My name is Danièle and I tried one diet after another until one day I browsed through the book by Pierre Dukan, the nutritionist...

My Dukan story...

All the personal accounts that I have read on the online site tell my story too.

I tried one diet after another for years, at times I concede they were quite eccentric and my good intentions would inevitably disappear out of the window as I grew tired and often had no results to convince me to stick at it. There is nothing new in this and many people with the same weight problems who want to sort them out will have experienced this frustration of “tomorrow never comes” as the song goes.

And then one day when I was in a bookshop, waiting for my train to go back home, I started looking through "The Dukan Diet"; I bought it and read it and a few days later “head down I went for it, all the while forgetting a few of the “Dukan method’s fundamental rules” such as walking and eating oat bran. In short, I hadn’t understood the method at all. After losing a few pounds I “relapsed”.
Despite my initial disappointment and the bitter taste of yet another failure, I started asking myself the right questions; had I actually done everything I was supposed to do? 
Although it was easy to follow, this diet kept going round and round in my head so feeling confident on April last year, with great determination I set off in Pierre Dukan’s footsteps this time following his recommendations to the letter: eating a diet naturally rich in proteins and adding vegetables on alternate days, oat bran every day, regular walks (between 30 and 60 minutes a day) and drinking lots of water (1.5 to 2 litres a day).

• My favourite support Dukan food: "agar-agar”, it isn’t a diet product but in my everyday cooking it is a valuable slimming aid. It provides me with “ammunition” to stop me getting ravenous; how? It’s quite simple just add a little “agar-agar” to a hot drink (for example coffee or tea)

• My Dukan treat: My oat bran galettes that I make every morning to start the day off right; eating these golden, round, crunchy galettes is a real treat

• My favourite form of exercise: Jogging

• The best compliment someone has paid me: The compliments and looks I get from my friends and family

• What keeps me going: The “coaching” we are offered provides very useful support; when your weight is stagnating and the scales get stuck and won’t budge... no need to panic, no need to get all worked up! That is precisely what you mustn’t do. The coaching is there to reassure, encourage and put things into perspective and what’s more this is not some impersonal contact, the coach really talks to you as an individual!

• The advice I would give to other Dukanians: Whatever you do, only start this diet if you have understood the method and taken it in properly and if you are totally and one hundred percent determined to succeed; for this diet your mental attitude is the main thing. If this isn’t where you are at the moment then just walk away now

The result was that 5 months later, I had lost just under 4 stone. 

What a great joy it was to be able to open my drawers and wardrobe and take out my size 12 clothes and everything else I had long lost hope of ever wearing again...
And me who was forever wanting to eat I don’t feel hungry anymore, I eat as much as I want of everything I’m allowed to eat and enjoy;  I no longer “get worked up about” all those complicated calculations I used to make myself do to work out my calories!
I have discovered the joy of walking and I no longer avoid the stairs whenever there is an opportunity to walk up them!
Today I am ready to start the consolidation phase; I realize that it is a tricky stage but I also know that now I will never give up.

As for the future, I am absolutely determined not to put back on any of the 4 stone and to stick with the nutrition rules that Pierre Dukan advocates. I also hope that my personal experience can be of use to anyone suffering from being overweight, or anyone who can’t come to terms with it or who has to lose a stone or more for medical reasons.

Thank you Pierre Dukan, you have helped me rediscover the image of myself that I like and that I had ended up forgetting existed; thanks to you I have also discovered what a pleasure it is to walk and take exercise. 
I am going to be a perfect ambassador for your method...