Dukan diet Cruise Phase (Phase 2) week 24 – I am a little bit stuck this week

by Marshall Brain

Here is my journey so far with the Dukan Diet:

And today I am reporting on my twenty fourth week (days 165 through 172) on the Dukan diet. This week I appear to be a little bit stuck. On Day 168 I gained 3.2 pounds in water for reasons that I don’t completely understand, and it has been slow to come back off. So I ended up gaining 0.8 pounds for the week rather than losing weight. The goal of 175.0 remains elusive. Here is how the week unfolded:

Day 165 –

  • I weigh the same as yesterday – 176.4.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of salmon, 2 cups of cottage cheese, 2 cups of plain yogurt, maybe 400 calories of peanuts and walnuts, about 4 ounces of lunch meat, a box of vegetables and a serving of asparagus. Perhaps 2,300 calories altogether.
  • I got no significant exercise today. A busy day.

Day 166 –

  • This morning on the scale I lost 0.4 pounds. I now weigh 176.0, a new low.
  • Today I ate half a pound of salmon, half a pound of chicken, a restaurant salad (with grilled chicken), a cup of cottage cheese, 400 calories of peanuts and walnuts, 3 eggs, a box of vegetables and a serving of asparagus. The salad is a wild card, but if you assume the salad had 500 calories, it was about 2,000 calories for the day.
  • For exercise I rode my real bicycle 21 miles (about 1.5 hours), and rode the exercise bike for 400 calories.
  • Tonight I did some more research on 6-pack abs. I learned 3 things. First, on this page we find this quote: “95% of the work in getting 6-pack abs is losing bodyfat and no ab machine will do that. You can have rippling muscular abs but if they are covered with an inner tube of fat then nobody is going see ‘em.” That page also points out that you need to have 8% to 12% body fat if you hope to have 6-pack abs, and if “want to remove the final bit of fat over your lower abs to get a true 8-pack washboard, then the advanced carb cycling technique is for you.” This leads to two obvious questions, the first being, how much body fat do I have now, and how much weight do I need to lose to bring it down to 10%, or even 5%? He has a nice percent body fat calculator on this page. That calculator says I am currently at 17% body fat and therefore 30 pounds of me is fat right now. So to get down to 8% body fat, I would have to lose 15 pounds of fat, which means going down to 160 pounds. I don’t know, but that seems HIGHLY unlikely. The second question is, “what does advanced carb cycling look like?” That question is answered on this page. After being on the Dukan diet, a few weeks of carb cycling really doesn’t sound so bad, and it even promotes the consumption of nuts! But the idea of going from here down to 160, or even lower, seems like a stretch. I really think I will be stopping at 170.0. (Note that it is possible to stay at 175 and have a low body fat percentage by putting on 15 pounds of muscle while losing 15 pounds of fat. But looking at the rest of his site, that may take a huge time investment and a year or more of elapsed time.)

Day 167 –

  • Today on the scale I gained 0.8 pounds and now weigh 176.8. I assume that it’s because of the exercise yesterday.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, 2 cups of cottage cheese, 400 calories of peanuts and walnuts, 8 ounces of lunch meat, 2 cups of plain yogurt, and something called egg beaters. Maybe 2,200 calories. And then tonight there was a demand for popcorn from the kids, so I made more air-popped popcorn and ate maybe 4 cups of it (about 25 grams of carbs in 4 cups). For this batch I used olive oil rather than butter. The popcorn boosted total calories to maybe 2,400 for today.
  • Let me say a few words about these things called egg beaters. I watched this video last night:https://www.youtube.com/embed/6X8dGji9Td8He is talking about egg whites, and how egg yolks are not particularly good for you. I eat a fair amount of eggs, and this info about yolks is an unfortunate reminder to me. Since Leigh is going to the store today, I tell her about this and ask her to see if they sell just egg whites, since that would make life a lot easier. What she comes back with is something called Egg Beaters. As best I can tell, Egg Beaters is egg whites with some additives. I cooked a cup of it tonight like I would cook an omelet. It looks and acts like eggs. It tastes like eggs. But it is basically pure protein. Is this a good Dukan diet food? Seems like it, unless someone tells me it is poisonous. I did a cursory Google search and did not see any huge red flags.
  • For exercise today I walked 2 miles.
  • One thing I will note – I was incredibly thirsty today and drank a lot of water. I do not know what caused the thirst. Salt from the lunch meat? The lack of vegetables today? The Egg Beaters?

Day 168 –

  • The thirst, apparently, translated into water weight gain. When I got on the scale this morning I was shocked to see 180.0. I gained 3.2 pounds today. I have no idea why. At least I know it is all water.
  • Today I ate half a pound of chicken, half a pound of tilapia, a cup of cottage cheese, 3 hamburger patties, 400 calories of peanuts and walnuts, 4 ounces of lunch meat, a box of vegetables and a serving of asparagus. About 2,000 calories.
  • I walked 2 miles today.

Day 169 –

  • This morning I lost 2.0 pounds. I now weigh 178.0.
  • Today I ate half a pound of chicken, a pound of tilapia, half a pound of steak, 2 cups of cottage cheese, a cup of plain yogurt, a cup of fresh strawberries, a restaurant salad, a serving of asparagus and 4 cups of popcorn. Maybe 2,700 calories – the steak and the salad are both wild cards.
  • For exercise I rode my real bicycle 10 miles and walked 6 miles with a friend.
  • Clearly it is time to put the brakes on popcorn. But it has been a nice diversion this week, and all three times it has linked with good times with the kids.

Day 170 –

  • My weight is unchanged this morning. I still weigh 178.0.
  • Today I ate half a pound of Tilapia, half a pound of chicken, half a pound of steak, 400 calories of peanuts and walnuts, a cup of cottage cheese, a cup of plain yogurt, a cup of fresh strawberries, about 4 ounces of lunch meat and a serving of asparagus. About 2,000 calories.
  • We took a family walk today for 3 miles and Ian and I rode our real bikes for 5 miles to visit Wal-Mart.

Day 171 –

  • Today I lost 1.2 pounds and now weigh 176.8
  • Today I ate half a pound of grilled chicken, 3 eggs, 200 calories of peanuts and walnuts, half a pound of tandoori chicken, a cup of plain yogurt, a cup of cottage cheese, a hamburger patty, 6 chicken wings and a serving of asparagus. About 2,300 calories.
  • Johnny, Ian, Leigh and I walked 2 miles today. It was an adventure.

Day 172 –

  • I gained 0.4 pounds – This morning I weigh 177.2. So for the week I gained 0.8 pounds. I have lost 50.4 pounds since starting the Dukan diet.

At this point I appear to be kind of stuck, for reasons I don’t completely understand. I have no idea why, on Day 168, I gained so much water weight. That was kind of a slap in the face. My average calorie intake per day this week was about 2,200, which is a little higher than normal, but below my daily burn rate and certainly not obscene. I got a good amount of exercise – something over 2,000 calories burned on exercise for the week. So it seems like I should have lost weight (at least a pound), and instead spent the week trying to remove a bunch of water weight.

Does this mean that the end-stage of the Dukan diet phase 2 is really hard? Does this mean that I should have quit at 185.0 (the Dukan web site target weight) rather than pushing to 175.0? Does this mean that popcorn is a baaaadddd idea while on the Dukan diet?

Who knows? At this point I am 2.2 pounds away from the magical, elusive goal of 175.0. We’ll see if I can reach it in the next 7 days.

[[Click here to find out what happened next…]]

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