How to eat healty and control your cholesterol

If you are looking for a heart-healthy approach to controlling your cholesterol, try following a low cholesterol, diet.

A cholesterol-lowering diet isn't too hard stick to, given the variety of healthy foods available. Although it is important to include healthy grains, fruits, vegetables and lean proteins, there are also a multitude of low-fat alternatives of foods available, courtesy of many food manufacturers that have caught on to the "heart-healthy" craze. So, whether you enjoy experimenting with healthy foods in your cooking, or need a quick meal to fix, a diet to lower cholesterol can fit easily into your lifestyle - and your plan to keep your heart healthy.

When you are shopping for such foods, be sure to look at the labels and keep the following in mind:

Fruits and Vegetables

Always eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. Not only are these foods low in calories and fat, they will also not raise your cholesterol levels. Many fruits and veggies also contain heart-healthy chemicals, such as phytosterols and polyphenols, which can help keep your cholesterol levels in check.

Fats and Oils

Try to lower your intake of saturated fats, since consuming foods with these fats could raise your cholesterol levels and place you at a higher risk of acquiring heart disease. You should avoid any foods that state they contain "partially hydrogenated" vegetable oils, such as those used in many margarines and shortenings, contain a particular form of saturated fat known as trans fats. These can raise blood cholesterol levels (including ldl, the bad cholesterol), just like saturated fat, and can also promote the formation of waxy, cholesterol plaques on your arteries.

When cooking with oils, you should use olive and canola oils, which are particularly high in monounsaturated fats or vegetable oil, which is high in polyunsaturated fats. Unlike saturated and trans fats, unsaturated fats can help lower your cholesterol and keep your heart healthy.

Breads and Grains

Switch out grains containing white flour for whole grain foods. Recent studies have indicated that ingesting high amounts of carbohydrates can also raise cholesterol levels and increase your risk of heart disease - especially if you have diabetes. hole grain foods contain more fiber than other types of grains, which can help lower your cholesterol.

Dairy

Use low fat or skim dairy products instead of regular, full-fat ones. You'll find that not only does this decrease your risk for heart disease - it is also friendly to your waistline! 

Meats

Use lean meats  such as chicken, fish or turkey instead of red meat. Leaner meats will not raise your cholesterol levels as much as red meat. For instance, using ground turkey meat instead of ground beef is a delicious alternative for hamburgers. If you find that you have a fatty piece of meat on your plate, you can trim the fat away, reducing the amount of fat you consume at your meal.

source : dietpro.com

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Vegetarian Det

A vegetarian diet is essentially a diet plan that does not contain animal or meat products. For centuries, millions of people in the world have followed pure vegetarian diets due to religious reasons, health reasons, or other emotional considerations. Today, more and more health professionals are discouraging the consumption of animal products—especially animal fats and red meats, both of which can increase cholesterol and harm the human body.

People following vegetarian diets are shown to be less prone to obesity and developing cancers, heart diseases, and other disorders which are associated with high cholesterol values. A vegetarian diet plan can help improve the health of a person in many ways.

Vegetarians believe in consuming plant foods exclusively and therefore abstain from consuming any form of animal foods. There are also several categories of vegetarians. While most vegetarians would abstain from consuming any kind of animal products, there are those who are lacto vegetarians and consume milk and dairy products.

There is also another class of vegetarians called lacto-ovo vegetarians who consume dairy products, milk, and eggs as well.

A vegetarian not only excludes meat and animal products from the diet, but generally does not wear clothes manufactured from animal products, such as leathers and wool. There are also partial vegetarians who consume some meat products, but not all.

A vegetarian diet has many health benefits in terms of digestion. Since a vegetarian diet is usually low in fats and trans fats, it does not contribute to the increase in cholesterol. Therefore, it has been seen that those consuming vegetarian diets are less prone to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders.

For those who want to adopt vegetarianism, the process is not as simple as it appears. Diet is an important part of the lifestyle of a person and changing the diet means bringing in a change in one’s lifestyle as well. If you want to change your diet to a vegetarian one, it is important to make these changes slowly. If your current diet consists of plenty of meat products, it would be wise to slowly start reducing your intake of these foods and substituting them with healthy vegetarian foods instead. For example, you can substitute a meat-based dish with a fresh salad. This slow transition gives your body the time it requires to get used to new changes.

Source : http://www.diethealthclub.com

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How Much Calorie Intake To Lose Weight Quickly

What is a Calorie?

You probably already know by now how metabolism relates to weight loss by the process called catabolic metabolism, which basically means the breaking down of cells and turning them into energy. To help you get an even better understanding of how this process works, I want to introduce to you a very important player in this whole weight loss process and that is the calorie.

So what is a calorie? Calories are simply a unit of measurement for energy in your body. There are not actually things within itself but more of a label similar to how an inch is a measurement for distance.

So how do we get a better understanding of how to boost your metabolism? Your body doesn't really care where your energy comes from, there are dozens of varieties of foods to choose from and there seems to be a fairly clear understanding as to what types of foods is good for you and which is bad.

We don't need to be a nutritional expert to know that a plum is good food, whereas a tub of thick creamy double-fudge ice cream is bad food. Your body simply doesn't care which food is healthy and which food is not, as long it get's energy.

So by knowing this, how can we apply what we've learned in terms calorie intake to lose weight. When you feed your body with calories, naturally your body will need to do something with that energy. If a plum gives you 100 calories, then your body will decide what it will do with the energy that those calories provide. The same goes for, deep fried chicken with 500 calories or 1000 calories, your body will have to do something about the amount of calories it receives.

Now, there is only two things which your body can do to that energy presented in calories. It will either transform that energy into tissue cells, or it will use that energy to break down cells. So now we got a rough understanding of how calories/energy, metabolism and weight loss/gains relates to each other.

When there is too much energy or calorie then your body is forced to create cells, hence this will cause weight gain, because your body has no use for that energy at that time, there is no such thing as increasing your calorie intake to lose weight.

What's The Right Amount Of Calorie Intake To Lose Weight?

Overall, the metabolism/calorie/energy/weight gain thing is just about energy and having too much of it. When you eat too many calories, which is energy stored in your body, your body will create cells, which increases your weight because your body can't do anything else with that energy.

And most of the cells that are created from the excess energy/calorie is turned into fat. Sometimes, those calories are turned into muscle but this will only occur when you exercise or lift weights which in turns, gives your body the incentive to turn those calories into muscle.

This is why people who have a lot of muscles can burn calories really quickly because muscles need a lot of calories to maintain. Which means a lot of times, without doing anything their muscles can burn the calories from the foods they eat without them doing anything.

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