Today, Thursday, September 8, is day one of my Dukan Diet trial.

Living a life-long battle with being overweight and having tried many diets in the past with Weight Watchers being the most successful, I was skeptical when first hearing about the Dukan Diet. However, after reading Dr. Dukan's book, The Dukan Diet: 2 Steps to Lose the Weight, 2 Steps to Keep It Off Forever, his website at http://www.dukandiet.com/ , as well as the many other web sites out there on the Internet about the diet, I realized that my Weight Watcher "choices" were effectively following the Dukan Diet anyway for the most part, the big difference being the Attack Phase and being allowed only Pure Protein during that time.

So I decided to give the Dukan Diet a try, since in recent months I have undergone a truly stressful experience that resulted in me being separated from my scale for four months which, of course, was self-permission to eat, drink and be merry! The end result is that I've gain 10 pounds on top of the 15 that had already crept on over the past five years since I lost 100 pounds using Weight Watchers.

I will be posting from time to time about my experiences with this diet, and how it compares to Weight Watchers for me. I emphasize the "for me" because Weight Watchers allows for choices and others may chose a radically different approach to it than I ever did. For me, I realize that I must practically be allergic and addicted to carbohydrates, because if I eat them, I simply want more and more and more, resulting in huge weight gains when I give in to the constant struggle of being hungry and craving carbohydrates. So, to lose weight and to maintain a weight loss for any period of time, I have to avoid carbohydrates like they are poison, regardless of what diet program I am following. Unfortunately, that usually, even on Weight Watchers, leaves me feeling constantly hunger and not satiated.

At the beginning of this year, I even tried to lose the initial extra 15 pounds that I was packing by joining Weight Watchers again, using their "Points Plus" plan which allows for 29 points per day. For the several weeks that I followed the program, I actually had to reduce my daily consumption to 23 points in order to lose at all and then lost so slowly it was a frustrating exercise of "one step forward and two steps back." Then some non-food related issues arose in my life and I found myself living in a situation where I did not have access to my scale for my daily weigh-ins.

For breakfast today, I had a cup of Chobani plain fat free yogurt with oat bran and did not feel my usually mid-morning hunger pangs. For lunch, I had an 8 ounce baked chicken breast and half a cup of fat free cottage cheese, followed by a piece of sugar free gum. Beverages are always a challenge for me, but so far I have had 3 cups of tea and a cup of water. I'm heading out to get a cup of coffee now. More to come tomorrow....