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Welcome back to The Diet Oracle! It is a new week and today we are jumping headfirst into The Mediterranean Diet Weight Loss Solution: The 28 Day Kick-Start Plan for Lasting Weight Loss by Julene Stassou, MS, RD. I don’t know about you, but I am excited to dig in and put this Mediterranean meal plan to the test!

So let me tell you how this is going to work. For seven days, I will be following Stassou’s comprehensive weight loss and wellness plan, blogging each day and sharing with you my experiences. Grocery shopping, meal prep, cooking, recipe testing, food logs–you’ll get a front row seat for it all as I commit an entire week to this Mediterranean diet plan and dish out my candid opinions every step of the way.

Though Stassou offers 6 weeks of complete meal plans with handy grocery lists and meal prep tips, I’m going to wiggle things around a bit and puzzle together my own Mediterranean meal plan using her blank meal planning sheet. I’ll simply plug in her various meal options and make my own grocery list. Yes, this will cost me extra time, but I’m good with that. To be honest, I want to pick meal choices my family will most likely enjoy and this also gives me the chance to test out as many recipes as possible.

With that said, let’s get right into Day One!

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Day One’s Mediterranean Meal Plan

Breakfast

• Yogurt with Blueberries, Honey, and Mint (pg. 90)
• 1 egg
• Coffee with half and half

I really liked how the honey and mint tasted together and the portion seemed just right.

Lunch

• Greek Salad (pg. 110)
• 3 oz deli turkey

This was a really nice salad with a tangy vinaigrette.

Snack

• Date Nut Energy Ball (pg. 202)

These were kind of fiddly to make, but eventually came together. Definitely wouldn’t be able to eat more than one of these at a go. Though they’re not overly sweet, they have a sort of filling richness thanks to all the high-fat ingredients, cocoa powder, and dates. My husband and 10-year-old both liked these.

Dinner

• One-Pan Tuscan Chicken (pg. 168)
• 2 oz whole wheat pasta
• Roasted Asparagus with Lemon and Pine Nuts (pg. 183)

The Tuscan Chicken dish was really delicious and a satisfying portion size. The asparagus recipe, I think, had way too much lemon. The whole family was puckered up!

Overall, I am really impressed with today’s offerings! The food was full of flavor and the portions were certainly satisfying. I could tell by the end of the day that I was in a calorie deficit, but wasn’t suffering by any means. In fact, based on our dinner, my husband wondered whether this was actually a weight loss plan!

Nutrient Analysis for Day One

So let’s take a look at our nutrient breakdown for the day. Between the three meals and one snack, I landed at 1324 calories with 44% coming from carbohydrate, 32% from fat, and 24% from protein. Fiber was right at 25 grams. This calorie level, for me, is appropriate for about 1 pound of weight loss per week. (I did weigh in this morning so we’ll see if there are any changes by the end of the week.) Given how satisfied I felt throughout the day, I’d say this plan offers a great balance between reducing calories whilst offering decent portion sizes.

Time and Effort

As for effort entailed, Stassou’s plan will certainly get you reacquainted with your kitchen. Between truly preparing and cooking food for every single meal as well as whipping up those Date Nut Energy Balls, there was a lot of time spent in the kitchen today. Though nothing was overly complicated, each meal involved some amount of washing, measuring, chopping, mixing, cooking and beyond. Nothing about this day was ‘grab-and-go.’ On the bright side, even my amateur iPhone pics show you how delicious and wonderfully good-for-you these meals were.

It’s a Lifestyle, too!

In keeping with every aspect of Stassou’s 28-day kick-start plan, I am also following her exercise schedule and working on drinking more water. Though she does include a strength training routine with body weight exercises, I’ll be sticking with my usual barbell program. Today was a cardio day and I had a great workout. As for the water, I managed to get in an extra liter. True confessions, I am not always the best water drinker, so this is definitely a good goal for me.

Alright! Day One is officially on the books! I’d say today was a great start to what I hope will be an enjoyable week full of new recipes. Up tomorrow, Day Two!

Thanks for reading!