High Cholesterol on a Low-Fat Diet
Yesterday, my cardiologist prescribed me medicine to lower my cholesterol. She also told me to cut down on red meat and pork, eat more chicken and fish, and avoid fried and fatty foods. She’s a nice person, but I imagined I heard judgment in her voice. I didn’t interrupt her to say, “But I already eat a low-fat diet.” I made no excuses. I just nodded — which she didn’t see because we were talking on the phone.
The fact that I even have a cardiologist is concerning. I didn’t initially visit her because of my cholesterol. My primary care physician sent me because I have orthostatic hypotension, a condition that started with my third Moderna vaccine. My blood pressure drops when I go from lying down to sitting up, and then it drops again when I go from sitting to standing.
But no middle-aged person is going to be allowed inside a cardiologist’s office without getting her cholesterol checked. And my numbers were high enough to warrant a phone call and a prescription for Lipitor.
The thing is, there’s not a lot of fat to cut from my diet. I only eat red meat maybe once a week — guess I’ll cut that down to zero times a week. In fact, most of my meals are meatless. And when is the last time I ate something that was fried? There’s not a lot of fat to cut from my diet. I don’t use vegetable oil — I use olive oil cooking spray.
I can promise you the culprit isn’t fatty foods. It’s sugar. The more sugar you consume, the lower your good cholesterol and the higher your triglycerides. I’ve been promising myself that I was going to cut down on sugar and start eating healthy, but I kept putting it off until “after.” After the holidays, after so-and-so’s birthday party, after the Super Bowl.
I’m declaring that today is “after.” It’s time to get healthy — and stay that way. That’s the part with which I struggle the most. I can do healthy for a while, but then I get tired of it and start giving in to the social pressure to eat crappy foods. Or I go visit my mom, whose idea of a healthy breakfast is biscuits and gravy.
No more.
I really hate cooking, which has always been a barrier to healthy eating. Processed foods are easier. Microwavable dinners are my go-to. Over the last year, I’ve eaten a lot of frozen dinners — mostly the healthier brands, like Amy’s. But I can do better. My goal is to eat real food — without a lot of cooking. Smoothies are about to become my best friend. There’s no rule that says I can’t drink most of my meals. Or is there?
Did I mention I hate salads? And I’m allergic to raw carrots (apparently, they’re not supposed to burn your mouth). I hate the texture of raw vegetables, unless they are very finely chopped. Several years ago, I discovered that Subway’s chopped salads make eating salads possible — the way they chop everything to such small pieces improves the texture by about 500%. After this discovery, I bought an herb chopper — I guess I need to pull that thing out of whatever drawer it’s hiding in and start using it again. Oh! And the best part is that if you put enough juicy things in the salad — such as banana peppers and pickles — chopping them releases enough juices that salad dressing isn’t necessary.
My clothes have gotten uncomfortably tight — I can’t even wear most of my jeans. That should have been enough motivation to change how I was eating, but somehow, it wasn’t. Cholesterol medication — that’s what it took. My cardiologist is going to recheck my cholesterol in two or three months.
My goal is to get my numbers down dramatically by then.
