ExRx.net

As I used to state before about my high Cholesterol, today I went to hospital to have a blood test again and the result is not good, very bad actually. My Cholesterol is 436 mg/dL and LDL is 329 mg/dL. My mother was freaked out, she's a doctor by the way, and said I have to change my diet immediately there're too much "meat and eggs" in my diet. She almost orders some pills for me.

My weight is now about 183lb and increasing gradually with 37'' waist.
My diet roughly looks like this.
06.00 - 5 raw eggs + milk 225cc + multivitamin
09.00 - chicken 150g + 1 egg + milk 225cc
12.00 - lean pork or beef about 300g + veggies 200g
15.00 - chicken 150g + 1 egg + milk 225cc
18.00 - various kind of snack
19.30 - lean pork 400g + veggies 300g
Also there're various kinds of nuts and fruits threw in here and there, mostly in the evening.
*On w/o day I add 5 egg whites, carb 30g and milk 225cc post w/o.

That is an ideal. I often have some ice-cream or crap with high carb for snack (but not much), fast food if I don't have time, skip a couple of meals and have a very big meal in the late evening if I don't have time at all also some alcohol on weekends etc.

So here're my questions. Am I eating too much saturated fat? Considering the blood test result it is way too much. Mostly it comes from eggs and pork, should I reduce it or maybe change pork in the evening to chicken? I want to grow more muscle, how should I trim down my diet to reduce my daily fat intake?

Many thanks :)

How are your HDLs and triglicerides? A high saturated fat diet will raise your cholestrol and your LDLs however the type of LDLs that increase should be the large fluffy kind that are actually beneifical. You need more specific tests to actually verify if you have an increased risk.

The problem is probably not with your diet, it's with the test. I have the same issue with my blood tests. Everything is healthy except for elevated cholestrol. I don't see that as a risk factor.

Dr. Eades writes about this often. http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/

I ask about your triglicerides because if they're low, that's a good thing, and low trigicerides will skew the LDL calculation making it appear higher than it really is. Dr. Eades talks about that in his Blog as well. With all due respect to your mother, the bottom line, if your HDLs are high and the triglicerides are low, you're probably OK. You need better testing to know for sure.

Edit: here's the imortant bit: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weig ... -the-myth/

"The moral of this story is that if you have been following a low-carb diet and your triglycerides are low (or if your triglycerides are just low) and your LDL reading comes out a little high – or even a lot high, don’t let anyone mule you into going on a statin or undergoing any therapy for an elevated LDL. Demand to have a direct measurement of your LDL done. Or if you get an insurance physical and your triglycerides are low and your LDL up a little, fight to get a direct measurement so they don’t stick you with higher premiums because they think you’ve got an increased risk for heart disease."




Stu

I'd look into the actual figures like stuward suggested, but in the meantime:

37 inch waist @ 183Lbs? and increasing? How tall are you?

I'd say your diet looks okay, if you stuck to what you listed, except you let yourself down with the eating crap, skipping meals, having a 'huge meal' in the evening, ice-cream and high carb snack, regular alcohol, fruit and nuts etc. Sounds like your over eating to me.

Where are you getting Omega 3 in your diet? I see no fish.

Your diet doesnt even have that much fat in it. lol

stuward,
My HDL and Triglycerides are 73 and 51 mg/dl respectively. I don't know what measurement method that the hospital use, I'll talk to them about this. But from the paper, it says the overestimated LDL is only 12 mg/dl on average, mine are still very high.

Rik-Blades,
I'm 5'8.5, 174cm. I don't eat crap and alcohol that much. About skipping meals or fast food, it's just unavoidable. It's not gonna be perfect, but I try for. And I sometimes have fish in the weekends but not often.

Your triglycerides are encouraging. They are much better than most peoples. This has better correlation to heart disease than cholesterol levels. Your HDLs are low. You probably have too much sugar in your diet. Go cold turkey for 3 weeks and see if that makes a difference. You may be surprised, both at how hard it is, and how it makes you feel. After 3 weeks, it's easier to sustain.

Junk food is very avoidable. Once you break a carb addiction, you don't get hungry every 2-3 hours. It's easy and healthier to skip meals as you body simply reverts to burning stored fat. I doubt you're at that stage.

Skip meals? That's catabolic blasphemy!

Johnny,

Your cholesterol and LDL is high.

Your body produce about 70% of your cholesterol. That means that high total cholesterol reading is more than likely genetic.

Intake of saturated fats is usually associated with high LDL reading. Thus, cutting back on saturated fats should improve your LDL.

Research show that diet/reducing you fat intake decrease choleserol reading by about 10%.

Research show that aerobic exercise is a bit more effective in reducing total cholesterol than diet. Aerobic exercise increases your HDL.

"Exercise is very important in controlling cholesterol levels. Not only does total and LDL cholesterol tend to decrease with activity, but HDL cholesterol increases." http://healthcenter.indiana.edu/departm ... terol.html

Fiber is also shown to decrease cholesterol. http://www.thedietchannel.com/Fiber-and ... sterol.htm

Nician (a B Vitamin), fish oils and other supplements are show to decrease cholesterol.

However, you reading is so high that it may require medication.



Good question. How much saturated fat are you eating? Pull out a nutrition book and do your home work.



Again, high total cholesterol readings are genetic. Diet plays a minor role.

Kenny Croxdale

I've been eating like this, no more than 150g of carb intake daily, for almost 4months now. I feel fine, no lack of energy or anything. The only problem is the LDL level.


I lift for 3days a week and do a couple of sets of BB complexes on day offs, but no aerobic exercise at all.


The doctor said she's not gonna give me any medication for now but I am required to change my diet and if the result next time doesn't improve, I'd have to take medication.


That's quite difficult to do. But I think most of my saturated fat intake comes from eggs and pork so I'll change pork in my dinner to chicken breast or fish and see how it goes.

Johnny, it's not that difficult to get a close estimate of how much fat and saturated fat you are consuming. It no different than counting the number of gram of carbohydrates you consume each day.

Nutrition (training and most things in life) are like taking a rode trip. Before you can figure out how to get to you destination, you first have to figure out where you are.

An analogy of your guessing about you saturated fat is comparable to living south of Denver, CO. You know you need to drive north to get to Denver. So, you're going to just drive around until you find Denver. How much sense does that make.

If you able to count the number of carbohydrates you consume in a day, you able to count/estimate how much fat and saturated fat you consume in a day. (The amount of cholesterol in eggs on the carton. How much easier can it get?)

So, what you telling me is tha you don't want to put forth any effort to calculate how much fat or saturated fat you are consuming. It you life, do it or don't do it...it up to you.

Kenny Croxdale

I know this is gonna sound crazy but, when was the last time someone gave u a big hug? lol Perhaps there is something wrong emotionally?

Of course, you may not even be unhealthy, Like stu said, the way many doctors read our cholesteral levels are obsolete.

I'm not convinced that chlestrol causes heart disease. Yes, levels that high are corelated with heart disease and you should take it seriously. I see it as an indicator that something is wrong. You need to find out what. As Kenney said, Niacin, fish oil, fibre, exercise all work. They work by addressing underlying problems, the cholestrol reduction being a side effect.

150 grams of carbs is considered a maintenance level for healthy people. When I suggested eliminating sugar, I was talking about the equivilent of an induction phase of a low carb diet. This is far different to what you're doing now. I also think limiting Omega 6 and supplementing heavily with Omega 3 is critical. There are a lot of routes you can go but the one you're on is obviously not healthy.

Johnny, based on what you try to eat in your list, i've 'guesstimated' the following from the pork, eggs, milk and chicken (so this excludes veg and post w/o).


Calories 2529
Protein 338g
Carbs 31g
Complex 2.8g
Sugars 28.2g
Fat 164.9g
of which Saturates 59.3g

Once you add in the 'extra' stuff, like veg, high carb snacks, fruit, nuts and alcohol, i'm willing to bet you are way over the calorie requirements needed for your age and activity in order to build muscle and keep the fat at bay.

One thing that jumps out at me is your protein consumption is WAY more that you need (I'd say almost double). I dont think this has anything to do with the high Cholesterol reading, but should show you that your diet could use a decent 'tweak'.

At 183Lbs and 37 inch waist (and increasing) puts you at around 27.5 BMI (30 will be grade 1 obesity). Do you know what your BF% is?

Your saturated fat intake is at least 59 grams. (the same as me! which is twice the offical RDA! insert new thread regarding this here!)
I'm having a Cholesterol test done next week. Will be interesting to compare results.
Here in the UK, the test should be lower than 5.0 mmol/l - yours works out at around 24.0 mmol/l

Rik, I wanted to post the chart from this site earlier. It gives the all-causes relationship to total cholestrol.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2 ... ality.html

You'll have to convert to mmols (divide by 18) but I think you're aiming too low.

I didn't think the protein intake was all that bad... High yes, but I don't think it's too much. around 50% of intake according to those measurements and that's not including 'various snacks' and 'nuts and fruit' that the OP states he has. If you're getting really picky then you should mention the cooking oil/butter/any sauce that's used, too, so the protein intake could easily be less than 50-ish %...

I don't know much about cholesterol etc compared to other posters but, in my opinion, the OP would be well served to try and balance out fat intake a bit more - more Omega 3's,.. What I would suggest is taking 2-3 fishoil caps with each meal.

I would also suggest eating more veggies. Try and get 2-3 servings with each meal...

If you're gaining weight then obviously you need to reduce calories somewhere so I wouldn't add the veggies and fishoil in top of what you're eating - swap something out. I would consider swapping out the milk with veggies. Every meal that you have milk there's already another protein source. As much as I love milk, it does contain a lot of lactose which is just another sugar. Personally if I was trying to lose fat, I would be quite careful of my milk intake. If I were trying to gain weight, however, I would have it in abundance.... You just need to weigh these things up.

In short, in my view, you need lots more veggies, lots of fish oil, in place of milk...

Try and be consistent, too, it's probably the most important factor in a diet.

KPj