cholesterol diet

[ellisbell]

I just found out I have astronomical cholesterol levels. You know your obese Uncle Tiny who's 6 feet tall and 400 pounds and eats nothing but McDonald's hamburgers? Yeah, my cholesterol is probably worse than his. My doctor said she had never seen it so high. Awesome

Comments

[ellisbell]

I don't mind answering you - I could stand to lose ten pounds I think, but I am not fat by any means. This is part of why the doctor was surprised. However, I will make an effort to exercise more - dropping a few pounds certainly couldn't hurt, and most of the extra is around my middle section which is bad for a lot of health reasons.

I love salmon, but my husband hates it, so we rarely have it. I need to find a way to have more though. maybe for my lunch?

I LOVE red meat. I probably have been eating more than I should lately.

[roasted_beets]

My good friend had a heart attack at age 47 and very nearly died. They found her cholesterol to be sky-high even though she was at a healthy weight.

She's 72 now and hasn't had red meat (and she includes pork as red) since the heart attack. She lives on chicken and fish. She has ice cream once a year.

Her cholesterol is still high and she has been on every drug and participated in trials but she is happy to be alive.

[ellisbell]

I'm 37 and heart disease runs in the family. I haven't been taking precautions but I am now. Thanks for the success story! My dad is another one - he has lived with heart disease since his 40s and had quadruple bypass surgery when he was 48. He's 70 and still going strong, though admittedly he is not eating as carefully now as he was the last 20 years. He takes Lipitor, I believe.

[seidhr]

Have you considered a more moderate approach to eating red meat? As in, the meat is not the primary ingredient, but you still have some for flavour? A serving of meat is 3 ounces (about the size of a deck of cards), so if you did 6 ounces of meat integrated into lots of veggies, pasta, rice, what-have you (oh yeah; eat brown rice, black rice, or red rice instead of white rices), you could serve two people a meal that has meat but not as the primary focus.

The other benefit of this is that it's so much cheaper. If you're used to making a pound of meat for 2 people, you save more than half the money by using only 6 ounces.