High Cholesterol Food List

Assembling Your Own High Cholesterol Food List

Fighting unhealthy cholesterol means putting together your own personal high cholesterol food list. Doing so will allow you to keep in mind the foods you should eliminate from your diet, or at least limit a great deal. Here are some tips on how to structure your list, so that it will provide you with the greatest benefit.

Your first step in preparing an effective list of high cholesterol foods is to jot down all the foods your doctor has told you to cut down on or avoid altogether. You will find that as you scan the listing, some of the foods are items that you consume on a regular basis. In organizing your own list, prioritize the items by creating three categories. The first category should contain all your favorites that you need to cut down on or eliminate from your daily diet. As an example, perhaps your physician has told you to cut way down on your red meat consumption.

In this first category, you may include such things as hamburgers, meat loaf, or pasta dishes made with red meat such as spaghetti with meatballs or a meat sauce. In the second category, include foods that you may have a few times a week, but that you can do without. For instance, candy bars are not the best thing to eat when you have high cholesterol. If you are in the habit of having a couple of candy bars during the course of the week, add them into the secondary category. For your third category, list those items your doctor wants you to avoid that rarely cross your lips anyway. Even though they are not part of your usual diet, you still need to be aware of them as something to avoid.

Categories help you to remind yourself that a particular food is not in your best interests. While it may seem like a big self-sacrifice, you can make one more addition to your list that will help take some of the sting out of the process. Along with foods to avoid, make a list of things you can have in the place of the now forbidden items. Being able to look at the list and say to yourself "I can't have that double-decker bacon cheese burger and the belly buster order of fries, but I can have a chicken breast seasoned with cayenne pepper on whole wheat with lettuce and tomato, as well as a baked potato with low fat sour cream," will take quite a bit of the sting out of changing your eating habits.

Providing yourself with a personalized visual inventory of what you should and should not be eating can make the process much easier. Why not start putting together your own customized high cholesterol food list today? And while you are at it why not begin to make substitutions from the high cholesterol list to a low cholesterol list. You will definitely find some great substitutions and be surprised how easy it is to make the changes in your diet and life style.

Jim Ott is a retired RN and Hospital Administrator and can be found at his website. http://www.bestcholesterolsite.tapwaterforgas.com

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