Alcohol Throughout the Diet

You cannot drink any alcohol in the first 2 phases. Alcohol is packed with sugar and not allowed. This is very hard to deal with if you are in your twenties, like me, and are getting pressured to drink every single time you go out.

You go out with your friends to a bar, to a club. Not only do you feel the pressure from your friends who mean well and your 'friends' who don't, but also yourself. It's hard to be the only sober person. Anyone who has ever D.D-ed can attest to this. But what if you had to DD every single time? I have gone out to a bar where even the bartender tried to pressure me into drinking!
When you go out to restaurants with your family or girlfriends, you can also feel the pressure to drink. It's a social thing.

I'll tell you what is the worst though: House parties, ugh.

Because not only do you feel that pressure from everyone to drink, but you feel ostracised if you don't. Much worse than if you were to go out to a bar in my opinion.

I know, people resist the temptation to drink every day. I'm not saying it's incredibly difficult or impossible, but imagine, there is nothing medically preventing you from drinking, you don't have to say sober to drive... you just decide that from now until next year you will not have any alcohol. Not a sip for New Years, not your birthday, not Christmas with your family. You wont have a sip of alcohol at any party, BBQ, any bar you go to, any event for the next year.

Now tell me you would totally be okay with not drinking. The only thing stopping you from being included is your willpower.

It has been pretty hard for me, to be honest. On the other hand it was super-easy for Prawn.

Alcohol and Phase 3

Now on phase 3 you can have "a glass of wine" with dinner during your celebration meal. After discussing this for a really long time Prawn and I decided that drinking alcohol would be the only thing we tweaked about the diet. So far we have been following the Dukan Diet to the letter, but since we feel it doesn't really take into consideration our age group when it comes to alcohol we have made a few changes.

Since we are technically allowed one "glass of wine" or alcoholic drink a week, we have decided that we wouldn't limit it to the day where we choose to have our celebration meal. If we do not have a drink with our celebration meal we can have that alcoholic drink (just one) during the week, so we can save it up for a time where we go out with our friends. If we do not drink it between the Sunday and Sunday, it doesn't save up. It's gone and we don't get our drink for that week.

Now, we call it 'binge drinking' but what we mean is drinking until you feel drunk. We allow ourselves one 'binge drink' a month as a replacement to the one drink a week. So in the same week we can't have a 'binge drink' and a weekly celebration drink. So that means every month (approximately) we have 3 single-drinks as well as one 'binge'. This is to make sure we don't set ourselves up for failure. We will be on phase 3 until August 10th 2013, there is no way during that period of time we wont be put in a situation where we are very likely to cheat, when it comes to drinking. So by making these rules we expect to save ourselves form the unavoidable, and instead prepare for the situations and create guidelines.

Our month starts on the first of the month and ends on the first day of the next month. So I can have a 'binge' drink on the first of September, but then I need to know that for the rest of that month, I can only do the one drink a week. So you have to think ahead and plan as well as you can.

Now we didn't do this during our weight loss phases (one and two). We were very strict and worked very hard during those phases, as I said above, following Dr Dukans instructions to the letter. Don't think you can drink alcohol and still have weight loss results like us, that just doesn't happen.

xoxo