The Dukan Diet is one of the fastest growing new diets. With so many people in a hurry to get started and experience the fast weight loss and low hunger program it’s possible that just a few will make mistakes in their haste to lose weight. In this article I will be looking at the five most common Dukan diet mistakes.
1. Not eating enough and feeling hungry
People used to starvation and calorie counting diets have a hard time getting used to the idea that they can eat as much as they want on the Dukan diet. There is a misconception that in order to be losing weight you must feel hungry all the time. Accordingly, some people new to the Dukan diet will subconsciously cut back on their portion sizes to prevent themselves feeling satisfied and so feel like they are on a diet (and losing weight). You do not need to be feeling hungry all the time to be losing weight! The Dukan diet is a low hunger diet, you should not be feeling hungry while you are following this weight loss program. If you do feel hungry then eat something (as long as it is on the list of allowed foods!)
2. Not having enough variety in your diet
When you first start on the Dukan diet you may have to refer several times to the Dukan diet book. It is natural to want to double-check what foods are allowed and what is not allowed. It may take a week or two to have the list memorized so that putting Dukan diet friendly meals together becomes second nature. For some people, once they find a meal they enjoy eating they then stick to this meal, thinking it easier to just stay with what they know is safe and easy. The downside to this plan is that meal-times quickly become repetitive and boring. The once enjoyable and eagerly anticipated meal solution becomes a dreaded chore. So, to avoid becoming sick of the mere sight of turkey kebabs in a tikka and mint sauce (for example) make sure to take time to experiment and widen your Dukan diet menu.
3. Constantly stepping on the scales
The weight loss on the Dukan diet, especially during the Attack Phase can be very fast. Dieters will get a motivating buzz stepping on the scales to see the pounds have been falling off. However, weight does fluctuate throughout the day. The scales may show an exciting loss of a couple of pounds in the morning but show you to have actually gained a pound in the afternoon! One day might see weight loss and another show weight gain. This is unnecessarily upsetting.
You must also factor in to this that most household scales are not very accurate machines. Move the scales slightly to the left or right and you’ll probably find a different result when you step on them.
Weighing should be done no more frequently than once as week. Once a month would be better in my opinion. Weight loss should always be thought off in terms of week-by-week at the very least, preferably month-by-month. Which brings me on to the next mistake.
4. Making too much out of occasional slips
It is very easy to slip on your diet and eat something that you shouldn’t have. Someone may offer you a cookie and without thinking you’re eating it before you realize what you’re doing. You find yourself in a situation in which refusing food or drink would be inappropriate and rude. On the Dukan diet there are also little accidental slips such has having full fat milk in your coffee by accident or eating a fattier cut of meat that you though you were having. I remember when I was first on the Dukan I accidentally picked up a packet of roast pork slices rather than roast turkey. For a couple of minutes I was devastated until I managed to put things into proportion!
One little slip while you’re on the Dukan diet is nothing. Imagine you have a couple of glasses of wine one day. Naughty, naughty, wine is not allowed while on the Dukan. But making too much of this slip would be madness! Let’s say that the extra calories for the wine was 280 kcal. That is 280 kcal that you shouldn’t have had for sure. But instead of thinking of this as 280 kcal extra for that day consider it as extra for the week. This means that this slip resulted in you consuming an extra 40 kcal a day for the next month.
So instead of spending time worrying about drinking those glasses of wine and feeling miserable, think instead of burning of those extra 40 kcal each day for a month. This won’t be too difficult! Drinking a liter of ice-water will burn of about that much (you don’t have to drink it all at once!) due to the fact your body will burn calories simply bringing up the temperature of the water.
5. Thinking that the Dukan Diet works by magic
It’s not hard to see why so many people appear to the think the Dukan diet works by magic. The lack of hunger and quick weight loss seems so different to all other diets that the food combinations must seem like its working by magic. Some people talk about the diet as if their stomachs are cauldrons and the foods they eat are ingredients of a magic weight loss potion. They think if they get one thing wrong, eat too much or this or too little or that, eat the wrong food or drink the wrong drink, then the spell will be broken and all the weight loss will cease!
Of course this isn’t the case. There is nothing magical about the way that the Dukan diet works. All that happens is what happens with all diets that work. The dieters simply burn off more calories than they consume and the weight loss occurs when their bodies use the stored fat for energy. The great thing about the Dukan diet, why so many people are singing its praises, is that the whole process is so much easier and quicker than is experienced with other diets. The high protein and low carbohydrate menus on the Dukan mean that people naturally consume fewer calories simply because they feel satisfied quicker and don’t feel hungry or crave food for longer. If you do slip or eat the wrong food, then on that day you will just have eaten more calories, nothing will be ruined or undone, as long as you go straight back to the program the weight loss will continue as before.
