Planning: Plan to follow the ideas of the Swank Lo-fat Diet as your life's MS eating gospel. That means no red meat for the first year of the diet and then only one to three servings of red meat per week for the rest of your life after that. Avoid all butter fat and man-made fats forever. (I also skip even skim dairy myself.)

Preparation: Learn to cook with some flair and panache. Forget those tired old recipes in Dr. Swank's book. You want Lo-fat Gourmet. Learn spices and exotic flavors. Food textures, colors and combinations that please the eye and the pallet.

Become a world class Ethnic cook book collector. However, don't expect to be able to open a cook book and follow any recipe A - B - C. Most of the individual recipes you'll find will call for way too much fat, but look at the spices and herbs used in dishes from the Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Middle Eastern, German, Mexican, and etc, etc. Cuisine. The world's kitchens are full of marvelous tastes and smells. Improvisation and adoption of those tastes is my key.

Some of the non-ethnic cookbooks in our kitchen are: The Multiple Sclerosis Diet Book by Dr. Swank, The Good Fat Diet by Dr. Robert Gold and Kerry Rose-Gold, The Ten Talents Cookbook by Dr. Frank and Rosalie Hurd, Gourmet Health Recipes by Paul and Patricia Bragg and Rodale's Naturally Great Foods by Nancy Albright. These are only a small sample of the thousands of the unbelievable verity of cookbooks out there.

The two books we use the most to guide us in flavor are The Reader's Digest Complete Book of Herbs and Spices by Sarah Garland and Cooking with the Healthful Herbs by Jean Rogers.

One of the best idea sources is The TV Food Network. And if you have a computer you can search for hundreds of recipes in every category by some of the world's best chefs. www.foodtv.com

Practice: My best advice in the practice of cooking is never limit yourself except in the fat content of your food. Always buy the freshest and best quality of everything. No one should ever be Penny wise and pound foolish in their food buying habits. Always remember: What ever you eat today is going to walk and talk tomorrow in your name.

The quickest way to get a verity of tasty recipes is to visit the food network on the web. www.foodtv.com is the site. Since fish and chicken are going to be the mainstays for anyone on the Swank Lo-fat diet, one thing we really should have on hand is chicken stock. I found eight recipes for how to make chicken stock, and then over 700 recipes for using chicken stock.

How about hundreds of clam, shrimp and crab recipes. And a few hundred baked fish and chicken recipes. We can eat like royalty on the Lo-fat diet. Of course you have to cull out all the butter and cheese recipes, but that still leaves many dozens of others to choose from.

As far as I can see there is only one reason for anyone not to be a gourmet Lo-fat cook on any income. Even on a very limited income, And that reason is spelled LAZY!

Just like everything else in MS, the answers are there for us to live longer and better. Just DO IT!