High cholesterol - how easy is it to reduce by diet alone?

[whatalovelydayontheintergoodlord]

I had some blood tests for something else, but they also tested my cholesterol and apparently it is high. Its 5.4 and should be under 5.

The GP recommended I cut out saturated fats from my diet, so I'm now being really careful to do this.

I just wanted to know how easy it is to reduce your cholesterol from diet alone? And how long should it take? I have to go back in 6 months for a retest and I'm hoping it will be down by then.

Eat lots of veg and fruit, including raw in salads.

Add more nuts, avocado, olive , peanut, and canola oils, and seeds. Add replace some meat with fish and some with vegetarian meals, to include beans. Try to eat at least 30g fibre a day. Wholemeal rice, bread or pasta instead of white. You may need to track at first to see what 30g looks like.

If you do this , you are essentially raising your good cholesterol and this in itself will lower your bad cholesterol, by counteracting it (your cholesterol number is a combination of both. More good = less bad, put simply).

I replaced all oils with olive oil. I eat whole nuts daily (they are now known to be 30% less calorific than was previously believed).

Ps Eggs will not raise your cholesterol levels.

I found mine went down each 3 month period it was measured, over a year.

Pps it's really motivating seeing it go down.

It depends what is causing the high cholesterol - we have genetic high cholesterol running in our family and I was told that although it's always good to make positive lifestyle changes, diet won't make much difference to this type of high cholesterol and statins are the only option. The levels tend to be very high when diagnosed though, mine was 11.

I already eat a lot of veggie meals as my DH is veggie and does most of the cooking. I do eat fish or chicken when I make it myself. Not into red meat at all, except mince in things like chilli. Could always go for veggie chilli option instead.

My downfall is butter (hate margarine spreads) so will stop eating this entirely. Also pastries (from lancashire so love a good pie 😁) and crisps.

I dont eat much sweet stuff at all generally, so that's not much of a loss.

Is olive oil better than sunflower oil?

I dont think there's any genetic high cholesterol in my family, not that I know of anyway.

My doctor recommended oatmeal and other things with soluble fibre.