Cholesterol Fundamentals

Before I get started I’d like to point out that the above photo is from my school days at Show Up Fitness.We’d be studying hard , let me tell you !And those are not booger stains(although they look like it.. at least I hope they aren’t). Onto the show anyways.

If there’s 1 thing Covid has taught us all, take our health and fitness seriously. As it pertains to health I’ve always been an advocate of a healthy blood pressure as a sign of progress over body fat loss. As personal trainers, our goal is to help clients with fitness. I’ve written about the importance of maintaining a healthy blood pressure in the past. In this blog we’ll touch on cholesterol. Just to be clear. This is where anyone in my field as personal trainers defer to the medical professionals, and registered dietician’s . We don’t give any advice here, just information. So lets talk cholesterol.

Cholesterol is made in our liver, but also found in various foods. We need cholesterol for certain processes such as digestion of food. There are 2 types:

HDL( high density lipoprotein), is “good cholesterol”, otherwise known as our body’s vacuum cleaners. Our body naturally produces this, and it carries bad cholesterol back to our liver where its disposed. The American College of Sports Medicine outlines 8 risk factors for coronary heart disease(see above photo). But if HDL is at 60 mg/dl( milligrams /deciliter), one of those risk factors is taken away. In other words, the more HDL the better. Our HDL levels can only be measured with a blood test. But we can improve our HDL levels a few ways:

• Healthy diet/ fruits and veggies
• Limited saturated fats / trans fats/ fried foods
• Exercise regularly ( I’m a big fan of this one for obvious reasons)
• Don’t smoke

LDL( low density lipoprotein), or “bad cholesterol “comes from all of our favorite greasy foods, hot links, sausages, bacon, and various snacks. Point of order one more time, I’ve never told a client that he/ she cannot have a particular food. Yes we can still lose weight and build muscle with some of these foods. I want clients to have a healthy relationship with all foods(hey I threw down this past weekend!)

But we have to maintain a good ratio between the good stuff and the bad stuff. So what’s a good ratio?

To calculate a cholesterol ratio we divide our total cholesterol by HDL. So if our total cholesterol is 200 mg/dl, and our HDL/ good cholesterol is 50 mg/dl 200/50=4. Then reverse it, and divide 50/200=.25, or 1/4th of total cholesterol making a 4:1 ratio. A good ratio is about 3.5 :1.

As a personal a trainer I always want my clients to understand the basics of health and nutrition (while staying in my lane). More good cholesterol,& let’s get back into the gym! ( Thanks for the read!)