RIGHT! That is it! I have had enough of the chub! I am going on a diet, NOW!” If you lived in our house you would recognise this as my usual hollering on a Monday morning, having just stood on the scales which have yet again revealed that I am at least – cough, cough – overweight. I confess I am a diet addict (along with food, booze and loafing on the sofa, obviously).

There aren’t many diets I haven’t tried: meal replacement regimes, diet clubs, cabbage-inspired, low carb, low fat, the J-Lo (shaking my booty vigorously to music at any given opportunity). I reckon I’ve lost a couple of stone (and regained it) about five times now. But I always feel that there’s a diet regime out there somewhere that will help me achieve permanent weightloss: the holy grail of diets. So when Jaine suggested I try out the Dukan diet for the Oxford Mail, I was well up for it. Well to begin with. Here is how it went:

 *Week One
Before I actually commence the diet, I do all the research. As any experienced dieter knows this is the fun bit: your motivation is 100 per cent and you have happy fantasies of the future you looking stunningly slim and gorge. The Dukan diet, also known as the Princess diet, promises rapid weightloss (yay!), was devised by a French doctor Pierre Dukan, and has many celeb fans, including most famously the Middletons. I add flowing brunette locks like Kate’s to my fantasy me – well, why not?

The diet has four phases: attack, cruise, consolidation and stabilization. It is a high protein, very low carb diet, and there is a list of 100 permitted foods.

During the attack phase, dieters must stick to 68 high protein foods from the list and drink a small lake of water every day. The expectation is that you will shift about five pounds in the first week. You then move on to the next phase, which is cruise – where you alternate protein only days, with low carb days – eg, you add a bit of salad to your chicken.

You can just buy the Dukan diet book and follow that, but they also offer an online coaching service, where you are monitored and given lots of advice and coaching. So I sign up – there’s no standard price – they say it’s individually tailored – but it works out at about £25 per month. If it works it will be money well spent.

At last, after creating an online account, I am actually dieting. By day two, I am starving and queasy. On the Dukan you can eat as much as you want of low-fat protein. There are two main problems with eating protein like this. First, you feel sickly before you feel full. And second is the enormous cost of it all. On day one I had: chargrilled prawns, chicken breast, fat-free cottage cheese, raw salmon with soy dip, plain fat-free yoghurt, more bloomin’ chicken, and it cost nearly £20! (Did I mention I also have a Marks and Spencers addiction?)

By the end of the first week, I’ve lost five pounds in weight, but many more pounds in money.

*Week Two
I’ve moved into cruise phase, so am allowed a little salad with my protein, and I’m glugging water all the time – a very dull business.

I get a daily email from the online people, feeding back on my progress and offering diet and exercise advice: it’s kind of like having a nagging cyber trainer – no bad thing. When you log on, you are taken to your “slimming apartment”, it’s a virtual world, kind of like the Sims game – there’s stuff like your fridge, which you can go to and find what foods you’re allowed, your gym with video coaching, etc.

The slimming apartment is great, really useful but alas, I struggle to take my virtual world seriously. I still feel woozy from the daily protein overdose, and now I’m living in a parallel virtual world. I feel like I’m losing my marbles more than the flab.

So midway through this second week, half a stone lighter, much poorer and madder, I agree, very quickly and with no debate, to head out for a curry and a few glasses of wine into the real world with my husband and my still very real fat bottom. Another diet done and deserted.

That curry was good though.