I have used these techniques successfully; they also have had a positive effect on other aspects of my health.
1. Lose Weight. BTW, if you do the following things, you WILL lose weight.
2. Eat less meat; when you do eat meat, pick a very lean cut, and spring for certifiably organically grown meat.
3. Boil and rinse ground meat prior to using in casseroles and wherever possible otherwise. Sound yucky? Try it. Also drain any leftover oil when frying any meat. Really quality lean meat will require a bit of oil and produce little or none itself when frying. I actually add coconut oil (little bit goes a long way).
4. Use olive oil and coconut oil to cook with. Coconut oil has both lowered my bad cholesterol AND raised my GOOD cholesterol. Coconut oil is a wonderfully and healthy oil that got a bad rap that it has since lived down.
5. Eat oatmeal each morning, preferably with the natural non-caloric plant sweetener, stevia.
6. Eat fresh salmon as often as you can hack it.
7. Eat sardines and tuna often.
8. Take a supplemental fiber, such as Metemucel, daily. Use the unsweetened, unflavored variety.
9. Learn about and use the wonderful quasi-grain known as qiano.
10. Eat whole grain breads only.
OOPS! Five MORE that I MUST include:
11. Take Omega 3 Fatty Acids in the form of clear gel caplets. Make sure the source is cold water fish oil. This is often recommended by physicians. Some recommendations say six caplets twice a day. I take six caplets three times daily. Flax oil is not as effective.
13. Use tons of garlic in your cooking and foods. Take garlic capsules if you can’t manage garlic or add it to foods. My belief is that fresh is better, then refrigeratable, bottled, minced, powder, and last caplets. Members of the onion family seem to help a lot too: onions, scallions, leeks.
14. Sprinkle flax seeds in everything. While flax oil is not so effective as fish oil, the whole flax seeds are. As a matter of fact all true nuts seem to help. I keep a small bowl of raw mixed flax seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pecans to nibble on between means. Non-salted nuts are best. I say a small bowl, because nuts are very high in calories.
15. Eat ripe Avocados plain, with crackers, or in salads.
16. Replace whatever you drink now with fresh squeezed lime drink sweetened with Stevia, a wonderful non-caloric plant sweetener. Lemons can be intermingled with the limes if desired. I split an average lime, and squeeze half of it into an eight-once glass. Then I sweeten with stevia to taste, stir, toss the squeezed lime half in the glass and top off with crushed ice. I do this all day as thirsty.
Note: I was able to radically reduce my cholesterol by eating oatmeal for breakfast, sardines for lunch, and fresh fish or chicken for dinner. If that’s too stringent, try small amounts of chicken and lean red meat for dinner, and alternate with tuna at lunch.
Radical results require radical measures. A month of doing this will shock your doctor and control many other leading indicators as well, such as A1C, and liver enzymes.