Anne Collins’ Cholesterol-Lowering Diet promotes heart health and concentrates on healthy low-fat meals specially designed to lower your cholesterol and help you lose weight quickly and safely. Anne Collins is a certified nutritionist and since the 1980s has made it her goal to help people lose weight and improve their lifestyles through healthy eating.
Cholesterol in a Nutshell
Cholesterol comes from two sources: what you eat, called dietary cholesterol, and what your liver produces. In general, low-density lipoproteins or LDL (bad) cholesterol can build up on the walls of the arteries and cause a number of serious health problems, including high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack. Much of LDL cholesterol is obtained from eating saturated and/or trans fats, found in animal products, such as red meat and hydrogenated oils.
High-density lipoproteins, or HDL (good) cholesterol carries cholesterol away from the arteries and back to the liver, where it is passed from the body. HDL cholesterol is produced by the liver and can also be obtained from dietary fats, such as those found in olive oil, walnuts or fish. Your HDL cholesterol should ideally be higher than your LDL cholesterol. Having a healthy HDL number can actually prevent heart attacks.
Triglycerides are fat that is found in the blood. Improper diet, lack of exercise, excessive alcohol consumption and smoking cigarettes can raise your triglycerides to an unhealthy level. Having some triglycerides in the blood is necessary for good health, however, high levels can put you at risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
Cholesterol-Lowering Diet Basics
The diet is a 1,200 calorie per day eating plan (depending on your gender and how much you have to lose, you may get up to 2,000 calories) that packs 40 delicious recipes into a 29-day dieting strategy. Dietary fat makes up 17 percent of your daily caloric intake and your meals concentrate on healthy fiber and nutrient-rich foods. At the end of the 29 days, you should notice a change in your cholesterol numbers. If you want to keep going, all you do is repeat the 29-day eating plan.
What Kind of Success Can You Expect?
Over time, it is possible to drop your LDL—or bad—cholesterol to 30 to 55 mg/dl. And after just the first two to three weeks, you will notice your bad cholesterol numbers begin to drop. This, of course, depends on how responsive your body is to your new way of eating. In addition to lowering your cholesterol, you will also drop some weight.
What Makes the Diet so Successful?
There are no gimmicks, there’s no special food to buy and the diet is easy to stick with. If you follow the plan, you will successfully lower your bad cholesterol and raise your good cholesterol.
What Do You Eat?
Because your goal is to reduce your high LDL cholesterol, the eating plan limits red meat and encourages the use of fish, whole grains and legumes, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables. It is important to limit use of saturated fat. This eating plan works very well for vegetarians.