Culture:

What can Dukan do?

Yo-yo dieter Martin Saunders wonders if France’s latest food fad will be the answer to his problems

My name is Martin, and I’m a yo-yo dieter. It’s a sad but important confession to make; my relationship with food has always fluctuated between passionate embrace and coldshouldered abstinence. I tend to apply the all-or-nothing principle to eating: if something’s worth doing, it’s worth sautéing in red wine before being smothered in a blue cheese sauce.

I’m not a glutton; I’m certainly not one of those people who seem unaware they have bits of cookie stuck to the side of their face. That said, the unfortunate flotation-aid-style side effect of a passion for food, which so brilliantly hides my rippling six pack, means I am rather more experienced in the diet arena than most men of 32. Of course I’ve done Weight Watchers.

Of course I’ve been on the Slim Fast plan. I sidestepped Atkins when I heard it made adherents smell of cabbage, and plumped (pun absolutely intended) for the Montignac diet, a sounds-too-good-to-betrue French eating plan which allowed plenty of cheese, dark chocolate and red wine, as long as you don’t eat carrots. Almost inexplicably, it worked, and the weight fell off, although I also found that I couldn’t climb the stairs without doubling over in exhaustion. That too, fell by the wayside.

In each of these cases, I successfully dieted for between three and six months, losing a stone in weight or more every time. Then, inevitably, I found myself tumbling off the wagon – one night I was nibbling on a cereal bar and convincing myself it was nutritious, the next I was walking through the door of the place where diets go to die – the all you can eat buffet.

Of course, if diets really worked, they wouldn’t be so popular. They make sense to us when we’re feeling chubby and vulnerable, but they invariably treat the symptoms of weight gain, not the cause. That’s why they’re generally unsustainable, and why a whole industry is in business forever when theoretically it should be in decline; the dieting trade is reliant on the long-term inadequacy of its own products.

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