Cause Dukan-kan-kan

So, the Dukan Diet. From what I’ve read it’s Atkins with a side of South Beach. Because eating good quality food, but less of it, and exercising regularly is obviously too simple to work.

But, as a survivor of Atkins, South Beach, Pritikin, The Zone, the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, SlimFast, Metabolife and about another dozen other crazy diets, I think I can claim some moral authority in saying – please, can we just not?

I don’t mean that I did any of those. I mean I survived working in an office where half my co-workers were on one of those regimes (and I mean regime in the same tone of voice that I would say totalitarian regime or Pol Pot). Most of them caused nearly psychotic breaks where someone in ketosis was yelling at their office mate for writing too loudly, or two women got into a fist fight because there was a missing can of double-chocolate SlimFast in the break room and nobody likes the strawberry flavor, or somebody cracked out on Metabolife passes out in the bathroom and has to be wheeled out on a stretcher with a pressure bandage on a bleeding head wound. That kind of stuff. Of course, the cabbage soup diet had it’s own little difficulties (like if it’s one week on and one week off the soup, why can’t the whole office coordinate which week is on and which week is off, and why does it have to stink of boiled cabbage every day for months on end?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, I’m bitter.)

So, please, if you want to lose weight, could we please, please, please just try eating fewer calories, exercising a little more, drinking enough water and sleeping 8 hours a night? I know. I know. It’s insane. But really. It could work. And as far as I know, it has never caused a fist fight.