Since it's the last day of American Heart Month, I thought I'd take a second to dispel a myth about eating a high protein diet when it comes to cholesterol.

Since I've started with Go Figure, I've definitely gotten quite a few questions about the program; things like:  Is it hard to stick to? Are you hungry a lot? How much have you lost? ... The usual questions you get with any diet.  I've also had a couple of people ask if I was worried about my cholesterol since you eat so much protein on this diet.  Protein comes in many non-meat forms, but I'm no vegetarian, so I've consumed many steaks, eggs, bacon, etc. since I started.  I dropped quite a few pounds, but I really didn't know about the cholesterol part until recently.

Part of my "Be a better person in 2018" resolution was to give blood on a regular basis.  When you donate blood (at least when you donate at United Blood Services), you have access to your cholesterol numbers.  I was in a couple of weeks ago and nervously asked what my number was.  "192", they said.  That didn't mean a lot to me since I honestly have never looked at it before.  I asked if they happened to still have my stats from the year before.  She was able to pull the number no problem and it was 247.  Once again, didn't mean much until I walked away and did some googling.

As it turns out, anything about 240 is considered High and below 200 is considered good.  So, with my current diet, I've not only lost over 45 lbs., but I'm in way less danger of having a heart attack with these cholesterol numbers.

I honestly started the diet thing just to feel better about the way I looked, so this was just a bonus.  I just thought I should share since I didn't have a great answer when people asked how eating all that grease could possibly be healthy.  Apparently, getting out of the obese category is a pretty powerful weapon against heart disease.  Oh, and for the record, I don't think Kelsey at Go Figure would approve of the amount of bacon that I can consume in a sitting, but she doesn't beat me up about it as long as the scales keep going in the right direction.

 

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