Mediterranian diet help...please

idabug3 · August 2011

I just learned I need to watch my cholesterol. I have been told a mediterranian diet is exellent for doing that. Does anyone have a good diet or resource they can share with me?. I am not even sure what a mediterranian diet entails.

DKBelle · August 2011

http://www.oldwayspt.org/mediterraneandiet

servilia · August 2011

Living with a mediterranean man and having lots of mediterranean friends, I laugh at the way their diet is represented on those kind of sites! LOL Don't get me wrong, the sites have great recommendations but they don't exactly represent the real mediterranean diet very accurately

If I ate the way my husband's family and my mediterranean friends ate (and yes I'm talking about their traditional food).. yikes!!

erinsueburns · August 2011

The most basic premise is to replace carbs, particularly simple and refined carbs, with unsaturated fat. And also to have unsaturated fat with every meal. I do a variation of this. To get in the unsaturated fat I eat alot of pecans and use olive oil, and I am looking into macadamia oil. There are alot of different "methods", but I can tell you this helped my cholesterol immensely. Personally, I had to cut out most grains due to allergies, but I believe whole grains are considered acceptable. I think it also recommends fish as a main protein source.

I didn't find any really good books and mainly relied on information from the research articles. Look in the JAMA. I think I found a few in there.

erinsueburns · August 2011

Go to google scholar, and type in mediterranean diet cholesterol, there are lots of good articles.

astrosnider · August 2011

A Mediterranean diet generally involves consuming things like olive oil, yogurt, tomatoes, chickpeas, couscous, eggplants, zucchini, onions and garlic. You go easy on the red meat and instead have chicken, tuna, sardines and shellfish. Choose lentils, tabbouleh, hummus, whole wheat pita bread and other complex carbohydrates instead of the white bread, white rice and French fries we Americans tend to eat. And to make it all more palatable, don't forget to include lots of herbs, such as parsley, basil, rosemary and oregano.
For recipes go to Epicurious online or to the Epi app on your iPad or iPhone and type in Mediterranean cooking and you will find lots of intriguing ideas, such as Mediterranean Pita Pizza, Mediterranean Salad with Chickpeas and Arugula and Provencal Lamb with Mediterranean Vegetables.
It's a great way to eat, especially in at the summer when you can get lots of fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers market or grow them yourself.

marika33 · October 2011

http://www.oldwayspt.org/mediterraneandiet

great website, thanks!

Carl_Carlson · June 2017

idabug3 wrote: »

I just learned I need to watch my cholesterol. I have been told a mediterranian diet is exellent for doing that. Does anyone have a good diet or resource they can share with me?. I am not even sure what a mediterranian diet entails.

"The Complete Mediterranean Diet" By Michael Ozner, MD from www.Lifeextension.com

PAV8888 · June 2017

Being of Greek origin I used to add olive oil to my food because "healthy and good for cholesterol" and since my cholesterol was generally speaking high adding olive oil would improve my ratio of good (HDL) to bad (LDL) cholesterol...

And it did work with my Total to Good cholesterol ratio being good (below 3.5) while my total cholesterol remained high. This includes the total amount of bad cholesterol. While I remained morbidly obese.

One of the things that I reduced (not eliminated, reduced) during the past few years of losing weight has been my consumption of fats including olive oil. Specifically in terms of olive oil I've gone from 4-6 bottles a year... to 1 bottle over 3 years (that's for my own consumption)

Long story short... losing (a substantial amount of) weight improved all my blood work. Not sure at which exact point the blood work changed during that year; but, the first tests showing the change coincided with approximately 40lbs lost and an increase in daily activity from sedentary to active.

Observationally, this seems to be a common occurrence on MFP regardless of the way of eating and changes of activity that bring about the weight loss.

A lot of people on MFP lose weight by religiously logging their foods, evaluating the satiety and satisfaction they get for the amount of calories they spend, and adjusting what they eat based on that feedback while evaluating their progress based on a trending weight application or web site

jgnatca · June 2017

It's a nice diet, very satisfying. Look at it as a way of eating. Fill up half your dinner plate with a salad. Use a full fat (olive oil) vinaigrette dressing. Another quarter of your plate is a starchy carb like couscous, bread, quinoa or rice. They may be dressed too. (Oil and balsamic vinegar dip for the bread for instance). Your protein will be fish more often. Fatty fish like salmon is good for cholesterol.

jgnatca · June 2017

I just went pintering and googling around and talk about information overload! Egads!

Here's a cool app that will suggest meal plans and recipes. You can ask it to filter for Mediterranean.

https://www.eatthismuch.com

lemurcat12 · June 2017

(The OP was in 2011.)

Sheisinlove109 · June 2017

Along with the diet...
Do you exercise? If not and you can, I'd try some hard work a 4-5 times a week.

Try eating mostly clean and the exercise....should go down.

If you are in the US, I believe a nutritionist is fully covered on most plans, might be worth the call.