`Dukan Diet Ups Olive Oil Recommendation - Olive Oil Times

Dukan Diet Ups Olive Oil Recommendation

By Naomi Tupper
Feb. 6, 2012 11:15 UTC

The Dukan Diet is the lat­est diet to take the world by storm with its promises of long-term weight loss with­out food restric­tions and its high pro­file fol­low­ers in Kate Middleton and Jennifer Lopez.

The diet, cre­ated by French doc­tor Pierre Dukan, con­sists of four phases, fin­ish­ing with a life­long sta­bi­liza­tion stage which has no restric­tions with the excep­tion of one day per week where only pro­tein is con­sumed.

This is pre­ceded by the attack stage — ten days where only lean pro­tein is eaten; the cruise stage, dur­ing which you’d alter­nate between days with only pro­tein and days with pro­tein with veg­eta­bles until the tar­get weight is reached; and lastly the con­sol­i­da­tion stage where for five days pro­teins and veg­eta­bles are eaten with the addi­tion of lim­ited amounts of bread, cheese, fruit and other starches.

The orig­i­nal diet elim­i­nated all sources of fat and oil, with the excep­tion of a few drops of olive or rape­seed oil, wiped on a paper towel to grease a non-stick pan for fry­ing.

However, more recently Dukan has updated the restric­tions and increased the allowed amounts of olive oil to one tea­spoon per day, stat­ing in an online coach­ing ses­sion that this may fight con­sti­pa­tion and help dry skin — two com­mon side effects seen in fol­low­ers of the diet.

He also stressed that fat was not the num­ber one enemy in weight loss, this title is reserved for sugar.

Despite the increase, the quan­tity of olive oil falls a long way short of the two table­spoons per day that has been shown to have ben­e­fi­cial effects on heart health.

Nutritionists cau­tion that very low-fat diets may inter­fere with the absorp­tion of fat-sol­u­ble vit­a­mins.

They may also deprive fol­low­ers of ben­e­fi­cial fats and essen­tial fatty acids found in good lipids such as olive oil, which pro­tect from chronic dis­ease.

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