How To Lower Cholesterol – Reduce Fat

Deciding to start a new diet in order to lower cholesterol is very daunting for most people. If you tried to make all the changes required at once you would very probably be entirely overwhelmed. Also, undertaking change at this rate would almost certainly be totally ineffective, as few people would be able to accommodate such wide changes in one go.

The answer then is take small steps, one at a time, each building on the other, until you have the full regime in place. This is the first step in a series of articles on “How To Lower Cholesterol”.

Step 1: Fats

First of all THE BODY NEEDS FAT, so it is not the enemy, it just needs to be controlled. When we talk about calories (obtained from fat) we are discussing the body’s source of energy. The reason weight loss and lowering cholesterol are all about lowering calorie intake is that in order for the body to use this energy, whenever it is required, there must be a store of it and if this store is larger than our requirements we become overweight and the excess cholesterol blocks our arteries.

The general recommendation is that fats should constitute around 35% of our diet. To complicate matters, there are broadly speaking two different types of fats, saturated fat that can be labelled “bad” and Unsaturated fat that can be labelled “good”.

Saturated fat

This comes mainly from animal products, both meat and dairy. It can be the cause of raised levels of cholesterol in the blood and increased risk of heart disease.

Unsaturated fat

This, on the other hand, depending on the type, can improve you health overall and reduce the risk of a number of diseases developing. Unsaturated fats can be split into three sub-categories; polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and Omega-3. These can all help lower your cholesterol – the Omega-3 Fatty Acids being by far and away the most effective.

Trans-fatty acids.

They are an unnatural form of fat which is made by mixing hydrogen and vegetable oil. They should be eliminated from your diet if at all possible as they have been found to be the worst of the bunch and considered by many to be very dangerous for your health. They are found most often in deep-fried foods and all efforts should be made to identify and avoid them.

The overall aim with fats then, is to reduce your consumption of saturated fats, replacing them with the unsaturated variety and at the same time add Omega-3, in good quantities, to your diet

Additional things you can do to avoid the fat problem:

• Reduce the amount of full-fat dairy products you eat, especially egg yolks. Have skimmed or semi-skimmed milk instead of full-fat.
• Avoid fried food as much as possible, try substituting fries with a baked potato for instance.
• Processed foods are another kind of food that are generally very bad for you, containing high levels of fat and cholesterol and often all kinds of additives that do no good at all. The worst offenders are processed meats such as sausage, and most kinds of deli. meats.
• Replace the unhealthy foods such as processed meats with fish – especially oily fish such as mackerel.
• Chicken consumption should be reduced, if not cut out altogether, always use the lean meat and remove all skin before cooking.

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