Cholesterol is something that our bodies need in order to carry out many vital physiologic functions like hormone and vitamin production, maintaining cell membranes etc. But too much of even a good thing is dangerous and the same fact applies for blood cholesterol too.
Hypercholesterolemia is a disorder where the levels of LDL cholesterol are higher than normal range. If you have been diagnosed with hypercholesterolemia, chances are that your physician has already informed you that losing weight with high cholesterol is a necessity and advised you to keep your body weight under control.
Dangers of High Blood Cholesterol
Before you can understand why losing weight with high cholesterol is so crucial, you will need to understand more about hypercholesterolemia. There are many factors that contribute towards this condition, but the major source of cholesterol in blood is from your diet. In simple words it means that high blood cholesterol levels could be due to a high dietary intake of saturated fats and cholesterol rich foods.
Persistent high blood cholesterol levels pose a grave danger to your health and life, because it can predispose to atherosclerosis, heart disease/ even cardiac arrest and result in sudden death.
Foods to Avoid in High Blood Cholesterol
As mentioned earlier, your diet plays a very huge role in determining your blood cholesterol levels. Certain foods like lard, ground red meat, organ meat, lobsters, cream, cheese, butter, fatty red meat, poultry with skin on and egg yolk etc. are high in saturated fats and will worsen your hypercholesterolemia and add to your body weight.
Also junk foods like potato fries, meat cheese burgers, ice cream, muffins, cookies, etc are also dangerous foods that you must learn to avoid or at least discipline yourself to eat only in moderation and very infrequently if want to keep your blood cholesterol levels at bay.
Oftentimes, losing weight with high cholesterol can turn out to be very tricky because even if you avoid these danger foods you may be ingesting saturated fats even without your knowledge like for example when you eat healthy foods that may be cooked with the wrong oil. Certain oils like vegetable oils, hydrogenated vegetable oils, bacon drippings, and palm oil are all going to increase the bad cholesterol levels in your blood.
Foods to Include in Your Diet
When you are choosing foods to help you control your blood cholesterol levels, remember that almost all the cholesterol in your diet comes from animal food. So the best foods to eat would be from plant sources and of course avoid the dangerous vegetable oils as mentioned in previous section.
The best choice of foods are fresh veggies, fruits, nuts, oily fish, soy products, olive oil etc. Out of these there are certain super foods like garlic, walnuts, avocado, beans of all kinds, peas, lentils, barley, fish like mackerel, halibut and salmon which help in increasing the good cholesterol (HDL) and reduce the harmful LDL cholesterol. It helps to include healthy proportions of these in your daily diet.
Losing Weight with High Blood Cholesterol
The key to losing weight with high cholesterol is to consume a healthy diet that includes the beneficial foods and eliminates the harmful foods as mentioned in the previous sections. The other most important part of proper blood cholesterol and body weight maintenance is to exercise regularly. When combined with a healthy diet, about 30 mins of moderate exercise daily like walking or jogging is adequate. But if you are relying solely on exercise to reduce cholesterol levels and body weight, then you will need to exercise quite vigorously in order to get the required effects.