Best foods to eat to lower cholesterol?

Oh god... This isn’t a knock on you, I just expect this will go like the other cholesterol threads. Post your numbers and we will try and help out.

250 cholesterol. Doctor didn't give me my HDL or LDL numbers. Said good cholesterol is where it needs to be and bad cholesterol and triglyercides are high. 41 year old male, 6ft1, 230 lbs. Haven't done much working out since October.

My bad cholesterol was borderline high at my last checkup, so I recently read up on this as well. I go to the gym 4-5 days per week. I'm 43, 6ft, 195 lbs. My biggest trigger foods are chocolate and cookies, and I've been known to overindulge on beer during football season, i.e. a couple of beers every Saturday evolves into a couple of beers every day.

Foods to add, from healthline.com:

Beans
Avocados
Almonds and walnuts
Extra virgin olive oil
Fatty fish
Whole grains
Fruits, especially berries
Dark chocolate
Garlic
Vegetables
Leafy greens, especially dark leaves
Red wine

Avoid:

Full-fat dairy
Fatty red meat
Fried foods
Regular chocolate
Beer, raises triglycerides level, which is bad, mkay
And all the other foods I love but shouldn’t eat every day: cookies, pastries, cake, ice cream, etc.

Probably one of the reasons I rarely ever post on here.

quote:

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NB4 Keto guys.

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NAFTER the guy that says only trusts doctors and then calls doctors that have different opinions than traditional cholesterol science bloggers

Do you want to lower your cholesterol or just talk about lowering your cholesterol? If you truly want to lower it do the exact OPPOSITE of what DLSWVA said to do.

You need to be eating:

Full-fat dairy
Fatty red meat
Eggs
Butter
Mayonnaise
Avocado
Fish
Heavy whipping cream

I'm not here to flame. At least we agree on fish and avocado.

Disclaimer: no food science knowledge exists in my brain.

Anyhow, here's what I did. My cholesterol was through the roof a few years ago. 300+ overall. Doc wanted me to get on meds but I am pretty young so I wanted to see if I could get it down myself before being stuck on meds the rest of my days. I'd never paid any attention whatsoever to my diet (have never been overweight; 31" waist, 25 BMI athletic) so I figured I had room for improvement. I knew I wasn't going to transform my lifestyle overnight, so I decided to make small changes to see how much they helped. I'll keep results and a timeline.

2016
HDL: 95
LDL: 196
Total: 318

Wakeup call results. The first thing I did was start knocking out '4th meal' (quite literally, taco bell). If I was out drinking with buddies I was relentless about getting food (usually taco bell) at like midnight-2 am. At least a couple times a week. Replaced those cravings with lots of water, and they eventually went away altogether. Also limited my unhealthy snacks. I used to be a fiend for potato chips or chips and salsa. Stopped keeping those things in the house as much, therefore stopped snacking as much. I also started working out a bit more this year. Always have exercised more than the average person, but never really did it more than 1-2 times a week consistently. Started going to the gym consistently 3 times a week.

2017
HDL: 73
LDL: 175
Total: 264

Progress! Still bad, but clearly an improvement. Doc was skeptical (still in the high risk range), but let me keep going with no meds. This year I decided I was going to fix one of my meals. I was never a big breakfast eater so I didn't think that would have a big enough impact, so I picked lunch. My lunches prior-to were basically always sandwiches, dinner leftovers, or fast/convenient food. There are literally 20+ quick options within walking distance of my office so it was easy to ring up 2-3 'eating out' lunches a week. Set a goal to only go 'out' for lunch once a week max, and start meal prepping every other lunch.

My meals were generally a large portion of protein (mostly chicken, sometimes red meat, fish and tuna on occasion), a small portion of veggies (I wear out squash, zucchini and broccoli), and a small portion of carbs (either a wrap or a side of couscous) prepared in a variety of ways. Hot sauce is your friend. The more I did this, the better I got at it and eventually I wasn't eating out for lunch any more often than once every few weeks. And as an added bonus I often had extra so would replace some dinners with this much better option. Grilled chicken > frozen pizza apparently. But again, I didn't actively try to change my dinner diet. I was still eating fried foods, pizza, whatever I wanted for dinner. I did find that I wasn't craving the unhealthy stuff nearly as much, though. I also started lifting weights MUCH MORE this year. 5 times a week strength training.

2018
HDL: 78
LDL: 140
Total: 233

Hell yes. It can be done! Bad cholesterol and total cholesterol dropped from high to med risk. Maintained good cholesterol in low risk. Doc was pretty astounded. My goal this year is to pay just a bit more attention to dinner choices and try to replace most of my snacking with healthier options. Also incorporate more cardio (not sure this is going to help my cholesterol but I have a family history of bad heart health, so I need to do what I can). My "diet" is not only easy for me now, but I enjoy it. And I think it's because I attacked it in baby steps rather than trying to tackle the whole thing at once.

TLDR: IMO it's more important to eliminate the really bad foods than find the best good foods. Find one thing you're doing bad, and fix it.

Beans
Brown rice
Apples
Blueberries
Oatmeal (not the flavored shite)
Oranges


Really any whole food.

For your triglycerides get rid of the high fructose corn syrup foods. That shite will kill you.

If you want to lower your cholesterol I wish you the best of luck , but I'm going to give some other information.

Just remember your body makes a lot of cholesterol because it is important for you to function. I mean your brain is basically water, fat, and cholesterol. Studies show that people of all ages with higher cholesterol live longer.

What if Heart Disease and Diabetes had the same cause? | Ivor Cummins

I think that video with Ivor Cummins will help show connections of why things that shouldn't be a problem have been misdiagnosed as a problem. If you like that video the rest of that channel has a lot of good stuff that is backed by studies.