Anything Dukan Do

10 April 2012

"Pee pee," says the waitress hovering at my table with a bottle of water. I've arrived at La Residence, a spa hotel on the Mediterranean coast near Carthage, in Tunisia, sister to the Mauritius outpost, just in time for lunch.

I've yet to have my "Dukan Method" spa consultation but I'd read enough about the latest French fad diet to know drinking gallons of water is integral to its success. I didn't, however, think I'd be quizzed about bladder movements at the poolside bistro. "Pardon?" I say, failing not to blush. "PP," she says again. "Pure Protein: you've just arrived, so it's Pure Protein phase. It's marked on the menu what you can eat."

And so begins a very convenient, very five-star and very French way to lose weight. The little orange card I'd received at check-in alerts staff across the hotel's restaurants and bars as to who is "Régime Dukan" and they serve these guests according to the principles set out by the diet's founder, French doctor Pierre Dukan. This is the chap whose enlightened version of the Atkins diet has 1.5 million French women hooked. Politicians and celebrities such as Gisele Bündchen and Jennifer Lopez are fans.

His book was translated into English last year and now Brits, among them Kate Middleton's mother, are catching on to the "French secret."

And for the first time, bulge-conscious Britons can book into a residential spa programme designed exclusively by the French doctor himself.

Lunch is superb, even given that I'm eating nothing but lean protein (swordfish carpaccio and herb-grilled chicken), but I'm descending into misery as I approach my consultation with a spa doctor. A statistic I'd read on the plane said one in five British women are constantly on a diet. Depressing. I'm not one of those women because, ultimately, I think diets fail. So it's this and the fact I have to face the brutal truth of how far my weight has escalated since having a baby four years ago. However, the consultation is comfortingly like an old-fashioned medical.

Before arriving — the hotel is just 20 minutes from Tunis airport — I'd filled in some pretty basic questions to calculate my "true weight" (build, health, weight patterns, family history and so on) and it is this "science" rather than some wishful figure that the programme works towards. In its first phase, "attack", you undergo extensive slimming massages and therapies while eating nothing but lean protein.

The three phases that follow — cruise, consolidation and stabilisation — come after you've left the safe confines of the spa, and allow you first to reintroduce forbidden vegetables on alternate days with pure protein, then eventually grains, pulses and higher fat foods.

Like any dramatic diet and lifestyle change, it takes months of commitment to arrive at your goal. Then, Dukan's controversial idea is, if you stick to one day "PP" a week, you'll keep the same weight for the rest of your life.

Faced with my first treatment I'm beginning to see how dramatic a commitment this is. I'm standing naked in front of a Tunisian therapist as he tries to help me cram myself into a blue body stocking. My broken French and his patchy English means I'm not entirely sure why this is.

It turns out that the thin layer of nylon is my armour as he aggressively vacuums my body with an endermologie machine. Good for cellulite and even better for making you think: I'm never eating chips again. If French women invest this sort of time, money and humiliation into spa sessions twice a year, as many do, it's no wonder they're determined to stick at being thin.

A certain class of French woman clearly doesn't raise a well-plucked eyebrow at receiving intimate treatments from a man. But I did, particularly in Tunisia, a French speaking nation that is European in outlook but essentially Muslim. After some re-arranging, my next few days of pummelling, sweat chambers and underwater cycling (yes, really) were with female therapists.

At the end of treatments I'd pad back to my room to find exquisite sweet snacks, made entirely without sugar or fat. You certainly don't feel like you're going without and you're never hungry, largely thanks to the Dukan "galette."

This bread-substitute pancake, made with oatbran, eggs and zero fat cheese, is the cornerstone of the diet and works to keep you going ... in all senses of the phrase. It was, however, a bit odd to be at a spa surrounded by smoking, drinking, food-focused guests. La Residence is known for its top-notch restaurants and championship-quality 18-hole golf course so it attracts plenty of bon viveurs. Don't they get lured from spa to bar?

"Sometimes, they do," says the hotel's Dukan Diet coach, Sonia Ben-Salem. "Mostly the men here to support' their wives. Generally people see results quickly if they are encouraged."

I didn't get that far but, by the end of just four days, I've lost almost four pounds, and two inches from around my waist and thighs. It's "water weight", but as water is a cellulite cause, I'm happy to see it go. Has the diet worked miracles? No, but what it has done is re-establish some easy-to-ignore rules: salt, sugar, fat and refined carbs are bad; lean protein and leafy vegetables good. And exercise is better although, without sugars in my system, walking the stairs to the plane home makes me dizzy.

At home a week later I've dropped another 7lb. But I'm experiencing the kind of rage only a person sustained solely on animal protein can muster. It's not that I'm hungry, more that I'm lacking fatty comforters that cushion a person's mood. I feel like a highly-strung wild dog, and the headaches would fell a donkey.

All this subsides eventually but things are improved by a glass — or three — of wine. Hello me! I've missed you. And, wow ... don't you look slimmer.

DETAILS: TUNISIA
Seasons offers the seven-night Dukan weight loss programme at The Residence Tunis from £2,370pp, including all meals, spa treatments, consultations and transfers. Flights excluded but available on request
seasons.co.uk

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