The Notorious Fad Diet Kate Middleton May Have Followed Before The Royal Wedding

Many brides want to lose a few pounds before their wedding day, and already-slim Kate Middleton appeared to have dropped significant weight before her carriage ride from Westminster Abbey. People on X (formerly Twitter) posted their concerns about Middleton's weight, saying how she needs to be a healthy role model for women. A royal biographer said on ITV Loose Women that she wasn't trying to lose weight, but instead, Middleton was stressed out because the royal couple didn't have a wedding planner (via Express UK). Instead, the future princess was trying to put on weight.

The Royal Palace wouldn't say if she intended to lose weight, and it didn't offer information about how much Middleton weighed (per CBC). However, that didn't stop the rumor mill. Maclean's said Middleton might have lost up to 20 pounds in the five months between her engagement and wedding. The rumors suggested that Middleton took on the Dukan Diet to drop the weight so quickly.

The Dukan Diet has four phases: attack, cruise, consolidation, and stabilization. The attack phase looks a lot like an extremely high-protein diet or carnivore diet, where you eat an unlimited amount of animal protein to curb your cravings and shuttle out excess water. What's different is that you'll be consuming oat bran for carbs and fiber to help with digestion. If you have less than 10 pounds to lose, you'll follow this phase for a day or two. More weight requires a few more days. You'll also gradually introduce morning exercise in this phase to help with fat burning and continue exercising through the program.

The cruise phase adds 32 non-starchy vegetables to your protein to ensure you're getting fiber, vitamins, and minerals that you would miss on an all-protein diet. You continue this phase until you reach your goal weight. You begin to add starchy foods to your diet during the consolidation phase, where you work to maintain the weight that you lost during the cruise phase. This phase might last for up to five days for every pound that you lose. However, every Thursday you eat similarly to the attack phase, meaning all protein. The stabilization phase is about maintenance, where you continue your attack on Thursdays, eat 3 tablespoons of oat bran each day, and take the stairs as much as possible.

Although you'll probably lose weight quickly on the Dukan Diet, it might be difficult to maintain for the long term. It's very restrictive in the first few phases, but the noticeable changes on the scale might keep you motivated. Experts say that the Dukan Diet might be an option if you need rapid weight loss, but only if you're under the guidance of a health provider or registered dietitian.

A 2015 article in the Yearbooks of the National Institute of Hygiene took a closer look at the menus of 51 women who adopted the Dukan Diet. As expected, the intake of protein was much higher than nutrition experts recommend. The diet was high in potassium, iron, and vitamins A, D, and B2. Because of the low carb intake, the diet was low in vitamin C and folate. The women did lose about 30 pounds after 8 to 10 weeks, but the researchers concluded the nutritional deficiencies in the Dukan Diet can lead to long-term health problems such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and kidney and liver disease.

According to a 2018 analysis in Progress in Nutrition, women who followed the Dukan Diet for seven months had increased levels of white blood cells, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and glucose two years after the diet.