Healthy Life - Cholesterol

How difficult to have a healthy life? This is a very basic question that one can always ask himself. It depends actually on his lifestyle whether it's simple or having a glamorous lifestyle (e.g party, alcohol, smoking, etc). General assumption is if the more glamorous your lifestyle, it will be more difficult to have a healthy lifestyle.

I'm not a have that kind of lifestyle, glamorous I mean. It's not so simple either. That's why I'm worrying about my health. I'm working in a small place. Everything is limited, including food choices. Everyday I'm having about the same food. Fried rice, fried kwetiaw, black-pepper chicken, chili chicken, pecel lele, ayam penyet, and instant noodle. I know those are not a healthy food. But what choices do I have? That's why I mentioned that my lifestyle is not so simple.

Even though I'm very aware about the food, I have no choice. I had my cholesterol check-up for the first time last year. The result was not so good. I was 25 years old and yet my cholesterol level was at 253 (healthy person will have less than 200). LDL Cholesterol (also known as bad cholesterol) was at 129, and HDL (good cholesterol) was only 30 where healthy person will have less than 100 for LDL and more than 40 for HDL. The worst was my triglyceride level at 327. A more than double of healthy standard of less than 150. That was my result a year before.

This year I have another checked-up done exactly 1 year after my first result. It's getting worse. The cholesterol level increased to 271 and LDL increased to 167. HDL was at 29 and triglyceride was 320. I still have a long way to go to get ideal cholesterol level. Fortunately, my blood sugar level is normal.

What I'm worried the most is my triglyceride level which was double than healthy standard. I need to do something to lower it. I did some research and found an interesting fact. Triglyceride level is related to sugar level of the food. For example, rice, bread, noodle, and potato are high sugar level food. The suggestion is to reduce the consumption of high sugar level food. Do I need to eat less rice? I cannot eat bread and noodle either. That's a confusing suggestion I guess.

Then I realize that what ever food is good. You only need to control and have a balance overall. For example, avocado. Some people say avocado is a junk but the others say it's good as it has high protein. For sure if you consume avocado more than you should, it will do nothing good and vice versa. That is why I believe we can eat all food but we need to control it. Self consciousness is very important.

Another thing I want to do is exercise. Controlling food consumption only will be difficult to achieve the goal. You need to do exercise at the same time. I've been wanting to have regular jogging as my exercise activity. I'm planning to jog at least two times per week and about 20 minutes per session. I know it's not enough to have only 2 times per week but to start slowly also important to ensure your body can accept the changes better.

I'm still behind from my schedule to have 2 times per week, which means 8 times per month. Until today, I only had 2 times. Let's start slowly. For everyone out there, it's easy to have a healthy life. Start today. It's for your own good and people around you. (Croe.Ta)