We interrupt the viewer mail below for a HELP ME STAT from a member of the Bumbling Band:

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My husband’s cholesterol has been steadily climbing and yesterday the total cholesterol tested at 260. His good cholesterol was only 30. The testing nurse is giving him until August to get it under control naturally. Her only suggestion was to eat oatmeal and exercise.

He does not exercise and makes no attempt at all to make healthy eating choices, and I know I can’t change that but I can change our dinners and what food I bring into the house. My kids are horrible eaters so I hope these changes will improve their diets, as well. But as I said, I guess I need some easy recipes or snack tips. Maybe that’s where I need to start.

My immediate thoughts?

fish, chia, flax and/or coromega for the omega 3’s.

add in a serving a day of nuts for their mono and poly unsaturated fats (lower the bad LDL cholesterol)

Plant sterols also lower LDL cholesterols. Look for them in foods (this is a hotly debated topic. more on a later post. the same applies to soy and lowering cholesterol).

Fiber Fiber Fiber

egg whites or egg substitute in everything.

as far as INCREASING HDLs these foods are great to add in/increase amounts: walnuts, avocados, barley, macadamia nuts, rice bran/oat bran, beans, some studies show orange juice (!) can increase HDL, and onions.

When we had a similar situation up in herre I actually liked this site for healthy recipes (kinda sale-y I know—but they were good none the less)

ok, the MizFit is off to don her BabyMama bandanna so Im tossing it back to ya’ll as Im confident you have some insights for our emailer.

please to comment away.

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Comments

  1. Your ideas for snacks are right on, MizFit. I would just add that the reader can make some easy changes in the way she cooks as well. Replace white flour with wheat (I know this isn’t directly related to cholesterol but getting his blood sugar under control will help with cravings). Throw in a handful of flax seeds to whatever you’re making. Cut the transfats entirely. Reduce saturated fat by using non-fat cooking spray or a non-stick pan. Sub a banana for some of the oil in recipes – or applesauce for butter. That kind of thing. There are lots of ideas out there!

    Oh yeah: my fave cholesterol-lowering tip (and good for the budget too): Commit to only eating out once a week.

  2. On the exercise front, how about instituting a family walk after dinner every night? Hubby and I take a walk every evening and while it may not get the heart rate way up, it is a little movement and is a great way to reconnect at the end of the day. It is also a nice way to get familiar with your neighbors. 🙂

  4. The Bag Lady must caution you to make the changes GRADUALLY! Especially when adding bran to the diet. Too much too fast can cause havoc in the gastrointestinal tract, and will make family unhappy.
    If they are resistant to the changes, you can sneak bran into their meals by adding it to things like hamburger (spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, etc.) and bran is extremely important.
    Also encourage your family to drink lots of water (now that you are sneaking all this bran into the diet, they need the water, too.) TAP water, not that pig-swill they sell in bottles.
    If they won’t eat broiled fish, try skin-less chicken. And if they won’t eat veggies, chop them up and make a soup or stew. If they don’t like them that way, grind them up and add to hamburger, much as you would the bran….
    There are all kinds of ways to make changes – just be creative.

  5. My reaction to the email was….good suggestions from YOU on ways to work the cholesterol but, really, they are in vain if the individual does not BUY IN to the diet/exercise lifestyle change. That’s where it HAS to begin.

  7. is he overweight at all? dropping weight will help tremendously, but having high cholesterol doesnt necessarily mean you are over weight…if only i can get my boyfriend to understand that.

  8. if you want to give him a scare story, my sister’s baby daddy was 30 years old and passed away from a heart attack. 30 YEARS OLD. He was only a little bit over weight, and had started to try and get his cholesterol under control.

    Also, a 2% increase in trans fat intake can up your risk of heart disease by 93%. NO TRANS FATS.

  9. Cheerios and oatmeal are so good for this – maybe you can sneak some oats into other meals or make some sort of cheerios-crusted chicken breast? I don’t know- I’m not a cook (obv!) But what about the exercise – he, like, just won’t do it? even though it’s his health? I’m not a nag but I would push on something like that.

  10. Some great ideas… my first thought was along the line of what Nitmos said. Plus, I don’t want to be a nag either… but I do encourage my (often “too busy” to exercise hubby) to try to take steps to keep himself healthy because once you have a family – it’s not just about you, it’s about your wife and your kids. I want them to have their daddy around for a LONG time.

  11. Thanks to MizFit and all you readers for the help. I think my husband is sufficiently alarmed now to get serious and I am going to change what we eat. Your ideas are much more helpful than what I found in my initial google search!

  12. Great suggestions from everyone! My first instinct was beans! I love beans.

    Anyway, beans can be mushed and mixed with hamburger meat for burgers, added to soups, used with chicken in making chili, and loads of other creative ways. Also try trading out things you normally may keep in the house for the healthier version, like whole grain breads, pastas and cereals. If he doesn’t have the option, he’ll eat what you put in front of him. And add fruits and vegetables as per the suggestions above.

    Scrumpy’s suggestion for implementing a family after dinner walk is a great idea!

  14. Last year, when I was trying to lose weight, I will confess that I resorted to some very sneaky tactics. My husband is a real meat-and-potatoes kind of guy and doesn’t always make the best dietary choices, so over time, I gradually made changes like making baked potatoes instead of mashed, substituting ground turkey for ground beef, and generally using less butter, oil, etc. in cooking.

    The changes were gradual and really, he didn’t even notice. But I agree wholeheartedly that people have to take responsibility for their own choices and their own health. I look at it this way: I (usually) cook dinner, so I CHOOSE to cook it in a way that reflects my health choices. He can choose not to eat it, but he usually does without complaint.

  15. Ah, my brother was 51, thin, fried food eater, smoker and had a massive heart attack. Tell hubby he will be missed dearly if he doesn’t wise up.

  16. I’m with Bag Lady and Nitmos! It’s important to really want to make these changes and then to take it slow so as not to shock the system and all. Scrumpys Baker made a good point about the family walk, too! That’s bound to help a lot.

  17. Barley helps lower LDL cholesterol and I have an easy receipe for chicken n barley soup that my meat and taters husband loves!

    saute chopped up onion and 3 chopped celery stalks til onion is translucent(i do in a little olive oil, but you could just spray the pan w/cooking spray if you prefer)

    throw in two chopped up raw skinless boneless chicken breasts and brown lightly

    add box of chicken broth

    mix in 1/2 cup of uncooked pearled barley (or add more if you like…add broth as necessary)

    salt/pepper to taste (or Jane’s Mixed Up Crazy Salt, my fave)

    simmer half an hour or so

    Delish!!

    I also add 1 c of uncooked barley to white chicken chili as it’s cooking and no one is the wiser.

    I loves me the texture of the barley. Squeak!

  19. I had slightly high cholesterol that I managed to lower naturally (over a year) by going whole hog (is that an expression) into this healthy life thing. One of the easiest things? Benefibre in the morning with your coffee or whatever. Don’t even notice it’s there. an extra 4g of fibre. Throw it in every cup! (again, gradually, or you’ll experience some sharp discomfort in the afternoon!)

  20. I got my husband – a stubborn, smoking, drinking (still does both of those), crap eating, no exercising, cholesterol of 205 kinda guy – “on the bandwagon” in a kind of secret way (note that I do a “low” carb, no grains type diet). Anyway, he loves meat (which works well with a lower carb diet), and I just started making food on the weekend so that we’d have leftovers — and it just happened to be yummy steak, chicken, huge amounts of yummy veggies and kept salad stuff in the house. He still drowns his steak in A-1 and maybe loves bacon a little toooo much, but his cholesterol is now 165 *and* he’s exercising.

    I admit he probably had a bit of the wake-up call and wanted to change, at least subconciously. I still thought I’d never get him off frozen pizza and burritos – but I did by making the good stuff always available. Look into low carb – it really helps the blood profile. (More proof: I have great HDL levels and my ratios are excellent. “super preferred” for life insurance – keeping healthy saves you money!)

  21. wow.

    I strive to have ANYTHING which is ‘super preferred’ (who knew that term existed?)!

    thanks for you all your great insights/tips.

    M.

  22. I’m with the Bag Lady and that making small gradual changes will be easier to stick long term. He’s got 4 months til the next test so in that time I’d suggest eliminating as much processed foods and foods filled with additives and artificial ingredients, and replacing them with whole versions.

    Also, he’s probably not eating well at lunch too, so perhaps if she could make some of his lunches to bring to work it could help with the better eating efforts and save some money. On the weekends, the family could also make an effort to do something together that involves walking, swimming, or playing.

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