yourself drink a large amount of liquid so that you boost your need for water and reestablish your natural thirst.
Forget Calories, Think Categories
The pure protein diet, the initial and principal driving force behind the four integrated diets that make up my program, is not like other diets. It is the only one to use just a single food group and one well-established category of foods with the highest protein content.
During the pure protein diet and throughout the whole program, any mention of calories and of calorie counting is to be avoided. Whether a few or many calories are eaten has little effect on the results; what counts is eating only the prescribed foods. So the actual secret of the program’s first two weight loss phases is to eat a lot, even to eat in anticipation, before the hunger pangs take over. Hunger that turns into an uncontrollable craving that can no longer be appeased by pure proteins leads the careless dieter toward comfort foods with little nutritional value—sugary, creamy, rich, and destabilizing foods that nevertheless have a strong emotional power.
By following the Dukan Diet, you have replaced a calories system with a categories system. There is absolutely no need for you to count calories; all you need do is stay within the categories. But if you stray away from the list of permitted foods, you are no longer allowed to eat any quantity you like, and you will have to start counting how many calories you eat.
So this is a diet you cannot follow in half measures. It relies on the all-or-nothing law, which explains not only its metabolic effectiveness, but also its amazing impact on the psychology of an overweight person.
With a temperament that goes from one extreme to another, just as determined when making an effort and as easygoing when giving up, overweight people find in each of the four stages of my program an approach to suit them perfectly.
These affinities between the individual’s psychological profile and the diet’s structure create a synergy that is decisive for the dieter.
THE
DUKAN DIET
IN
PRACTICE
You have now reached the decisive moment of putting my program into practice. You now know everything you need to understand about how it works and the effectiveness of the four diets that make it up. In the introduction to the theory, I also tried to help you understand that people do not become overweight by accident. The pounds you have gained that you now want to get rid of are a part of you that you may want to deny, but they are nevertheless a part that is a reflection of your nature, of your psychology, and therefore of your identity.
The extra pounds you carry have as much to do with your personality, emotions, and feelings and your own particular way of using the pleasure from food to deal with life’s small and large problems as they do with your genes, a family predisposition to put on weight, or the way your metabolism works.
That is to say, the problem is not as simple as it seems, and it explains why so many others, and maybe you too in the past, have failed. To struggle against a force as powerful and ancient as the need to eat obviously cannot be based simply on rationally learning about nutrition, or on the hope that you will achieve self-control on your own.
To stand any chance against the force of instinct, you have to fight it on its own ground, with means, language, and a strategy that come from the same instinctive level. Our need to feel desirable, our need for well-being, our fear of illness, our need to belong to a group, and our need to conform to prevailing style trends come from this level. Nowadays they are the only instinctive defense forces capable of motivating people to lose weight. But with the first signs of improvement, these motivations fade away. As soon as our self-image improves, our clothes no longer feel too tight, or we are able once again to climb stairs without losing our breath, these defenses are gone.
But above all, in order
Forget Calories, Think Categories
The pure protein diet, the initial and principal driving force behind the four integrated diets that make up my program, is not like other diets. It is the only one to use just a single food group and one well-established category of foods with the highest protein content.
During the pure protein diet and throughout the whole program, any mention of calories and of calorie counting is to be avoided. Whether a few or many calories are eaten has little effect on the results; what counts is eating only the prescribed foods. So the actual secret of the program’s first two weight loss phases is to eat a lot, even to eat in anticipation, before the hunger pangs take over. Hunger that turns into an uncontrollable craving that can no longer be appeased by pure proteins leads the careless dieter toward comfort foods with little nutritional value—sugary, creamy, rich, and destabilizing foods that nevertheless have a strong emotional power.
By following the Dukan Diet, you have replaced a calories system with a categories system. There is absolutely no need for you to count calories; all you need do is stay within the categories. But if you stray away from the list of permitted foods, you are no longer allowed to eat any quantity you like, and you will have to start counting how many calories you eat.
So this is a diet you cannot follow in half measures. It relies on the all-or-nothing law, which explains not only its metabolic effectiveness, but also its amazing impact on the psychology of an overweight person.
With a temperament that goes from one extreme to another, just as determined when making an effort and as easygoing when giving up, overweight people find in each of the four stages of my program an approach to suit them perfectly.
These affinities between the individual’s psychological profile and the diet’s structure create a synergy that is decisive for the dieter.
THE
DUKAN DIET
IN
PRACTICE
You have now reached the decisive moment of putting my program into practice. You now know everything you need to understand about how it works and the effectiveness of the four diets that make it up. In the introduction to the theory, I also tried to help you understand that people do not become overweight by accident. The pounds you have gained that you now want to get rid of are a part of you that you may want to deny, but they are nevertheless a part that is a reflection of your nature, of your psychology, and therefore of your identity.
The extra pounds you carry have as much to do with your personality, emotions, and feelings and your own particular way of using the pleasure from food to deal with life’s small and large problems as they do with your genes, a family predisposition to put on weight, or the way your metabolism works.
That is to say, the problem is not as simple as it seems, and it explains why so many others, and maybe you too in the past, have failed. To struggle against a force as powerful and ancient as the need to eat obviously cannot be based simply on rationally learning about nutrition, or on the hope that you will achieve self-control on your own.
To stand any chance against the force of instinct, you have to fight it on its own ground, with means, language, and a strategy that come from the same instinctive level. Our need to feel desirable, our need for well-being, our fear of illness, our need to belong to a group, and our need to conform to prevailing style trends come from this level. Nowadays they are the only instinctive defense forces capable of motivating people to lose weight. But with the first signs of improvement, these motivations fade away. As soon as our self-image improves, our clothes no longer feel too tight, or we are able once again to climb stairs without losing our breath, these defenses are gone.
But above all, in order
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