Kitchen confession: I'm adding fat to my diet

Elizabeth Templin McCamic: 

I have a confession to make. I love to cook, almost as much as I love to eat. That's not something I have talked about in this blog, but it's time to tell the truth.

Not only do I love to cook, but I love the planning and research that goes into cooking. I love hunting down interesting recipes and learning new techniques. I like thinking about ingredients, looking at my pantry and coming up with a meal plan that will use that last little bit of something that's been hanging around for a few weeks.

I love mixing and chopping, the whiz of my food processor and the sound of water boiling on the stove.

This makes the whole diet thing tricky. It's hard to find recipes that are both interesting AND good for me. When the ingredient list starts with butter, I have to take a breath and move on.

This past week, however, I tried an experiment. I added a little fat to my diet.

Last week, each meal I ate included some form of monounsaturated fat, like nuts, avocado, olives and certain oils.

I didn't eat a lot of these fats, just a little at each meal. And I ate a little bit more each day than I had been, making sure to get in one good snack plus my normal breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And the result? I felt more energized throughout the week and still lost a little weight. I'm not sure that all the credit should go to the added fats because I also did quite a bit of running, but it still counts as progress in my book.

It seems like there's been a lot of discussion in this blog about what we should and shouldn't eat. There are a lot of different opinions out there. I'd like to know what has worked for you.