Happy Wednesday to you! It's time once again to post another WFMW tip.

Yesterday I had an appointment with a nutritionist to discuss my high cholesterol levels and what to do about them. You can read about some of the details right here.

The nutritionsit shared a website link with me that offers a PDF file for A Guide To Lowering Your Cholesterol with TLC at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. It's pretty good, check it out!

The nutritionist also gave me some helpful handouts that I've scanned in to my computer. They include:

1) General Tips for Healthy Dining Out

2) Physical Activity Pyramid

3) 1600 Calorie Sample Menus

4) Menu Planning Guidelines

If you're interested in receiving any of these handouts, leave me your email in the comments section, specifying which handouts interest you, and I'll send them out to you.

Depending on the level of interest, it may take me a few days to get to you, but fear not, I will get them emailed to you!

Sharing healthy eating tips from the nutritionist works for me. To see what works for others, be sure to check out the other links at Shannon's, the creator of Works-For-Me Wednesday!

My past WFMW entries are found here.

Technorati Tags: Overwhelmed With Joy, Works-for-Me-Wednesday

Labels: healthy eating, lower that cholesterol, Works-For-Me Wednesday

My appointment with the nutritionist yesterday was pretty good.

The woman was very nice and didn’t lecture me as I expected her to. She took my food journal for the week, recorded at www.my-calorie-counter.com, and figured out my averages for Fat, Saturated Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, and Sugar intake. Then she wrote out some goals that I need to work on achieving.

Goals
1) Keep calorie intake at around 1600/day. This may have to increase with increase in exercise.

2) Limit saturated fats and trans fats to less than 7% from saturated fat based on total calories which is less than 12 grams saturated fat/day.

3) Limit cholesterol to less than 200 mg cholesterol/day (eat less than 3 egg yolks/week).

4) Eat more omega-3 fats (heart healthy fats)- to achieve 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids/day- eat two 4-oz portions of fatty fish weekly (salmon, albacore, tuna, mackerel, or sardines) or take 1000 mg/day fish oil supplement.

5) Keep total amount of fat consumed to less than or = to 53 grams total fat/day (less than or = to 25%- 30% total fat).

6) Get 20-30 grams of dietary fiber per day.

7) Work on Menu Planning: 3 servings of fruit per day, 5 starches, 5 serviings lean meat, 5 servings of fat (butter, dressing, peanut butter, mayo, etc), 3 servings of dairy, and 4 vegetables.

8) Exercise 1 hour/day, 6 days/week. This should entail brisk walks 1 mile/15 minutes or rigorous bicycling or swimming. 30 minutes of moderate level of activity per day should be a bare minimum.

Food Tips
1) Switch from 2% to 1% milk.

2) Eat whole grain cereals- oatmeal, plain Cheerios, plain Wheaties, wheat Chex cereal with 6 grams of sugar or less per serving.

3) Eat only lean meats (palm-sized servings).

4) Lean Cuisine & Healthy Choices frozen meals are fine, but watch the high sodium intake that comes with those meals.

5) Eat out as little as possible because it’s nearly impossible to eat healthy when eating out!

6) Avoid fried foods and creams whenever possible!

7) Eat lots of fruits and vegetables!

The nutritionist gave me some helpful handouts that I'll be posting about tomorrow as my WFMW contribution. Check back tomorrow if you want more details! :)

I hope this info is helpful. Although my doctor only authorized one visit with the nutritionist, I've got the nutritionist's email and she encouraged me to email her with any questions. So, if you have any burning questions about any of this, leave me a comment and I'll see if I can get you an answer!

Labels: healthy eating, lower that cholesterol

In 2 hours I have an appointment with a nutritionist to discuss my high cholesterol levels. Let me show you what they are:

LDL "bad cholesterol"- 148 (normal is below 130)

HDL "good cholesterol"- 46 (normal is 40-59)

Triglycerides: 265 (normal is 0-59)

Total Cholesterol: 247 (normal is 100-199)

I've been asked to keep a food journal for the past 3 days. I actually plan on bringing on in for all of last week.

I fully expect this appointment to be a lecture on what a crappy eater I am. I don't eat enough veggies, I eat too many fatty foods, I don't exercise enough. I need to change my lifestyle.

Can you tell I'm dreading this a bit? I'm not even sure if this appointment is covered by insurance so I may be paying about $87 for a lecture.

I'm not sure how much the fact that high cholesterol runs in my family will weigh in. Both my parents and my 2 sisters are on high cholesterol medication because they couldn't lower their levels even after changing their eating and excercising habits.

Despite not looking forward to the well-deserved lecture that I'm sure to receive, I know I need to go because I don't want to die of a heart attack or heart disease! I owe it to myself and my family to get these cholesterol levels under control and I obviously need help doing so.

I hope this appointment will give me tools to help me change my eating habits for the better. I'm going to ask for concrete lists on foods to avoid and foods to eat more of, I'm going to ask for recipes and help with menu planning. I'm going to try to get my money's worth out of this appointment.

I'll try to stop back today or tomorrow to give you all a report on the results of my appointment with the nutritionist, so please stop back.

In the meantime, I'm curious, when's the last time you had your cholesterol levels checked and how were they? Does high cholesterol run in your family?

Labels: health, healthy eating, lower that cholesterol