Following A Decent Diet Can Lower Cholesterol

If you have just been told that your cholesterol levels are out, you will almost certainly be weighing up the alternatives that your physician gave you. One alternative would be to take medication and the other option would be to modify your diet and take more exercise. The alterations in diet are not radical, but they could have a big effect. Exercising may be more of a difficulty to most people who lead a sedentary lifestyle.

People talk about cholesterol levels because there are two types of cholesterol. The two levels are HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol). LDL comes from animal fats (saturated fats), which are predominant in red meat and full-fat dairy products like milk, butter, cream and cheese but it also is present in hydrogenated trans fats, which are common in margarines, pastry and crisps.

The first thing to do is try to cut out saturated fats by changing to chicken and drinking low-fat milk. You could also substitute the margarine or butter with one of the cholesterol-decreasing margarines in the supermarkets. Just taking these two steps will make a huge difference to numerous people, however, others may have to go a little further.

Grains are very useful in the battle against cholesterol, because of the amount of fibre in them. Therefore, you could give up your traditional English breakfast of cereals with milk followed by sausage, bacon, eggs and fried bread and instead eat Scots porridge oats with water or skimmed milk followed by granary toast and cholesterol-decreasing margarine. This step alone will also significantly alter your cholesterol levels.

If you like a steak for lunch occasionally, you may not have to give it up entirely, but if you normally order an eight ounce steak, get a four or six ounce one instead and if you eat that four times a week, cut back to two instead. Replace the steak with meals of skinless chicken and fish. Omega 3 fish oil is considered to be a big ally in the fight against cholesterol.

If you eat a great deal of junk food like greasy hamburgers and oily hot dogs, you will probably have to give them up, yet that is not a bad thing anyway. Endeavour to snack on citrus fruits as they are also your friends against LDL cholesterol.

It is not all doom and gloom on the dietary front for sufferers of cholesterol problems. The alterations that will be suggested to you to sort out your cholesterol worries have almost certainly already been made to you to sort out being over weight or having high blood pressure or even having diabetes.

They are fundamental, sensible minor lifestyle alterations which will have a enormous impact on a number of aspects of your body. The same is true of exercise. Most individuals know that they should exercise more, it is just a pity that most of us need such a serious incentive before we do anything about it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with low fat low cholesterol diet. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?