Dukan diet Cruise Phase (Phase 2) week 22 – Yikes! I gained 2.0 pounds rather than losing weight

by Marshall Brain

Here is my journey so far with the Dukan Diet:

And today I am reporting on my twenty second week (days 151 through 158) on the Dukan diet. This week had moments of brilliance and I reached a new low of 176.6 (51.0 total pounds lost). But then I gained a bunch of water weight for reasons that are not entirely clear, and I ended the week up 2.0 pounds rather than losing weight. Here is how the week unfolded:

Day 151 –

  • My weight went up 0.4 pounds overnight to 178.0. I think that yesterday’s hamburger patties didn’t help.
  • Today I ate 1.5 pounds of chicken, half a pound of tilapia, one hamburger patty (0.3 pounds), 300 calories of nuts, 2 cups of cottage cheese, 4 ounces of lunch meat, a box of antioxidant vegetables and a serving of asparagus.
  • For exercise The kids and I walked about a mile and a half together this evening.

Day 152 –

  • I gained 0.8 pounds overnight and now weigh 178.8. I seem to be heading in the wrong direction here.
  • So why did I gain weight the last two days? It could be that I am eating too much. All the hamburger and nuts over the last two days probably are not be helping. It could be that I have habituated to the asparagus and some water is coming back. It could be the difference between moving around all weekend and sitting in a chair all day once the workweek starts. It could be water retention related to salt. Or something else. We will see. I will try to hold down calories today and see how that goes.
  • Today I did better on food than yesterday. I ate 12 ounces of round steak, a cup of cottage cheese, 3 eggs, 600 calories of nuts (sigh), 8 ounces of lunch meat and a serving of asparagus. About 1,800 calories, maybe a little less. Gotta get these nuts under control…, but the good news is that I ate less meat and cottage cheese than normal and apparently replaced them with nuts.
  • Tonight for exercise I rode the exercise bike for 400 calories and watched episode 6 of Lost.

Day 153 –

  • Today on the scale I lost 1.4 pounds. I now weigh 177.4.
  • Today I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of Tilapia, 3 eggs, 1 cup of cottage cheese, a restaurant salad (no idea how many calories or how much salt, but it had zero carbs), 400 calories of nuts and a box of antioxidant vegetables. So there was no lunch meat today and my cottage cheese consumption was down, meaning a lot less salt coming in.
  • I used up all my asparagus yesterday, so today I am not eating asparagus. Let’s see if that has any effect on weight.
  • I got no exercise to speak of today.

Day 154 –

  • Even without the asparagus (or any exercise) yesterday, I lost 0.4 pounds last night. I weigh 177.0 today. That almost certainly happened because of reduced salt intake.
  • Today I ate a pound of Tandoori chicken, 6 ounces of round steak, 2 cups of cottage cheese, 3 eggs, 4 ounces of lunch meat and a quarter of a cantaloupe. That is an awful lot of salt, and no veggies, but the calories were fairly low (maybe 1,700) because I just didn’t feel very hungry today.
  • I walked a mile today.

Day 155 –

  • This morning on the scale I lost 0.4 pounds. I weigh 176.6.
  • Today was not a good day for food – I ate too much. I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of tilapia, a cup of cottage cheese, a cup of plain yogurt, 6 meatballs (340 calories), 2 boxes of antioxidant vegetables, half of a cantaloupe and about 1,000 calories of nuts in various forms. That’s probably about 2,800 calories or so.
  • I did a lot of yard work today, but nowhere near enough to burn off 1,000 calories of nuts.
  • So you might ask yourself, as I am asking myself, how is it possible to eat 1,000 calories of nuts, which translates into 120 nuts, in just one day? And the answer is, “one at a time.” This is very interesting to me, because even though I was there doing the eating, I don’t quite understand it after-the-fact. But the fact is that three times today I was working, and I was hungry, and what I chose to eat was a few nuts, and “a few” meant about 300 calories. And it was only at the end of the day that I totaled it up and realized I had consumed 1,000 calories worth. In other words, it did not seem like binging at any of the three occasions, because my brain was not keeping track of accumulated totals. So I guess I need to pay more attention to that. And honestly, I need to never buy a big 2.5 pound container of delicious, deluxe nuts again because obviously I have a problem.

Day 156 –

  • Today I paid the price for yesterday’s overindulgence – I gained 1.4 pounds and now weigh 178.0. Sheesh.
  • I was pretty good today. I ate a pound of chicken, 3 eggs, a cup of cottage cheese, a box of antioxidant vegetables, 2 ounces of lunch meat and then we had a big picnic at Leigh’s parent’s house. I ate 3 hot dogs (no buns), a cup or so of fresh strawberries, some fresh pineapple and a bunch of carrots. If you haven’t eaten anything sugary for a few weeks, fresh fruits like strawberries are heavenly. In the grand scheme of things, that was pretty good behavior for me at a picnic. If I weren’t on Phase 2 of the Dukan diet, fruits and carrots would be considered good behavior. Plus…
  • I rode my bike 42 miles this morning, about 3 and a half hours worth. I ate 2 ounces of lunch meat at the 30 mile point – no other snacks at all. That 42 miles was absolutely effortless.
  • So my calorie intake was less than 2,000 calories for the day, and I burned something like 1,400 calories riding the bike. An excellent day! But then there have been a number of occasions where heavy exercise translates into weight gain in the short term.

Day 157 –

  • Once again, a day of good exercise turns into weigh gain rather than weight loss. After riding 42 miles yesterday, I gained 1.6 pounds and now weigh 179.6. I’m not liking this at all!
  • I guess it is possible that the carbs in the strawberries, pineapple and carrots were treated like the carbs in pizza by my body, and immediately stored as glycogen. This topic was explored in the comments around the Cici’s pizza incident, where a little bit of pizza turns into a huge, disproportionate weight gain, apparently because of glycogen storage. Who knows? What I do know, after doing the Dukan diet for several months, is that this too shall pass if I am patient, and the water I have gained over the last two days will eliminate itself. The only bad news is that I may have to report a weight gain for the week tomorrow rather than a weight loss.
  • Especially since I ate too much today. I was really hungry, perhaps after being so low on net calories yesterday. I ate a pound of chicken, half a pound of Tilapia, 2 cups of cottage cheese, 2 boxes of anitoxidant vegetables, 3 eggs, about a pound of lunch meat, a serving of asparagus, 500 calories of peanuts (don’t ask), and then a package of frozen Chicken Piccata. This product was picked up at BJ’s on sale. It is very low carb but pretty high fat. Probably more for the Atkins diet than the Dukan diet, but it tasted great and I ate an entire package (about 1,000 calories). So the total calories for the day was about 3,500. Total salt for the day is staggering – Potentially as high as 10,000 milligrams. Half of that salt was in the lunch meat, the other half in the cottage cheese and the chicken piccata. But if you look at what I ate, carbs for the day were low. I hate the idea of getting on the scale tomorrow, with that many calories and that much salt, but… this diary is prepared with complete honesty so I shall.
  • No exercise to speak of – it rained the entire day.

Day 158 –

  • Today on the scale was not nearly as bad as I thought. I gained 0.4 pounds and weigh 180.0 today.

So what can we say about this week? It was kind of a roller coaster, and a little baffling. I hit a new low of 176.6 (51.0 total pounds lost – yay!) and felt really optimistic on that day. I was thinking I could get really close to 175.0 this week. And then it all collapsed. From that low I gained 3.4 pounds to end up at 180.0 for the week, and all of that appears to be water. I don’t quite understand where all that water came from – in the same way that I have no idea how a day of strong exercise can result in weight gain the next day.

But what I do know is that it will work itself out. Yes, I ate too much on day 157. But if you average it with day 156, I ate about 2,000 calories per day. The average for the whole week looks pretty good too. I got a good amount of exercise for the week. Besides the nuts there were no significant transgressions, and if I am going to transgress, nuts are a relatively healthy way to do it. Salt yesterday was way out of line, but what can you do? The good news is that BP is OK – it was 125/80 this morning. That’s pretty amazing to me.

So next week I am going to try to be better, and expect that all the water I gained this week will work itself out. In theory, if it does work out, I should be very close to 175.0.

Let me close with a note from Drew Carey, who is getting more press this week for his amazing weight loss:

But then Carey followed the cone [his first ice cream since January] with an entire pepperoni pizza and a cupcake. The next day, he ate another pizza, leaving him a few pounds heavier and feeling sick. He learned a valuable lesson from his relapse which he posted above his bathroom mirror: “Eating crappy food is not a reward–it’s a punishment.”

Or as Kate Moss would put it, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” I’m a lot more like Drew than Kate, but it is still a good quote. Onward!

[[Click here to find out what happened next…]]

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