Why the Dukan Protein Diet Can Be Dangerous. Coach’s opinion

March 29, 2019, 3:11 p.m

The Dukan Diet, one of the most famous and pop­u­lar diets, is based on pro­tein foods. It min­i­mizes the con­sump­tion of fats and car­bo­hy­drates in the diet. And helps to lose weight — but at what cost?

Let’s try to fig­ure out the effec­tive­ness of this diet with an expert Iri­na Bara­novskaya,

cer­ti­fied train­er in the direc­tion of reha­bil­i­ta­tion train­ing.

Principles of the Dukan protein diet

Dukan devel­oped a tech­nique that includes four phas­es:

• In the first, only pro­tein prod­ucts are used. This phase is called “attack”.
• The sec­ond stage — “alter­na­tion” — dur­ing this peri­od, veg­eta­bles are added to the diet, but they can only be eat­en with pro­tein foods, alter­nat­ing between a pro­tein day and a pro­tein-veg­etable day.
• At the “fix­a­tion” stage, a small list of prod­ucts con­tain­ing com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and fats appears, they are dosed and slow­ly added to the diet.
• The final stage is “sta­bi­liza­tion”, eat­ing as rec­om­mend­ed, which becomes your right habit and keeps the result.

The effect of a protein diet

In terms of speed of weight loss, pro­tein diet is one of the most effec­tive. In a cou­ple of days / a week, you get rid of unnec­es­sary and such hat­ed kilo­grams.

How­ev­er, not every­one is able to go through all the stages of the diet, not break loose and con­sol­i­date the result.

In prac­tice, this usu­al­ly means that after a restric­tive monot­o­nous pro­tein diet, reach­ing the cov­et­ed fig­ure on the scales, we relax, for­get about the impor­tant stages of con­sol­i­dat­ing the results and sta­bi­liz­ing our body. And we return with an increased appetite for foods high in car­bo­hy­drates and fats, which nat­u­ral­ly leads to repeat­ed exces­sive weight gain.

Consequences and risks

Dukan’s weight loss has become pop­u­lar due to the wide list of foods that are allowed dur­ing the diet. You don’t have to eat by the clock, eat when you feel hun­gry. No need to count calo­ries and the amount of car­bo­hy­drates con­sumed. Just fol­low the list of prod­ucts that you can at one stage or anoth­er. In addi­tion, you will real­ly quick­ly lose those extra pounds. But at what cost?

There are many stud­ies that high­light the neg­a­tive effects and down­sides of such a diet. An excess of pro­tein puts a heavy bur­den on the kid­neys, so the Dukan diet is not intend­ed for peo­ple with dis­eases of the uri­nary sys­tem.

An exclu­sive­ly pro­tein diet is also not very good for the liv­er and even for the brain, which, for exam­ple, needs glu­cose for nor­mal oper­a­tion, and there is no place for it almost all the time in this food sys­tem.

If it is impor­tant for you to take care not only of los­ing excess weight, but also of your health, I rec­om­mend that you think about choos­ing anoth­er method that is more gen­tle.

It is impor­tant to build the right eat­ing habits. Under­stand the prin­ci­ples of healthy eat­ing. The choice of prod­ucts and their quan­ti­ty should be adapt­ed to the lifestyle of a par­tic­u­lar per­son. Do not be embar­rassed and bet­ter ask for help from expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als — nutri­tion­ists and nutri­tion­ists. Per­son­al­ly, I pre­fer and always rec­om­mend a three-phase nutri­tion pro­gram, but trust me, the experts will help you cre­ate a bal­anced diet and help you get your weight back to nor­mal with­out harm­ing your health.

pho­to — freepik.com