Let's Try That Again: Swank Diet Day 1

After the dismal failure that was my first attempt at the Swank Diet, I am mighty pleased with myself in reporting a Day of Success!! The diet allows a daily total of 50 grams of unsaturated fat (and a *maximum* of 15g saturated). So there's definitely an initial pain-in-the-ass period of reading labels and adding up fat grams and counting pieces of cereal to be sure you are having a serving, as well as trying to guess how many ounces of protein you are eating. (I'm buying a food scale today.)

For those of you interested in what you can eat, here's what I ate yesterday:


Breakfast (3.5 grams unsaturated fat):

• 42 Frosted Shredded Wheat biscuits
• 3/4 C almond milk

Lunch (12g unsat. fat):

• 7 low-fat Triscuits
• 2 ounces of smoked salmon
• 2 fat-free toasted crumpets with raspberry jelly

Dinner (21g unsat. fat):

• Fish au Chablis (an Official Swank Recipe!)
• Green beans with olive oil and crushed almonds (an Official Ms. CrankyPants Recipe!)

Snacks/dessert (0g unsat. fat):

• 1 banana
• Small bowl of fat-free chocolate/marshmallow swirl frozen yogurt

All in all, it was a lot of yummy stuff. I was already using almond milk for my cereal, so that wasn't an alarming change. The Triscuits are whole grain and quite filling, especially with the addition of the smoked salmon. The Fish au Chablis was very easy to make and turned out to be quite tasty! The beans I improvised, crushing some almonds (1/4 cup) and sprinkling them on the beans, which had been drizzled with 2 TBS of olive oil.

So you may be asking yourself: how crappy was that fat-free frozen yogurt? Well, I'll tell you! It was DG (damn good). Here's something else: I feel DG! It's probably nothing I can attribute directly to the diet, but it was nice yesterday to actually make a dinner, rather than reach for the phone to order pizza (mmmmmmm, cheese!!!) or Thai food. I'm enthusiastic and hopeful about the difference this diet could make to both my MS and my overall health.

On the menu tonight: a pasta, vegetable, and bean soup called Pistou from the Swank Diet book. That also sounds fancy and French; I'm becoming oh-so-cultured!

Hasta la vista, baby! (So much for cultured...)