You are young and you have cholesterol. So what’s your next take? Do you think it cannot bother you so easily, and need to wait till middle age? You got it all wrong then. Once this lifestyle disease affects you, all you can do is to control it through many ways, and mainly through diet.
Yes, it’s all in your genes that decide how much cholesterol your body produces, but diet plays a vital role. Here are 5 diet tips that can help you control cholesterol.
Various Diet Tips For High Cholesterol
Fiber Is The Mantra
Meeting the target range or cutting down high cholesterol levels is easily possible if you increase the intake of soluble fiber every day.You can include high fiber food like oats in your breakfast, one cup of beans for lunch, orange, banana or apple as snack and leafy vegetables like spinach or broccoli for dinner. If you eat such fiber rich foods along with a low-fat diet, your bad cholesterol level will come down eventually and for good.
Blacklist Saturated Fats And Trans Fats
Saturated fats found in animal products such as dairy, eggs and meat, oils such as coconut and palm directly increase your bad cholesterol (LDL). Trans fats are generally used to improve the shelf life of foods such as cookies, donuts, cakes and fries. They not only increase the LDL, but reduce the good cholesterol (HDL) as well.
Remove margarine, hydrogenated oil and butter from your list and start using liquid cooking oils. Always go for low fat food items and check the serving size on the nutrition facts label before you pick something. You can cook using sunflower, safflower, canola, corn, soybean, peanut and olive oil.
Add Fish To Your Diet
You like it or hate it, but try not to avoid it – fishes like tuna and salmon are rich sources of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which can reduce the bad cholesterol to a great extent. Our bodies cannot produce the polyunsaturated omegas, so it’s better to obtain it from sources like fish.
Snack Wisely
Yes, it is difficult to avoid munchies, but you need to bring them down if you want to save yourself. Go for home-made popcorns, fruits and dried fruits and avoid the luring potato chips and candy bars. It will be a good idea to cut down on bakery items as well, unless they have low saturated fats or trans fats.
The Nut Benefit
Without any coating (salty or sugary), nuts are great foods to cut down cholesterol. Walnuts, pistachios, peanuts, hazel nuts and pecans can be good munchies as well. Rich source of polyunsaturated acids, walnuts keep your blood vessel healthy.Apart from the diet tips discussed, adding more spices such as cloves, garlic, ginger and turmeric to your food can also help a lot in cutting down on LDL. Last but not the least, if you smoke or drink, it’s high time you bid adieu to those habits as well to live longer and healthier.
