Plague of Strength

In today’s Instagram post I highlighted some Czech bodybuilders whose diet was heavily cheese-based due to the scarcity of meat in the diets of most people in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Afterwards, I realized I wrote about a French competitor to the Atkins Diet called The Dukan Diet, and what follows is a very slightly edited version of my review of The Dukan Diet (I get dough from Amazon if you buy it after clicking the link, a fact that is both cool and a legal obligation to divulge).

Robert Dantlinger (1950-2012), left, mostly competed in the late 70s & early 80s as MW amateur (176-198lbs). Center is Jan Černý, the LW class winner of the aforementioned Soviet Mr O (the Sandow) in 1984 & another major Soviet meet in 1987. On the right is 6’1″ 230lb, decade-long Mr Czechosolvakia, Alois Pek (b. 1950).

As a bit of background, the progenitor of the Dukan Diet is Pierre Dukan, who is considered to be France’s answer to Dr. Atkins.  And like Atkins, he’s regarded as a saint by some (notable celebrities like the woman who married into British royalty, J-Lo, and Gisele swear by the diet) and a devil by others (including another popular dieting author who essentially said that Dukan’s poisoning the minds and bodies of the French).

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Additionally, Dukan is a legitimate doctor, and he seems to have developed his diet after years of receiving diet questions from his patients and combining what he found through research with what he saw working in real life.

Though someone to whom I recently described the diet responded with something akin to horror at the perceived complexity of the diet, I think it’s unbelievably simple.  The diet is broken down into four separate parts, all with very simple-to-follow rules:

• Attack Phase– this is a pure protein diet utilized to kickstart fat loss
• Cruise Phase– pure protein days alternated with quasi-paleo days on which you can add select vegetables
• Consolidation Phase– intended to prevent rebound, this phase is a bit looser than the cruise phase
• Permanent Stabilization Phase– basically, eat whatever the hell you want, with one protein day

In my opinion, it hardly gets simpler than this.  And it’s bizarre that this diet isn’t the single most popular fad diet in history given its cheese-heavy nature, yet this diet seems to be completely unknown these days.  

One of the most genius parts of the Dukan Diet is that it has built in game mechanics that essentially allow users to “level-up” and get access to tastier foods.  Additionally, this diet is far less draconian than anything I follow on a regular basis, requires little to no calculations, and keeps its food rules fairly simple.

General Dieting Tips

• On determining one’s ideal weight:  it’s better to ask yourself what weight is realistic and at which you’d feel good than to fantasize about looking like a celebrity.  Abstractions in shit like this generally lead to failure.  
• Your body’s biological memory of your most common bodyweight can never be erased.  As such, you should focus on losing weight gradually, rather than in big jumps- big jumps will waste the willpower you’ll need to stabilize your weight at a reasonable level, rather than momentarily hitting a new high or low.
• The DD includes a true weight calculator, which is pretty interesting, and Dukan notes that a man’s stable bodyweight increases 2.6 lbs per decade, and a woman’s increases 1.8 lbs.
• On a diet, you should refrain from using too much salt- this will reduce water retention and help keep your appetite at bay.  Salt intake increases salivation and gastric acidity, which trigger feelings of hunger.  Also, Dukan mentions that an increase in water with a concomitant decrease in salt will reduce the appearance of cellulite.
• Fats are public enemy #1, and simple carbohydrates are #2.

Attack Phase

The attack phase of the Dukan Diet lasts 2-7 days, based on personal fatness, the average of which is 5 days.  

During this phase, you limit yourself to foods that are as close to pure protein as possible- lean meats, skinless poultry, 90% lean ground beef or better, veal, pork, game meats, seafood, eggs, nonfat dairy… essentially, anything but duck, goose, and ribs.  

These meats can be prepared any way you like, but without butter [Editors Note: Don’t ask, because I don’t get it either], oil, or cream.  As I mentioned, poultry has to be skinless, though it can be cooked with the skin on to preserve the meat’s moisture as much as possible.  If you’re eating eggs, you should limit yourself to two yolks during this phase, but you can eat unlimited portions of the rest.

Did I mention the dairy? This is the perfect diet for people who fear the lack of cheese, milk, ice cream, cheese, and ice cream in their diets.  

Yep, ice cream.  No sugar added dairy is right at the top of the list for Dukan, whose capacity for digesting appears limitless. Fat free cheese can be eaten in unlimited amounts, skim milk can be drunk, and sugar-free yogurt can be eaten.  

If you’ll recall, I’ve written about how 70s bodybuilders would snack on a halved cantaloupe or other melons filled with cottage cheese, and this sort of thing is heavily encouraged by Dukan. Swedish, German, and Czech bodybuilders (and I’m sure other Europeans, but those are the ones of whom I’m aware) were and remain fans of quark, a soft cheese similar in many regards to cream cheese with a flavor akin to ricotta. 

I cannot speak to their flavor, as I am not a cheese enthusiast, but based on macronutrient ratios, these are the cheeses I would recommend for lifter:

• Quark– One cup of quark is like 4oz of chicken breast with a splash of BBQ sauce. It’s got 25g protein, 1g fat, and 9g carbs.
• 2% Cottage Cheese– 31g protein, 8g carbs, 4g fat.
• Mozzerella- 25g protein, 25g fat, 3g fat
• Gruyere Cheese– This seems to be about as close to beef ribs as you can get in a cheese, so they’re bad for this diet but qualify as keto.  If you want to sit down to a pound of this shit a day, have at it.  40g of protein and 42g of fat per cup with <1g carbs
• Limburger Cheese– Similar in nutrition to Gruyere, provided you can tolerate the smell.

• Other cheeses high in protein:
  • cottage cheese
  • blue cheese
  • Swiss cheese
  • goat cheese
  • mozzarella

In retrospect, I suppose it doesn’t necessarily allow ice cream, but dairy is dairy in my mind. There’s all kinds of pseudo-healthy ice cream on the market, but there’s also an old school Dukan end-around if you wanna go healthy and homemade.

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The only hard and fast rules on this bitch is that you must consume 1.5 tablespoons of oat bran every day (he recommends making it into a galette like this tasty one which you can’t eat in this phase but which I randomly googled), drink 1.5Q of water per day, and eat as much of the allowed foods as you want.  

Insofar as duration is concerned, he recommends a 3 day attack for people looking to lose less than 20 pounds (total), a 1 day attack for people looking to lose less than 10 lbs, and 7-10 days for Walmart fatties. Finally, he recommends 20 minutes of walking a day, but quite frankly if you think 20 minutes of walking constitutes exercise, then the series of odd decisions you’ve made in finding this site leads me to believe that you’re probably here for the porn.  

Cruisin’ Phase

The cruise phase essentially takes the attack phase and adds veggies.  Like I stated earlier, this diet is so simple, the book could have been written in crayon and Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder could have understood it without a problem.  

This phase is continued without a break until the dieter hits their target weight, and just alternates pure protein days with protein and vegetable days, all in unlimited amounts.  The average length of the phase is three days per pound of bodyweight lost, which is actually pretty reasonable, and retains the same oat bran and water prescription from the previous phase.

Vegetables that are ok’d by Dukan for this phase: tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, spinach, lettuce, asparagus, leeks, green beans, cabbage, mushrooms, celery, fennel, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, peppers, and provided they’re not at every meal, carrots and beets.  No amount of whining, pleading, cajoling, or other tomfoolery will make potatoes or corn vegetables.  They’re not.  It’s science.  Accept it and move on with your lives.

Consolidation Phase

At this point, you’ve conquered your body like Hitler raped France, and you’ve got to install your own puppet regime.  Instead of enlisting the help of the Vichy, you’ve got to continue the Cruisin’ diet with minor modifications, and add in some “celebration” meals.  

At this point, you get to add two slices of bread and a portion of fruit every day.  Additionally, you can have two portions of starchy carbohydrates a week, and two planned cheat meals.

At this point in the diet, you should have a pretty good idea of what got you to where you are, a healthy respect for the knowledge you’ve obtained by doing the diet, and a desire not to blow the whole goddamned thing because you’ve already broken your ass dieting for a month.  

This phase takes that and rolls it into a ball with what regular people consider a “normal”/”balanced” diet.  The idea here is to train yourself to have portion control so you maintain your weight.  Your body’s not taking that shit laying down, however, and will fight tooth and nail to regain its lost fat.  At this point, people find they’re cold, tired, constantly hungry, and have increased caloric absorption… essentially, it’s a big bag of bullshit.

To get your body to quit with the nonsense, Dukan reintroduces whole grain bread, certain fruits, and the wondrous cheat meal.  I’ve already outlined the myriad reasons why cheat meals are awesome (here and here), and Dukan agrees with my sentiments.  He does, however, add limitations I do not, and which might well prove useful to a lot of you who are struggling with fat loss:

• eat anything you want, but you only get a single portion, and your portion size should be moderated by reason
• eat one of every one of the haute-cuisine courses to provide yourself with a full  meal experience- 1 appetizer, 1 entree, 1 dessert, and 1 glass of wine.
• cannot have two celebration meals in a row

As I stated, this is in many ways similar to my suggestions about cheat meals, though my suggestions lack the effete trappings of that esteemed French gentleman’s.  In any event, they’re reasonable.  In addition to the above, he suggests that you have a single day of pure proteins per week, and recommends that the following fruit hierarchy to guide your decision making there:

Apples > Strawberries and Raspberries > Melon > Grapefruit> Kiwis, Peaches, Nectarines, Mangoes

You cannot have bananas, grapes, cherries, dried fruit, or nuts.  Additionally, you still cannot have starchy “vegetables” like corn, potatoes, or yams, unless it’s one of your starch meals.

Speaking of which, the plan for the starchy meals is not too dissimilar from the cheat meal plan- it’s governed by reason and common sense.  During the first half of the consolidation phase, you can only have one serving a week, and then you bump it up to two servings once you hit the halfway point.  As for what you can stuff down your gullet at these meals, you can have an 8 oz (cooked) serving of pasta, corn, breads, coucous, polenta, or lentils, 6 oz of white or 8oz of brown rice, or a baked potato without butter.  While it’s not quite an evening at the Olive Garden, it’s something for those of you who love their carbs.

At Least Your Weight Will Be Stable

The DD is structured so that you never have to return to a life of bulimia or other extreme dietary weirdness to manage your weight, and the Permanent Stabilization routine is the key to the whole shitteree, according to MM. Dukan.  This phase is actually simpler than the rest, as it involves eating whatever the fuck you want 6 days a week (provided you’re still getting your 2TBSP of oat bran a day, eating the pure protein diet one day a week, and never using an escalator or elevator again in your life.  

The latter recommendation only really works in sub-saharan Africa or a country that is bombed flat by its neighbor twice a century, but would likely be suicidal if you lived in the Burj Khalifa or wanted to stand at the top of the Empire State Building.  

Even Lance Armstrong would call bullshit on climbing the stairs in this motherfucker.

According to Dukan, however, this thing will keep you slender as a baguette-eater for the remainder of your days, and apparently does not require that you own a beret to do so.

Questions I Have Been Asked About This Diet

Q:  Is oat flour the same as oat bran?

A:  Nope.  Oat flour is entirely different from oat bran, and could be considered the yin to oat bran’s yang, or the Skeletor to bran’s He-Man.  On this diet you will have to eat oat bran, which is apparently hard as all fucking hell to find in some stores.  It should be located, however, in the cereal isle.  You can also get it cheap on amazon if you so choose.

Q:  I can’t find sugar-free yogurt!!!  HELP!

A:  Yogurt, like all dairy foods, contains sugar.  This sugar is called lactose, and is the alleged culprit when any person shits their pants after drinking a glass of milk.  According to one study, “Approximately 70% of the world’s population has primary lactase deficiency”, which means they are at least moderately lactose intolerant.  That fascinating sidebar aside, there’s no way to get sugar-free yogurt.  What you want is “No sugar added” yogurt, which is sweetened with artificial sweeteners.  No honey, no agave, and no other hippie faux sugars are allowed either- you want good, old-fashioned chemical sweeteners if you’re going to have yogurt, or just eat it unflavored.

Q: Where should I go to get recipes/more information/anything else because I’m too fucking lazy to read the book?

A:  My Dukan Diet seems to have some good recipes and breaks shit down a bit.  Go here for recipes.

Q:  Is cum allowed on this diet? [Editor’s note:  I very literally was asked this question.  Twice.]

A:  Yes, cum can be a very important part of any diet for anyone who wishes to partake (edited for the hyper literal readers out there).  This means that anyone who enjoys it can benefit greatly from the addition of cum to their diet.

“Although cum may look creamy and opaque, it contains very little fat, and few calories. One teaspoon of cum contains about 5 calories, and the average ejaculation produces about a tablespoon of semen, for a total of 15 calories. Because of the sugars in seminal fluid, we’d guess that it has a few carbohydrates, but considering the relatively small volume of semen per “serving” we’d guess the total amount to be negligible.Given that cum is a high-protein, low-carb snack, you’d think the Atkins Diet people would be all over it by now. Plus, when you factor in the calories expended in performing oral sex, chances are you’re burning off much more than you’re consuming. The only way that swallowing during a blow job will make you fat is if you cover your lover’s dick with whipped cream and chocolate syrup.” (Don’t Spit)

Per Wikipedia: “Semen is primarily water, but contains trace amounts of almost every nutrient the human body uses.[citation needed] It has somewhat higher amounts of commonly deficient minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and selenium. One typical ejaculation contains 150 mg of protein, 11 mg of carbohydrates, 6 mg fat, 3 mg cholesterol, 7% US RDA potassium and 3% US RDA copper and zinc.” 

Sources:

Don’t Spit, Swallow.  Cum Nutrition Facts.  http://www.dontspitswallow.com/cum_nutrition.shtml

Dukan, Pierre.  The Dukan Diet.  New York:  Crown Archetype, 2010.
Nazar, Robyn.  Dukan Diet: New Weight Loss Fad for Celebs.  http://www.emaxhealth.com/4214/dukan-diet-new-weight-loss-fad-celebs

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