Dukan diet Cruise Phase (Phase 2) week 21 – I hit the 50.0 milestone and reaffirmed the power of asparagus

by Marshall Brain

Here is my journey so far with the Dukan Diet:

And today I am reporting on my twenty first week (days 144 through 151) on the Dukan diet. This has been a really good week because I hit 177.6 pounds, meaning that I have lost a total of 50.0 pounds so far on the Dukan diet. Yay! I also reaffirmed the water-purging qualities of asparagus and came face-to-face with my nut addiction. Of course that same day I hit the 50.0 milestone I ate a pound of hamburger patties for dinner and my weight rose 0.4 pounds. So yesterday I weighed 177.6, and today I am at 178.0. Overall, I lost 2.0 pounds for the week and have lost 49.6 pounds since starting the Dukan diet. Here is how the week unfolded:

Day 144 –

  • Today I gained 0.4 pounds and now weigh 180.0.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of tilapia, 3 eggs, a handful of walnuts, about half of a cantaloupe (and wow was it good), a box of antioxidant vegetables, 4 ounces of lunch meat and 2 cups of cottage cheese.
  • Leigh and I went kayaking tonight for exercise. For the record: I don’t really consider this exercise like walking or biking, because I have never kayaked intensely enough to breathe hard or sweat intensely.

Day 145 –

  • My weight is unchanged today. I weigh 180.0 again.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, a pound of salmon, 3 eggs, a handful of walnuts, a cup of plain yogurt, 8 ounces of lunch meat, half a cup of cottage cheese (much lower than “normal” for me) and a box of antioxidant vegetables.
  • For exercise tonight I rode my real bicycle 8 miles with David and Leigh, Kayaked a little with Leigh and rode the exercise bike for 90 minutes and 850 calories. I watched episodes 4 and 5 of Lost while riding. I will admit that it is growing on me.
  • After a good food day and a night containing a lot of exercise, I expect to lose weight tomorrow and drop back into the 170s…

Day 146 –

  • …but I would be completely wrong. This is the sixth or seventh case where a day of heavy exercise is followed by weight gain rather than weight loss. I gained 1.4 pounds and weigh 181.4 on the scale this morning. Frustrating.
  • How to explain this bizarre weight-gain-after-intense-exercise phenomenon? My only guess is that it is pure water. I sweat a LOT when riding the exercise bike. I looks like I have come out of the shower, and my shorts are completely soaked. So I drink a lot of water during and after the ride. Apparently my body stores a lot of that water for some reason post-exercise. Hopefully it comes back off today.
  • A friend sent me this picture today:Before and after weight gainWow. See also this post: How does your appearance change when you become obese?.
  • Today I ate 1.5 pounds of chicken, 3 eggs, a handful of walnuts, 8 ounces of lunch meat, 2 cups of cottage cheese and a box of antioxidant vegetables. (about 2,000 calories)
  • I walked for about an hour today while the twins were at soccer practice (I walked around and around their field while they were practicing).

Day 147 –

  • This morning on the scale I lost 0.4 pounds and now weigh 181.0.
  • This is kind of a head-scratcher to me – why is my weight up even though I am eating right and getting a good amount of exercise? I have to assume that it is water retention (gaining 1.4 pounds yesterday was clearly water retention), but I don’t really understand why that is happening. I am simply going to be patient and see if it works itself out over time. In theory, the water should get released at some point and I will get back into the 170s.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of round steak, 3 eggs, 2 cups of cottage cheese and a box of antioxidant vegetables.

Day 148 –

  • Today on the scale I lost 1.2 pounds. I weigh 179.8. Let’s see if I am in the 170s to stay, or if I am up in the 180s again tomorrow.
  • Today I ate a pound of tandoori chicken, two cups of cottage cheese, half a pound of round steak, half a pound of salmon, a box of antioxidant vegetables, 8 ounces of lunch meat, two handfuls of mixed nuts (approx. 400 calories?) and a serving of asparagus.
  • I will be interested to see if asparagus has any effect tonight. In the comments for week 20, Sara suggested that I give asparagus another try since this vegetable worked so well for me earlier in the Dukan diet. It’s been a long time since I had asparagus, so it is worth a try.
  • For exercise today David and I rode our bikes 20 miles and Leigh and I walked 2 miles.

Day 149 –

  • The asparagus definitely seems to have had an effect. I lost 1.4 pounds last night and now weigh 178.4.
  • Today for breakfast I was hungry. I ate a pound of Tandoori chicken and 2 cups of cottage cheese. Still hungry , so I ate 3 eggs. By 11AM I was hungry again, so I ate 8 ounces of lunch meat. For lunch I ate 500 calories of nuts, and then didn’t eat anything else until dinner. For dinner I ate half a pound of salmon, a serving of asparagus and a box of antioxidant vegetables. About 2,000 calories total.
  • Let me talk briefly about the nuts. A large container (2.5 pounds) of mixed nuts somehow made it into the shopping cart at BJ’s and ended up in the pantry. It is a gorgeous “deluxe” nut mix – cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans and macadamia nuts, lightly salted, as shown here (I have no idea why the price is so high on that page – it was $10 or so at BJ’s). The nuts are now in the house, so I need a way to control consumption. I noticed on the label that it says a 1 ounce serving (approximately 21 pieces) = 170 calories. The “21 pieces” part was very interesting to me. What if I counted the nuts out to control consumption? Doing the math, each nut contains approximately 8 calories. So if I eat 12, that’s about 100 calories. So I counted out 12 nuts and ate them one by one. This sounds pathetic I know, but I am trying to solve an addiction problem here. I ended up doing that 5 times, totaling 500 calories. That was lunch. For comparison, normally I would eat something like half a pound of chicken and a cup of cottage cheese, which is 450 calories, so it is about the same. In other words, I didn’t really take a calorie hit by eating these nuts today.
  • For exercise I worked in the yard all day today. Nothing strenuous, but like last weekend it’s a lot more motion than sitting in a chair all day.

Day 150 –

  • This morning on the scale I lost 0.8 pounds and now weigh 177.6. This is a milestone because when I started this diet, my starting weight was 227.6. So I have officially lost 50.0 pounds since starting the Dukan diet. Amazing. If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be able to lose 50 pounds this year, I would have laughed and laughed…
  • I wrote a longer post on reaching the 50 pound milestone and things I’ve learned along the way that is available here.
  • Today I ate half a pound of chicken, 1 cup of cottage cheese, 8 ounces of lunch meat, 300 calories of nuts (36 nuts, eaten one by one), 3 eggs, half a pound of tilapia, one pound of hamburger patties, a serving of asparagus and a box of antioxidant vegetables.
  • For exercise I rode my real bike for about an hour. It was a gorgeous late summer evening. I really am going to hate seeing summer end.

Day 151 –

  • I don’t think that eating a pound of delicious hamburger patties last night was the best idea I ever had from a weight loss perspective, but wow were they good. Unfortunately my weight went up 0.4 pounds overnight to 178.0. So I have lost 2.0 pounds this week and 49.6 pounds since starting the Dukan diet.

It has been an interesting week. I reached the 50.0 pound milestone, which is great. I reaffirmed the power of asparagus that was first learned back in Week 2. I took positive steps toward taming my nut addiction, although I agree the technique is a little pathetic.

Is asparagus cheating? That is one question I have been asking myself for a couple of days. It definitely seems to have helped my body dump water. But it would seem like, as soon as I stop eating asparagus, the water will come back. I have 2 or 3 servings of asparagus left, so I will finish it up and then see what happens.

One thing I have noticed is that, at 178.0, my stomach is almost gone. My mental image of how my body should look and the mirror image that I see in the morning are becoming synchronized. Still no rippling abs, but that will be something to work on in the future. Just getting rid of the pudginess is a good start.

Will I hit 175.0 in the coming week, before the end of September? That seems like a stretch. However, it is fascinating to me that, even this deep into the Dukan diet, I am still able to lose weight at a reasonable clip. We will see if that continues. Onward!

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