* I will take the liberty to interject on this issue…. In my humble opinion even this doctor is wrong. While being lean and thin may be cosmetically desirable traits, they are still off base when it comes to evolution and nature. If one strives to be physically, highly efficient and funtional in form you are better suited for the real world. For I am not intereseted in how lean the good doctor is. I am far more interested in how much he can lift, and how far he can run. It is also my opinion, that what enriches each persons life is going to be different. That no one should force or shame any person that does not happen to have the same individual goals as themselves. Ralph Turchiano
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent 11:57AM BST 19 Aug 2012
Dr Pierre Dukan, whose weight-loss plan has been followed by the likes of Francois Hollande and Carole Middleton, said he “suffered” for those who were seriously overweight.
He told a Sunday newspaper: “It’s a mental problem. I’ve never seen an obese person who has said, ‘I am well in the mind.”
He said he felt sorry for the obese.
“I suffer for them,” he said. “I like them because they are not really ill, like with the cancer, but feel they are outside of society…. I want to help.
Dr Dukan, who has sold a million books in the UK alone, also revealed that he had sent the Duchess of Cambridge’s his diet books when he learned she was trying his method of losing weight.
“She organised the royal wedding, and she lost 34lb with my method and was very grateful.”
The Dukan Diet is a strict high protein, low carbohydrate diet. It is similar to the Atkins diet, focussing on food groups and being split into particular phases in which different foods are allowed. However, Dr Dukan advocates cutting out high fat foods as well.
The approach, which includes lists of permitted foods, is very controversial. The British Dietetic Association labelled it the “worst celebrity diet of 2011”, saying there was “absolutely no solid science behind it”. French organisations including the Institut Pasteur in Lille have also been highly critical, saying it could lead to serious nutritional imbalances.
Dr Dukan voluntarily took himself off the French medical register in May after he was threatened with being struck off for suggesting that teenagers who kept to “ideal weights” should be given extra marks in exams.
But Dr Dukan said it was “natural there are critics” of his methods, telling the magazine: “I am convinced deeply that for now, mine is the best [diet] on the market: it is the most healthy and the most ethical.
“My allowed foods are the foods of the old genes, the fruit of the hunter gatherer, the fish and vegetable.”