QUESTION: This low cholesterol diet my doctor has given me is no easy thing to follow, and I am not doing very well in getting my numbers down.
There must be some way to make it work.
What good advice can you give me to help me reach my mark?
ANSWER: It's never easy to change long ingrained eating habits, but such a change can possibly add extra healthy years of living to your life.
Eating is a behavior pattern and if you set your mind to it, it is certainly possible to change your behavior.
There are several "tricks" you can use to help yourself stay on the diet. Make rules for your eating behavior; real ones, that you can stick to, and write them down so you won't forget.
Sounds like serious business, and it is, for you're the one that will gain (excuse me, "lose") by staying with it. Always eat in the same location in the house.
Pick the dining room or the kitchen table.
Do not, however, eat standing up by the refrigerator or over the kitchen counter, and make a promise to yourself not to nibble while you are sitting in front of the T.V.
It is amazing how many calories and how much extra cholesterol you can take in while nibbling, so don't do it. Eat slowly, chew your food thoroughly before swallowing and moving on to the next bite.
It takes your body 20 minutes of eating to feel full, so if you gobble your food in ten minutes, you will still be feeling hungry for another ten minutes. One of the most important ways of checking up on your eating habits is to keep a food record.
Not just the food you have consumed during meals, but everything you put in your mouth.
Keep track of where you ate and at what time.
If you ate something you hadn't planned to eat (that wasn't on your low cholesterol diet), write down what your feelings were at the time. Before you go to bed, tally how many calories you have consumed and figure out how much of this was saturated fat and cholesterol.
Save what you've written down, and once a week, look everything over.
This will help you recognize your habits, good and bad.
Make an attempt each week to eliminate one of your bad habits.
For example, if you find that you eat scraps off the plate while you are clearing the table, make it your goal to stop that.
Once you've eliminated that problem, you can tackle the next. Perhaps you nibble as you cook.
Believe it or not, you don't need to taste everything, especially if the dish is something you are familiar with cooking. When you eat out, choose a restaurant that will accommodate your diet. Call ahead, and make sure there is something you can order.
Make sure they will broil rather than fry your fish and serve you margarine rather than butter.
When shopping for food, never go when you are hungry (you'll buy all the wrong foods in the place and then eat them so as not to waste money), and learn to read labels wisely. Best of all, when you do well, reward yourself.
But don't do it with food.
Reward yourself by buying yourself some new clothing for your new slimmer figure or taking yourself out to a movie or baseball game.
And give yourself three big cheers, you deserve it!
The material contained here is "FOR INFORMATION ONLY" and should not replace the counsel and advice of your personal physician.
Promptly consulting your doctor is the best path to a quick and successful resolution of any medical problem.
