A healthy lifestyle helps keep your cholesterol in a healthy range. Your body makes all the cholesterol it needs, so you don't need to get any from food — and eating a lot of saturated fat and trans fat can contribute to high cholesterol and related conditions such as heart disease.
Eat for healthy cholesterol
- Limit saturated fat. It comes from animal products (cheese, fatty meats, dairy desserts) and tropical oils such as palm oil; foods high in saturated fat may also be high in cholesterol.
- Choose foods low in saturated fat, trans fat, sodium and added sugars: lean meats, seafood, fat-free or low-fat milk, cheese and yogurt, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
- Eat foods naturally high in fiber — oatmeal and beans (black, pinto, kidney, lima and others) — and unsaturated fats from avocados, vegetable oils like olive oil, and nuts. These may help prevent and manage high LDL ("bad") cholesterol and triglycerides while raising HDL ("good") cholesterol.
- Find recipes: the Million Hearts® program offers healthy, seasonal recipes.
Keep a healthy weight
Overweight and obesity raise LDL cholesterol. Extra body fat changes how your body uses cholesterol and slows its removal of LDL from the blood, together raising your risk of heart disease and stroke.
- Doctors often use body mass index (BMI) — which you can calculate from your height and weight with CDC's online tool — and sometimes waist and hip measurements.
- Ask your doctor what a healthy weight is for you, and make a food and fitness plan together.
Move more
Physical activity helps you keep a healthy weight and lowers cholesterol and blood pressure.
| Who | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Adults | 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise — such as brisk walking or bicycling — every week (Surgeon General) |
| Children and teens | 1 hour of physical activity every day |
Build it into the day: take the stairs, park farther away, walk to the store, do jumping jacks during commercials — and get active as a family.
Don't smoke
Smoking damages blood vessels, speeds hardening of the arteries and greatly raises the risk of heart disease. If you don't smoke, don't start; if you do, quitting lowers your risk. Your doctor can help you quit.
Limit alcohol
Too much alcohol can raise cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood. Men should have no more than two drinks a day, and women no more than one.
Work with your health care team
Talk with your team about your other medical conditions and medicines, and bring a list of questions — Million Hearts® offers one on statins.
Sources
Based on "Preventing High Cholesterol," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.cdc.gov
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