The Dukan Diet is one of the fastest growing new diets out there. With so many people in a rush to start and experience a rapid weight loss and low hunger program it is possible that some will make mistakes in their haste to lose weight. In this article, I will look at the five most common Dukan Diet mistakes.
1. Not eating enough and not feeling hungry
People accustomed 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 you must feel hungry all the time in order to lose weight. Accordingly, some people new to the Dukan diet will subconsciously cut their portion sizes to prevent themselves from feeling satisfied and feeling like they are on a diet (and losing weight). You don’t need to feel hungry all the time to lose weight! The Dukan diet is a low-starvation diet, so you shouldn’t feel hungry while you’re following this weight loss program. If you’re not hungry, eat something (as long as it’s on the list of allowed foods!)
2. Not having enough variety in your diet
When you first start the Dukan Diet, you may need to refer to the Dukan Diet Book several times. It’s only natural to double-check which foods are allowed and which are not. It may take a week or two to memorize the list in order to stick to the Dukan diet. friendly Eating together becomes second nature. For some people, once they find a food they enjoy eating, they stick with it, thinking it’s what they know is safe and easy. The downside to this plan is that mealtimes quickly become repetitive and boring. What was once an enjoyable and eagerly anticipated meal solution becomes a dreadful chore. So, to avoid getting sick at the sight of turkey kebabs in tikka and mint sauce (for example), be sure to take the time to experiment and expand your Dukan diet menu.
3. Constantly Stepping on the Scales
Weight loss on the Dukan diet can be very rapid, especially during the attack phase. Dieters will find it a motivational buzz to step on the scales to see the pounds falling off. However, the weight fluctuates throughout the day. The scales may show an exciting loss of a few pounds in the morning but show you to have actually gained a pound in the afternoon! One day the weight may decrease and the next day the weight may increase. This is unnecessarily annoying.
You should also keep in mind that most household scales are not very accurate machines. Move the scales a little left or right and you might get a different result when you step on them.
Weighing should not be done more than once a week. In my opinion once a month would be better. Weight loss should always be thought of week-by-week at a minimum, preferably month-by-month. Which brings me to the next mistake.
4. Sometimes making too much out of slipping
It’s all too easy to slip up on your diet and eat something you shouldn’t. Someone can offer you a cookie and without thinking you eat it before you even realize what you’re doing. You find yourself in a situation in which it would be inappropriate and rude to refuse food or drink. There are also some accidental slipups on the Dukan diet such as accidentally containing full-fat milk in your coffee or an overly fat cut of meat that you were consuming. I remember the first time I was at the store I accidentally picked up a pack of roast pork slices instead of roast turkey. For a few minutes I was devastated until I managed to keep things in proportion!
A little lapse doesn’t count when you’re on the Dukan Diet. Imagine you have two glasses of wine a day. Naughty, naughty, liquor is not allowed at the dukan. But it would be insane to use this slip too much! Let the extra calories for the wine be 280 kcal. That’s 280 kcal that you definitely shouldn’t have consumed. But instead of thinking of it as an extra 280 kcal for that day, think of it as an extra for the week. This means that as a result of this slip you consume an extra 40 kcal a day for the next month.
So instead of wasting time worrying about downing those glasses of wine and feeling miserable, think about burning those extra 40 kcal every day for a month. It won’t be too difficult! Drinking a liter of ice water will burn almost as much (you don’t have to drink it all at once!) because your body will burn calories just by raising the temperature of the water.
5. Thinking that the Dukan Diet works like magic
It’s not hard to see why so many people think that the Dukan Diet works like magic. The lack of appetite and rapid weight loss seem so different from all other diets that food combinations seem to work magic. Some people talk about diet as if their stomach is a cauldron and the foods they eat are the ingredients of a weight loss magic potion. They think that if they do one thing wrong, too much of this or too little or that, eat the wrong food or drink the wrong drink, the magic will be broken and all weight loss will stop!
Of course not. There is nothing magical in the way the Dukan Diet works. That’s what happens with all diets that work. Dieters burn more calories than they consume and weight loss occurs when their bodies use stored fat for energy. The great thing about the Dukan diet, which is why so many people are praising it, is that the whole process is so much easier and faster than other diets. The high protein and low carbohydrate menu at Dukan means that people naturally consume fewer calories because they feel satisfied quickly and don’t feel hungry or crave food for long periods of time. If you slip up or eat the wrong foods, you will simply have eaten more calories that day, nothing will be wasted or undone, as long as you go straight back into the program, the weight loss will continue as before.
