So you’ve
been to the doctor and he ordered you to start on the painful
journey of lowering your cholesterol. You hear about it all
the time, and you didn’t think it was anything more than
taking a pill every morning…but then you found out that
lowering cholesterol involves a real lifestyle change. He preached
to you about exercise, diet, supplements, and old habits to
break. Now it all sounds so daunting. You begin to feel like
you would rather just face the heart problems.
Lowering your cholesterol doesn’t have to be so overwhelming.
There’s no reason to think that you can wake up tomorrow
as a completely different person. Your habits and lifestyle
took time to build, and they will take time to rebuild. The
key is to go in steps. This doesn’t mean “I’ll
eat better.” That’s not a step. “I’ll
cut the bacon out of my breakfast” is a step. “I’ll
cut fast food from my lunch next week” turns the steps
into a strategy.
Your strategy to lowering cholesterol should have a definite
schedule. Spell out each step and mark it on a calendar. If
you smoke twenty cigarettes a day, it won’t be easy
to quit, so cut down to eighteen cigarettes a day. But don’t
tell yourself that you’ll take the next step when you’re
comfortable with eighteen instead of twenty. Make it your
step to eliminate one cigarette per week. This way you have
clearly defined objectives.
Taking small steps makes it easier to focus on your lifestyle
as a whole instead of just one or two cholesterol lowering
areas. It’s easy to say “I’ll start working
on exercise once I get over the hump of this new diet.”
But if your new diet is just a slight change, you have room
to work on exercise as well.
Lowering cholesterol is going to be difficult no matter what.
Yes, there are drugs to help, but any doctor will tell you
that a change of lifestyle is still required. Making those
changes in baby steps will not only make it easier, it will
make you successful. |
