Easy Slow Cooker Recipes to Lower Your Cholesterol: The Best From VitaClayChef

Having high cholesterol leads to higher risk of heart disease and heart attacks, but a lot of things can be done to alleviate the risk. Changing your lifestyle to a healthier one is the most important thing you can do. Preventing disease is always better than receiving treatment after already succumbing to the condition.

Exercise: We all know that being overweight puts us at risk of having higher cholesterol, so increasing physical activities most of the days of the week will help maintain or achieve a healthy weight along with cholesterol levels. Plus, you get to fit into your jeans easier; how’s that for an exercise?

Quit smoking: Quitting smoking has fast beneficial effects. In 20 minutes after stopping smoking, your blood pressure and heart rate recover from the cigarette-induced spike. Let that go on for three months and observe your blood circulation and lung function beginning to improve. After a year, you’re halving your risk of heart diseases compared to that of a smoker. So don’t stop there, start living clean the rest of your life.

Alcohol control: If you’ve been drinking lately, especially without moderation, you have a higher risk of high cholesterol. If you lower alcohol consumption to only one drink a day (women of all ages and men older than 65) and up to two drinks only (men 65 years and younger), the risk of high blood pressure, heart failure and strokes decrease significantly already. If you don’t drink at all, that’s even better!

Proper/prescribed medications: If you feel that changes in lifestyle isn’t enough to help your problem, seeking medical attention is very important. Taking prescribed medications and continuing your lifestyle change will work better especially if you want to lower your doses over time. If that works, you can possibly stop medications as long as you get better and if the doctor approves.

Choose food wisely: Let’s not forget how you get high cholesterol. Food is the main propagator of high cholesterol levels especially fatty foods like meat. Reducing saturated fats (found in red meat and full-fat dairy products) and trans fats (labeled “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil," -often used in margarine and store-bought cookies, crackers and cakes) works as good as a lifestyle change. Choosing what and what not to eat is best to lessen-even fully eliminate these health-threatening high cholesterol levels. Eating foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (found in fishes), increasing soluble fiber (from oatmeals, vegetables, and fruits) and adding whey protein (from dairy products) in your diet are just a few healthy ways to get a well-managed cholesterol level. Putting simply, eat healthily.

With all these lifestyle changes you need to undertake, and so many restrictions from foods you once loved to eat, enjoying meals can be difficult especially if you don’t have time to experiment to make more exciting meals. Doctors will advise you to lessen meat consumption, stick to vegetables, fruits, and fishes to improve your health, but having no idea how to make these limited choices of food into a more indulging meal, you tend to just stick to plainly sautéed veggies and fishes in low-fat oil and chopped fruits for salad. That’s boring, isn’t it?

So here’s a complete list (beware it’s long) you can do with your food to make the lower-cholesterol journey even better. From main dishes, veggie sides, desserts, snacks, drinks, soup-name it all, SAVE IT ALL!

CRISPY HARISSA CAULIFLOWER
https://vitaclaychef.com/blogs/recipes/vitaclay-crispy-harissa-cauliflower?_pos=1&_sid=34967807e&_ss=r