John needs to lower his cholesterol

[John Coloccia]

:::sigh::: But we're pretty determined to keep me off of medication, so I need to make a few tweaks to the diet. First thing I did was cut out alcohol entirely. Why? Because alcohol makes me want to smoke, which makes me want to drink, which makes me want to smoke more, and I've been struggling for years to eliminate those last few cigarettes a week. The trigger is a nice glass of wine or a beer. Anyhow, the booze is now gone and it feels good to be truly smoke free for the first time in 20 years. Apparently that's going to help the HDL and triglycerides.

Next is changing the diet. I'm drastically cutting the red meat to maybe once every 2 weeks, and going up on fish like salmon. I'm filling in with some vegetarian dishes.

Obviously I'm exercising a lot more now too. I stopped for a while due to some injuries but I'm all better now. I think the injuries started all of this nonsense. My weight went up, and the struggle with smoking hasn't helped.

So why this thread? As most have probably noticed (or maybe not) I don't usually post about personal stuff like this, but I thought this would be a great oppurtunity for me to combine two of my great loves. First of all, I love life and I don't want to die with clogged arteries....at least not for another 40 or 50 years. Secondly, I love cooking and good food, and I'm determined to use every ounce of skill I have to create a delicious cholesterol busting menu.

I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we can share our healthy concoctions for others to try.

I'll start us off with my special salad dressing. Now, you have to use this sparingly because it is oil, however it has such a powerful flavor that you can use it sparingly.

Olive Oil (Canola if you wish...I've started blending the two)
Champagne Vinegar
Sliced Jalapenos (pickled in vinegar)
Mustard (dijon, just a dollop)
Honey (not much)
Sea Salt
Pepper Medley (ground)
Black Pepper (ground)
Basil (dry)
Garlic (dry)
Fresh Grated Nutmeg (just a touch)

BTW, go easy on the mustard and honey. This is NOT a honey mustard dressing. The honey is just there for a little sweetness to offset the mustard and the jalapeno. The mustard is mainly there for a little extra kick and body. If it comes out like honey mustard, it's wrong. LOL. Small amounts.

Toss it all in a small food processor, and let'er rip. I have a small processor especially for making dressings and salsas in small batches.

Sorry there's no amounts. I rarely go by measurements so you may need to experiment a bit, but the proportions are really not critical. Yours may not taste exactly like mine, but it will probably be excellent so long as you're reasonable with the amounts.

[David Weaver]

Got a vitamix? I'm not very good at eating vegetables, especially green vegetables that are fairly bitter. I am/was also a sugar hog and at a turning point where I'm going to go from a bit chubby to either back to not chubby or the other direction, and I realize at my age (which probably isn't much different than yours) that means I'm going to cut out the sugar.

One thing about diets that always irks me is that you often end up cutting weight at the expense of muscles, and you end up feeling thin and soft. I'm not exactly muscle bound, but I know one of the things that takes people out later in life is a lack of flexibility and a lack of at least a maintenance level of muscle mass.

My cholesterol is fine, but my BP is borderline high (probably genetic) and I can just control it with diet if I behave. And I could stand to lose 30 pounds.

Our blender busted a couple of months ago (I thought it was chinese made, turns out it wasn't) and I popped a gasket about cheap goods and bought a vitamix.

I'll bet I have had more vegetables in the last 3 months than I've had in the last year total. The only thing I do to eat them is put them in a vitamix mixed with fruit and add ice, with the bulk of the mix being vegetables. The result isn't gourmet, and it's not going to convince you that you're eating ice cream (the ice is gone by the time it's mixed, anyway, it gets blasted into liquid) or milkshakes, but a lot of green vegetables are really tolerable if they are mixed with apples and oranges, and you get to eat the whole vegetable, fibers and all.

I can't contribute much on the cooked side, because I don't get motivated to cook something unless it's going to be something like crepes with a butter/sugar/walnut mix in them, but I can sure dump the garbage processed food and substitute a lot more vegetables if I'm able to cover them up with fruit and blast them into a liquid. By rule we always have at least two type of fresh fruit around, too, and my taste for sugar is getting recalibrated so that it doesn't have to be super sugar overload for me to feel like I'm eating something sweet.

I've supplemented the muscle side by getting Mike Mentzer's book about muscle development, which involves 15 or 20 minutes twice a week rather than hours and hours circuiting around a gym (which I would never do).

[Greg Peterson]

John,

What I do runs contrary to general practice, but it has worked for me.

For six months last year I drank a gallon of whole milk a day, ate ice cream almost every night, consumed plenty of red meat and ate like a pig. My cholesterol level this past February was 80, resting heart rate is 54. In six months I gained 30 pounds -mostly muscle but some fat came along for the ride. No problem, and easy to fix.

I do strength training. To be clear, I do not do body building, I train for functional strength, high weight, low reps. Not interested in big bulging muscles. Many, if not most of the concepts of strength training run contrary to body building. This distinction is lost on most people.

Metabolism is not a function of age, rather it is a function of muscle mass and activity level. Functional strength training builds muscle which in turn increases metabolism.

When I finished off my whole milk, ice cream, red meat regime, I had a little extra fat hanging around. I just converted back to my previous low fat diet and continued my strength training routine. Protein is a key ingredient in building muscle, but so is fat. And the little bit of fat I had accumulated was quickly burned off by my routine.

In your case I am not suggesting you consume a high fat diet. A few Olympic lifts are the trick will get your muscle mass hungry and invigorated. Squats, deadlifts, press (not to be confused with bench press) and the power clean will give you all the functional strength you need. And any excess fat you may have will go towards feeding those muscles as you wake them up.

It is important to consider what attributes you want to accentuate when you design a fitness program. There are a limited number of attributes and the individual has to decide which few attributes they want to accentuate.

Strength, power, endurance, agility and flexibility.

Treadmills, bicycles and the like will increase endurance but add little to strength or power. Olympic lifts will increase strength, power and agility.

In my experience, Olympic lifts do get the heart rate up into the so-call 'fat burning' zone. I ride the stationary bike for 25 minutes, throw in some interval training on the bike to keep it interesting. Then I do some strength training. Usually train Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat. At 48, I need more recovery time than the younger bucks at the gym.

[David Weaver]

I do strength training. To be clear, I do not do body building, I train for functional strength, high weight, low reps. Not interested in big bulging muscles. Many, if not most of the concepts of strength training run contrary to body building. This distinction is lost on most people.

High weight and low reps is exactly what body builders do, to build size. Body building is about proportion and size, the diet is just much more strict than strength training and the building of muscles is targeted rather than focusing on exercises that engage a lot of muscle groups at one time (though guys like mike mentzer recommend those exercises, too, for bodybuilders).

The key to both strength and body building is a weight that causes failure in 6-8 reps. Positive failure, followed by negative failure followed by static failure. The same strength and mass can be gained in two sessions per week that can be gained from spending 2 hours a day in a gym.

Steroids are a necessary addition to look like Jay Cutler, Ron Coleman and even folks like what Mentzer looked like in 1980. I don't believe too many of the olympic and competitive power lifters are clean (they are just not using dianabol and winstrol and other common stuff), but they don't need to manage diet like a bodybuilder for appearance.

[Greg Peterson]

Sorry David, but you are wrong.

Body builders use relatively low weight, with typical reps between 10-15 reps.

Strength training reps are 5-7 reps, three sets.

Body building and strength training are two entirely different goals. The means to efficiently achieving those objectives are fundamentally different.

Power lifters have an entirely different training program than body builders. And I don't think anyone would confuse a power lifter with a body builder.

To be sure, I have seen some mighty strong body builders. But pound for pound, an individual that trains for strength will be stronger than a body builder. Bigger isn't necessarily stronger.

[David G Baker]

The commercial that touts that oatmeal lowers cholesterol has been true in my situation. I eat Quaker original oatmeal every day for breakfast and it has lowered my cholesterol down to a very healthy level.

[Joe Pelonio]

I was getting close to borderline, and the doctor has put me on these big fat supplements from Costco called Red Yeast Rice, an over-the-counter product. It actually does seem to work, as it went back to the normal range since. I have altered the diet too but did talk him into letting me eat bacon once a week! I think the biggest help is laying off the french fries and chips. Instead we get those puffed vegetable chips which are actually not too bad. I read that 2 tablespoons of vinegar a day helps but I couldn't even choke down 1 so I eat a lot of pickles.

[Steve Griffin]

John,
Way to take charge of your life and make some positive changes!

The key to a happy life, in my opinion, is to avoid exercise at all costs and be a become a drug addict.

I haven't exercised for probably 10 years. By exercise, I mean purposely getting on a treadmill or lifting weights or some other method of removing fun from your life.

Instead, seek out activities and sports that are fun to do. I'm an avid mountain biker, nordic skier, skate skier, hiker, snowboarder. Secondary interests include swimming, golf (walking of course),climbing, rafting, canoeing.

With a little creativity it's easy to find ways to get the heartbeat up and tire out some muscles.

By drugs, of course I mean endorphins. Once you get back in the swing of fun exercise, you will form an addiction for endorphins. These body chemicals make food taste better, pain less painful,music sound nicer and other pleasures more pleasurable. Don't fight it, and don't let life stop you from finding way to get your fix a couple times a week. Ditch out of family obligations, play hooky from work, skip the yard work--what ever it takes to keep feeding the addiction to endorphins. Because in the end it's the best thing you can do for others in your life.

Now for some people traditional exercise works well and I don't mean to down talk it. Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of people enjoy it enough to keep it up, so the success rate is really low.

Good luck and keep it up!

[David Weaver]

Sorry David, but you are wrong.

Body builders use relatively low weight, with typical reps between 10-15 reps.

I guess you've never heard of mike mentzer, casey viator or dorian yates.

Mentzer went all the way down to one rep exercises to train, and won mr. Universe. Dorian Yates was Mr Olympia 5 or 6 years in a row, and not that long ago. Cutler is not a HIT advocate as far as I know, but I have heard him say he keeps his reps at 10 or lower.

There are other bodybuilders who don't use high intensity low rep sets, but to state that bodybuilders do high rep sets with lower weight is antiquated 1950s talk, as is the old wives tale that bodybuilders aren't strong like powerlifters. They may not be at the same specialty exercise as a powerlifter, but a powerlifter wouldn't match a modern body builder with spot exercises, either.

Maybe you're around too many amateurs. The sports science class I took in college a decade and a half ago also recommended low-rep high weight and one set with muscle failure.

[Mike Henderson]

I know you said you wanted to avoid medication but statins work well and have shown to have positive effects other than just lowering your cholesterol.

Mike

[Phil Thien]

It seems to me that more and more research indicates that fat isn't what is going to get you, it is the carbs/sugars. Those people that did Atkins typically increased animal protein intake and still reduced their cholesterol, didn't they?

[Phil Thien]

I know you said you wanted to avoid medication but statins work well and have shown to have positive effects other than just lowering your cholesterol.

Much to the chagrin of my doctor, my entire family has always had very, very low levels of cholesterol. So I've never had to investigate the drugs. What kind of pros do statins have? Any side effects? Are they expensive?

[Mike Henderson]

Much to the chagrin of my doctor, my entire family has always had very, very low levels of cholesterol. So I've never had to investigate the drugs. What kind of pros do statins have? Any side effects? Are they expensive?

Here's one study that addresses the positive effects of statins, other than reducing cholesterol. Do a search and you can probably find others. Many of the statins are off patent now so they're generic and priced at generic prices. I think even Lipitor (the most prescribed statin) is off patent now. I take simvastatin.

All drugs can have side effects. Talk with your doctor about it.

Mike

[Here's another study.]
[And one more.]
[Another one.]

[John Coloccia]

re: eating all the meat you want, etc.

I did that for 38 years. I never had any problems to speak of until this last round of testing. I was always pretty reasonable with stuff....watch the butter, use healthy oils, stay away from chips and fries most of the time, but I never really thought about it much beyond vaguely trying to "eat healthy". There was a period of a few years where I lost a LOT of weight (I was overweight until I got to be about 23 or so). I did an excellent job keeping it off for almost 15 years until a year or two ago when I was just plagued with injury after injury, stopped biking, and all around just seemed to wind down. It's sort of cycle that feeds on itself.

And I think that culminated with this. That's okay, though. The injuries are healed, I'm eating better, feeling better, and the cholesterol is an extra little motivator to get my butt in gear, so I guess things are culminating towards a positive place now

[Phil Thien]

Here's one study that addresses the positive effects of statins, other than reducing cholesterol. Do a search and you can probably find others. Many of the statins are off patent now so they're generic and priced at generic prices. I think even Lipitor (the most prescribed statin) is off patent now. I take simvastatin.

All drugs can have side effects. Talk with your doctor about it.

Mike

[Here's another study.]
[And one more.]
[Another one.]

Pretty interesting stuff. Two of those (and two others I found) said the statins can decrease the chances of t2 diabetes because they increase insulin sensitivity. But the Wikipedia article says they can increase the chances of diabetes.

But the stuff everyone agrees on looks very promising. Absolutely a drug that could improve the quality of life as we get older.

So if the doc ever tells me things have changed and I need to take them, I think I won't mind as much based on this information. Thanks.