I have heard people say that they want to lower their cholesterol levels in order to lose weight. The reason for decreasing your cholesterol levels is not because you would like to lose weight. That is putting the cart before the horse. You almost certainly only have a couple of grammes of cholesterol in your body, so reducing that amount is not going to help you look any trimmer.
The reason for shedding weight can include wanting to lower your cholesterol levels; it can also include wanting to lower your blood pressure; it can include wanting to take weight off your knees and it can include wanting to look healthier.
But there are several other reasons as well: losing weight will raise your general feeling of well-being, making you feel better and happier in general and reduce your likelihood of getting diabetes.
This piece is concerned with cholesterol and how to lower the amount of cholesterol in your blood. So, first of all, what is cholesterol? The first thing to do is clear up the misconception that all cholesterol is harmful. It is not. There are two types of cholesterol: LDL cholesterol is not good for you for certain, but HDL cholesterol is good for you because it assists mop up LDL.
In fact, not all LDL is bad either, your body requires some LDL to create bile, vitamin D and maintain the correct balance of hormones, especially in women. So LDL gets a very bad press, but it is not a total villain. The problems start if you have excess. It is like guests at a party, you have to have some, but too many and there are problems.
If you have too much LDL, it can obstruct your arteries, causing your heart to have to pump harder, raising blood pressure and consequently increasing the danger of kidney failure, strokes and heart attacks.
How do you get too much LDL? Most LDL is taken into our bodies by eating saturated fats (animal fats) and hydrogenated or trans fats (normally discovered in junk food).
HDL picks up our surplus LDL and takes it back to the liver where it is dealt with. HDL is to be discovered in nuts, grains, pulses, fish oil and mono-unsaturated or poly-unsaturated fats. Therefore, the strategy in a nutshell is, if you are trying to lower your LDL level through diet is to eat less animal fat as found in red meat and dairy products and eat more vegetarian food and fish.
In particular, LDL is to be discovered in high quantities in beef, pork, milk, cheese, butter, cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, potato crisps, potato chips, et cetera and HDL is to be found in fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts, fish, whole grains, soya et cetera.
There are also a few myths. Some individuals say that eggs, liver and prawns are high in LDL, but the British Heart Foundation says that humans cannot access cholesterol from these foods, so they are safe to eat and others say that coconut is high in LDL as well.
It is difficult to find agreement on coconut, but it seems that it raises LDL and HDL, but HDL by a little bit more than it raises LDL. So, not good for you if you have high levels of cholesterol, but good if you have low levels.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous subjects, but is now concerned with lowering cholesterol without medication. If you want to know more, please visit our site at What Foods Lower Cholesterol?