The Dukan Diet story...

My first contact with obesity date back to when, very young doctor, i was practising general medecine in the Montparnasse area of Paris while specializing at GAbout the Dukan diet...arches in a neurologic service populated with paraplegic children.

I had at that time in my customers, an obese publisher, jovial, tremendously cultured, and suffering from a rude asthma in which i had helped out. He came visit me one day and after sitting comfortably in an english chair that was creaking under the load : "Doctor, i've always been satisfied of your good cares, and today i'm coming here to ask you to make me loose weight."

At that time, i knew about nutrition and obesity only what i've been teached at the faculty and comes down to suggest low-calorie diets, some kind of small meals which are looking to normal ones, but with Lilliputian portion which where making smile and escape the obese people, great pleasure-seeker used to gamble their life by each end, exasperated to the idea of counting what was doing their happiness.

I challenged then while stammering, using the fact that, i didn't have the subtilities of that science.

"Which science are you talking about? I saw all the specialists in Paris, all the starvers of the place. I lost myself more than 300 Kg (661 lbs) since my adolescence and took back everything. I have to confess that I've never been deeply motivated and my wife wrongly helped me by loving me despite of my overweight. But today i'm getting short on breath by only raising my eyes, i can't find anymore clothes that are fitting me, i'm starting to be scared of paying with my life." And to conclude, he added this ultimate sentence which one, suddenly changed the course of my professional life: "Make me follow the plan you want, delete all the food you want, everything, but not meat, I'm so lovin meat."

As a reflex, and to answer his request, I remember that i have answered without hesitation: "So! If you're so loving that meat, come back tommorow morning, stomach empty so that i can weigh you on my scale, and during five days, you will eat meat exclusively. However, avoid fatty meats, pork, lamb, and pieces such as fatty steak or prime rib. Grill it, drink as much as you can and come back in five days stomach empty for reweighing you on my scale.
- Ok, i'll take you up on it!"

Five days later, he was there. He lost almost 5 Kg (11 lbs). I couldn't believe my eyes and so did he. I felt a little bit worried but he was shinning, more jovial then usually, talking about getting back his wellness, snoring dissapeared, sweeping my hesitations : "I'm continuing, i feel like in Zenith, it works and it's a real treat."

And he went for a second turn of five days of meat, accepting the promise to take an urine and blood test. When he came back, he lost again 2 Kg (4 lbs) and, jubilant, putting me under the nose, the results of his blood test that was revealing perfectly normal measurments, no sugar, cholesterol, or uric acid.

In the meantime, I went to the medical school library where I had taken care to go further about nutritional characteristics of meat and expanding my interest to the large family of proteins, which are the prestigious flagship.

So well that when he came back 5 days later, still shining and removed with another 1,5 Kilogram (3.3 lbs), I asked him to add fish and seafood, which he accepted with good grace, because he started making the rounds of meat.

After the first 20 days, the scale showed the first ten kilograms (22 lbs) lost, he made a second blood test which was just as reassuring as the first one. Playing my all-in, I added the categories of proteins that remained in my possession, throwing in a jumble dairy products, poultry, eggs and allay my concerns, I asked him to step up to drink three liters of water per day.

He still ended up being tired and agreed to add vegetables which I began to dread the so prolonged absence.

He came back five days later without loosing any gram. He found in this an argument to go back to his favourite diet and all those categories of proteins in which he had a taste and enjoyed the absolute absence of limitation. I gave him on under the condition to alternate with levels of five days of association with vegetables, claiming a likelihood of vitamin in which it didn't believe at all, but he accepted the argument of a slowdown intestinal transit by lack of fiber.

And this is how my diet of alternative proteins was born, like my interest for obesity and all those categories of overweight that deviated the axis of my studies and my professional life.

Insalled, i used this diet, improved it continuously and handmaded in order to make a diet which seems today the most adaptated to the extremely particular psychology of the obese and the most efficient diet composed with food.

However, over the days, I made the bitter observation that diets, as efficient and well conducted as they are, can not resist the time and lack of effective stabilization, saw their results faint, at best in a deaf and slow drift, the worst in a massive recovery usually grafted onto a destabilization emotional, stress, setbacks or other annoyances.

In response to this war relentlessly lost by the vast majority of those who lose weight that I had to build a consolidation of the weight lost, defensive bulwark against the early resumptions, partial resumptions engaging in discouragement to behavior of self-loathing, or total abandonment and extreme resumptions. This level of protection in charge of reintroducing by successive layers the basic elements of an acceptable food, I had designed it to contain the revanchist violence of a body stripped of its reserves. And, to cover the time of this revolt and make this transition acceptable, I had agreed to this plan a specific duration, proportional to weight loss and easy to calculate, ten days lost per kilo.

But, again, passed the test victory in the consolidation, the gradual return of habits, the pressure of metabolism helping and, more importantly, the inevitable resurgence of the need to compensate the miseries and concerns in the creamy, sweet and the abundant, had an insidious reason for this defensive stronghold.

To conclude, I had to take a difficult measure to accept, an instruction that dares to wear the label of "final", the unacceptable barrier that all the fat ones, the excessives, big or small obese or simple overloaded hate and rejecte a first because it's a long term and is against the grain their need of impulsivity and the holy horror of the guidelines. Unacceptable, except if such an instruction to follow for the rest of the life and guarantee of an authentic stability was only one day per week of a special diet, non-interchangeable, non-negotiable on its content and devastating in results. A plan of attack, short, severe but violent, relayed by a cruise alternative plan that alternates cutting remark
and breaks, supported by a level of consolidation in which the duration is proportional to the weight lost. Finally, to stabilize forever that weight won at a great cost, a conservative measure as ponctual as efficient : one simple day per week of food redemption that keeps the rest of the week in balance, at the condition to keep it forever at his side as a watchdog for the rest of life.


Finally got my first long-lasting results. I hadn't anymore a simple fish to offer, but the learning of fishing, a comprehensive plan that allow the fat to become autonomous, to lose weight quickly and to steer a long-lasting course.
I spent twenty years to make by my hand and to a limited audience this beautiful tool, a four-articulated plans that I propose today by the pen to a wider audience.

This plan is for all those who have tried everything, who have lost weight often - too often - and who seek above all the certainty that in exchange of a flawless effort but limited in time, they can loose weight but rather keep the fruits of this effort and live with the ease and the body they want and they deserve. So I wrote this book to their use in the hope that this solution that I suggested one day become their own.

But it's for those that I always convinced by the speech and direct instructions, those who made my life of doctor fulfilling, my patients of flesh and blood, young and old, men and women, and especially the first of them, my obese publisher, that I dedicate this book, this method.

Dr Pierre Dukan, writer of the book "Je ne sais pas maigrir" (I can't slim).