you do however zealously you follow the rules of the diet, there will be days when your weight does not go down and there will even be days when it inexplicably goes up. Whatever your previous history of dieting, has been, do not panic. Do not make a drama out of a minor matter. Persevere and you will see that you will start to get slimmer again. You don't have to starve yourself or look for ever more drastic things to do. Keep doing what you have been doing. Don't go hungry. Above all else keep drinking plenty of water.

There are several things which might make your weightloss slow, or stop or even go into reverse temporarily. If you are eating your lean protein and not eating starchy foods or more than minimal amounts of fat, then it is extremely unlikely that you will be taking on board more exploitable calories than you use. Our activity levels vary, which change the way we use calories. This might make your weight loss curve flatten out. The most likely causes of any halt to slimming or even a reverse will be linked to fluid retention and dietary transit.

Fluid retention is when the body does not allow water to circulate and exit the body. It can be linked to illness, but it will fluctuate naturally. Please don't assume you are unwell if your weight sticks for a couple of days. You will also not resolve fluid retention by drinking less. Strangely enough the opposite is true. Drink more water, watch your salt intake and take a walk. 

Look at what else you are eating. On the days you eat vegetables the fibre these provide can also be the reason for water retention. Understand this fact, but don't worry about it. The fibre is also essential for dietary transit. When only taking protein and the only fibre you consume is the oat bran, this can slow dietary transit and cause some constipation. The fibrous vegetable matter you take on the vegetable days relieve this. I found the actual effect could reverse. This is because it takes time for food to pass through our systems. The days I ate vegetables were the days I found my dietary transit was slower (I hope you appreciate the delicate way I describe a rather indelicate but totally natural business...) The fibre didn't work its way through until I was on a protein only day. 

This is why it is important to keep a diary and possibly plot a graph of your progress. Once you have overcome your first setback and seen how quickly things settle back after a short pause in weightloss and once you have written down the facts about how you handled this, you will be better placed to deal with any subsequent stalling. 

It makes for a boring story, but an easier path to the weight you want to be.     

Weight loss results, my progress record

 

I wanted to show you this chart. I kept a record of my weight loss progress. It was a way of keeping track of where I was on my way to my target weight. I had seen some examples of these charts, so I wanted to be able to reassure myself if things slowed down or if I hit a weightloss plateau. 

On many diets, you start losing weight rapidly but this slows down. I think this is a natural thing because one of the facts about losing weight is that a lighter person needs fewer calories than a heavier one. At the beginning of a weight loss plan, you will be consuming more calories than you will later on. Keeping records, weighing myself often, were part of my plan to get a good idea about my body and how it consumed energy, how my weight would fluctuate. This is a good idea because even over the course of a day, you will see your weight rise and fall. I recorded my weight first thing because this was usually the lowest weight I would be at during a day.

Look at the graph I attached at the top. There are a few hiccups along the line, because there were a few days when I didn't lose any weight or even put some back. Nevertheless the overall path of that line is remarkably straight. There was almost no discernible change in the rate at which I lost weight over the course of the period covered. 

Look at the date line along along the bottom. The whole thing took just two and a half months. 

I would like you to be inspired by my success. I can't guarantee you the same results that I had. No diet will do the work for you. You will need to be motivated and you will do better if you are supported by your friends and loved ones. You need to be honest with yourself and confident to follow the plan. I am showing you what can be done, because I did it. I hope you will be able to achieve something comparable, or perhaps something even better!