Low-fat diets to reduce cholesterol

You may have high cholesterol because you're eating unhealthily, indulging in too many fatty, greasy foods, when all the while your body is crying out for some else. Or, it may not be because of something you've done; you may have been born with high cholesterol; inherited it; and you feel frustrated in your attempts to live a healthy lifestyle in spite of a condition that just isn't your fault. You may even have inherited a high cholesterol condition and are now making it worse by eating the wrong sorts of food all day.
In any case, the first thing a doctor will tell you to do is try a healthy, low-fat diet. And "low-fat diet" doesn't necessarily mean that you starve yourself - it simply means that you replace bad foods with good ones. You don't have to go around hungry all day - you simply go around feeling full from the right foods and not the wrong ones.

Now, if you give a low-fat diet a good, hard try, and you even then you find that your cholesterol level is still too high, perhaps at that point your doctor will see about adding a cholesterol-lowering medication to the process. But first things first! Yes - the first and essential step to reducing cholesterol is a low-fat diet, the details of which should be worked out between you and your doctor.
In the meantime, here are some general things to get you thinking about your low-fat diet. The time to reduce your cholesterol is today, not tomorrow. And remember that "low-fat diet" is not the same thing as "suffering." A low-fat, cholesterol-reducing diet can include many healthy, delicious meals that will leave you feeling energized and also relieved that you're giving your body the fuel it craves to keep you healthy and strong.
- First, what you want to do is replace the saturated fats that you're eating too much of with non-saturated fats. Saturated fats are the main bad guys when it comes to high cholesterol.
- The primary sources of saturated fats are animal fats. A low-fat, cholesterol-reducing diet will have to cut a lot of these out. Animal fat is the fat you see in a big red juicy steak. Animal fat is what sizzles the bacon. Animal fat includes butter and cheese and whole milk and the cream for your coffee and ice cream, and it even includes fats found in fish and chicken.
- HOWEVER - vegetable fats can be bad guys too. You need to watch out for oils such as palm oil and coconut oil. Vegetable fats are often lurking in those snacks you buy at the grocery store, crackers, potato chips, cookies, and so forth.
- A low-fat diet to reduce cholesterol should include lots and lots and lots of vegetables. Be creative in your arrangements, buy a book with a thousand recipes designed to make vegetables as delicious as possible. You don't have to become a vegetarian to reduce your cholesterol, but you should reduce your animal fats intake dramatically.
- You can also be creative with breads and rice and pasta. These foods are high in fiber and starch, and will do much to help you lower your cholesterol. Those who have had the most success with low-fat diets have said that creativity and a sense of fun took them a long way. They learned, for example, to make delicious deserts from fruit. There are so many foods that are good for you, and so many ways to prepare them, that you never need get bored while reducing your cholesterol.
- Make sure that before you start your low-fat diet, you speak to your doctor. He or she will assist you in finding the right foods in the right amount, and make sure that you're meeting your goals to reduce your cholesterol correctly.