I don't know about your office but here at Water Coolers Direct we seem to have a constant supply of cakes and doughnuts. All the girls (and some of the men) are constantly talking about cutting down and loosing weight whilst reaching for the next naughty treat (will power isn't our strongest point). That is when this caught my eye “The Dukan Diet: Want to Stay Slim Forever? Eat whatever you want – except on Thursdays!”. Apparently it is a diet that has been spear headed by a French guy called Dr.Dukan and in its most basic form is a high protein and low carb diet comprising of four different eating programs that all follow on from another. The book ‘The Dukan Diet' has been translated into 10 languages and being sold in 20 different countries so it must be doing something right, mustn't it? When researching about this new, ground-breaking diet I discovered that it has been followed by numerous A list celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and it may go some way to explain how French women always manage to look so slim. So, how does it work? Well, it's fairly longwinded actually (hence it has been made into a whole book) but on its most basic level it promotes eating protein – and lots of it. In fact the first stage of the diet – The Attack Phase – requires you to purely eat protein for a set number of days (to lose 1 stone it is suggested to stay in the first phase for around 2-3 days). Personally I think I would struggle to eat just protein for 1 meal let alone for 2-3 days... The diet caught my eye as during this phase it has been emphasised that anyone following it must drink plenty of water, 3 litres is the amount that is recommended – at last part of a diet that should be fairly easy to stick to! When eating high quantities of protein, more uric acid is consumed and so this needs to be flushed out of the body. It's surprising how important drinking water is both in staying healthy when on diets but also in helping you to lose weight. Where the Dukan Diet differs from most other diets is that once the weight has been lost (in the first phases of the program), Dr Duken then slowly helps to reintroduce a more ‘normal' diet that is healthy and keeps the weight off. There is just one catch – Duken suggests that you always have one day a week where you only eat protein for the rest of your life (he suggests a Thursday).