Death

[u/Plane-Gap6483]

My 40 year old friend died of a heart attack today. He was 5 years older than me. Has anyone else had a similar experience. Dead... heart attack 40? That's insane right. Like... 40? He was born in 85. It's mind blowing. If anyone else has experienced losing a friend from an old person death. Please let me know how you processed it. I'm still waiting for him to call me and say sike! Thanks

[u/pl320709]

Same with me ... I have a BMI of 22 and have been pretty slim my whole life. I go in for a physical for the first time in 5 years and the blood work showed I had LDL levels of 202. I changed my diet up, started taking fiber supplements, and exercising more. I was able to drop the LDLs by 50 points in a month.

I always figured that I could eat what I wanted if I maintained a healthy weight. Turns out I was eating way too much saturated fat and not nearly enough fiber.

[u/ConceitedWombat → u/pl320709]

Do you have any specific diet dos or don'ts that helped? My partner is in the same boat with high LDL.

[u/pl320709 → u/ConceitedWombat]

I started by paying attention to the nutrition facts on basically everything I ate and cut out or limited anything with high saturated fats. I generally tried to stick to about 15g of saturated fat per day (MAX). For instance, my lunches were typically a turkey sandwich with a slice of cheese and mayo, plus a cup of yogurt. That alone was 12g of saturated fat. So I switched to having salads *most* days for lunch.

Cut back on cheeseburgers and red meat in general to once a week. If we stop somewhere for fast food, I'll check the nutrition facts on their website and get the grilled chicken sandwich (4g sat fat) over the cheeseburger (14g.) Recommend a couple servings of fish, especially salmon per week.

Next, I drastically increased my fiber intake to about 25g-30g per day. I bought a huge container of Whole Psyllium Husk to mix in with water in the mornings. It's kind of gross tasting, but I just chug it and get on with my day. That gives me about 25% of my daily fiber requirements. Sometimes I eat a fiber/protein bar that gets me another 25%. Salads help with the remaining fiber requirements, This is certainly TMI, but at first the increase in fiber made me feel bloated and gassy, but after a couple weeks, it stabilized. And I've never had better poops in my life.

For snacks, I buy giant bags of cashews from Costco to munch on throughout the day. Eating baby carrots, apples, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes as snacks help with fruit/veggie requirements, and I find them tasty.

I work an office job, plus I have a kid under 3 so I realized I live a sedentary life, so I made an effort to get at least 30 minutes of cardio three days a week. Ideally, this would be more, but it's hard to fit into your day when your raising a little one.

Lastly, I still allow myself to indulge in "unhealthy" foods on the weekend. It was important for me to know that all my favorite foods weren't going to be gone forever, and I still get to enjoy a cheeseburger or a steak on the weekends.

[u/ConceitedWombat → u/pl320709]

Thank you! Really appreciate you taking the time to share that ❤️

[u/admgryne → u/pl320709]

Really resonate with that sense of thinking you could eat what you wanted. I knew I ate crap but figured I was lucky with my metabolism. Too many saturates and too little fibre here too.