The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Share Your Badassity => Topic started by: Hula Hoop on April 11, 2018, 03:02:26 PM
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I just had my cholesterol checked. it was very high about a year ago and my doctor put me on a low fat diet which weirdly made the numbers go up even higher. I then went around 9 months just eating my regular diet and had it checked again yesterday and the numbers are way down to the normal range - so no statins for me.
I think what made the difference is that I started walking to and from work every day (around 40 minutes brisk walking each way) and I now do pilates for an hour twice a week. Nothing crazy but a significant amount of exercise. Also, thanks to MMM, I now bring lunch every day to work and very rarely eat out. And we've replaced a lot of meat meals with beans and pulses of various kinds.
The low fat diet was hell. So glad that I've managed to do this while still eating cheese, ice cream and salami in moderate amounts.
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Good work!! Caring for your health is super important.
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Good on you!! Exercise is key. The more you can ramp it up, the more health benefits you'll see. If you can do some resistance/weight training once or twice a week, you'll be amazed at the results if you stick with it. Even basic body weight exercises are great, and involve no equipment: squats, lunges, crunches, pushups, supermans, tricep dips etc.
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https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/expert-answers/cholesterol/faq-20058468
Low fat diets and low cholesterol diets don't work to lower cholesterol, per recent research.
That said, the cardiac doctors I work with continue to prescribe them. Not sure why. Habit? I am afraid to ask.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29281976
There are many studies that show that people with higher cholesterol live longer. The link above is an example. However, if in your family history, early death from heart disease is large factor, reducing cholesterol may be advised.
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Good on you!! Exercise is key. The more you can ramp it up, the more health benefits you'll see. If you can do some resistance/weight training once or twice a week, you'll be amazed at the results if you stick with it. Even basic body weight exercises are great, and involve no equipment: squats, lunges, crunches, pushups, supermans, tricep dips etc.
I do pilates as I mentioned above and this is basically a description of pilates.
Tom Bri - thanks for that - I now eat my ice cream and cheese guilt free. Life is too short to eat low fat cheese!
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https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/expert-answers/cholesterol/faq-20058468
Low fat diets and low cholesterol diets don't work to lower cholesterol, per recent research.
That said, the cardiac doctors I work with continue to prescribe them. Not sure why. Habit? I am afraid to ask.
Unfortunately, because most doctors have no clue about the effects of diets. I don't know about the US, but in my country a medicine degree only requires about 6(!!!) hours of nutritional education in a 6 year degree. And of those lectures, most of them are about metabolism in general and not even about healthy diets or nutritional value.
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Great job!
Reducing meat consumption will lower cholesterol as well as eating beans and exercising more....you have it figured out! Way to go and great job staying off medications.
You might enjoy watching some videos about cholesterol lowering and lots of other nutrition information at Nutritionfacts.org
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Great job!
Reducing meat consumption will lower cholesterol as well as eating beans and exercising more....you have it figured out! Way to go and great job staying off medications.
You might enjoy watching some videos about cholesterol lowering and lots of other nutrition information at Nutritionfacts.org
I went vegan (plant based) about 6 months ago and my total cholesteral went from 185 down to 134 after being on a plant based diet for like 2 months. Snacking and exercise remained the same, weight loss was minimal (a bit more now after 6 months on it), but after reading and watching more about a vegan diet it's incredible how quickly your bad cholesteral can drop from eliminating meat and dairy. I don't think it's absolutely necessary unless you are overweight and at risk for stroke or heart disease, but if you are at risk it's something I would check out. I did it as a 1 week challenge w/my wife and just stayed on it as within 3 days I noticed that the constant swelling in my bad knee went down significantly. That was enough to switch over after a decade of pain.
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I'm not overweight and not really interested in going vegan or any other specific diet. We cut down a lot on meat consumption partly for health and partly for ethical reasons (frugality too).
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great job getting it down with walking. i get my labs rechecked in a few months. Been somewhat good with using the DASH Eating Plan. like I don't add salt an sugar to anything anymore. it will be interesting to see my numbers again.