With obesity in the U.K rising more and more people are being diagnosed with high cholesterol, brought on by an over consumption of fatty and sugary foods. Once diagnosed many suffers have to maintain a healthy diet and exercise to control their cholesterol. Here is some advice on how to control your cholesterol level.

Take and Make Note of What You Eat

If possible try to keep some sort of food diary, this doesn’t have to be permanently, but using one for a month or two when you first begin to control your cholesterol can help as you will be able to pinpoint trouble areas in your diet.

Find and Use Replacements for High Cholesterol Ingredients and Meals

When you are eating meals and snacks at home you have the advantage of controlling exactly what you eat and what ingredients you put into your body. A great way to lower cholesterol is to modify usual recipes to a low-fat, low-cholesterol version, which can be done with most meals.

Avoid Fad Diets

Often Cholesterol is linked weight. The key to losing weight and maintaining a low cholesterol is to take your doctors advice and stick to a safe, healthy diet rather then to fad diet, as this can that damage your health. Just simply follow your doctors advised diet and combine with an exercise routine and you will start to see results.

Set Realistic Fitness Goals

Instead of over doing it and setting off hoping to achieve too much at once, choose to focus on regularly modest amount of exercise for example try walking, go swimming, play a sport with a friend. It doesn’t have to be much in order to see results. 

Earlier this week the American public and the fitness industry worldwide received some sad news, ‘the godfather’ of American Fitness, who once said “I can’t die, it would ruin my image”, Jack LaLanne, passed away at the age of 96.

LaLanne was the pioneer of the American workout, he single handedly revolutionised the countries attitude to fitness.  LaLanne brought the concept of daily exercise to the masses of Middle America, which soon filtered through to the rest of the world.  He was the founder of the first ever American gym, in Oakland, California in 1936, and the inventor of many pieces of commercial gym equipment such as the cable pulley system, the leg extension and the Jumping Jack aptly named after the man himself.

Throughout his life LaLanne followed a series of self-generated pointers, which he believed helped him to stay active and healthy into his golden years.  

Consume a Healthy Diet - He was a keen believer of a healthy, high fiber diet, his philosophy was if you consume substandard food today then the next day you yourself will be substandard.

Continue to Push Yourself - Throughout his life LaLanne continuous strived to better himself and to take things up to the next level. At the age 42 LaLanne set a record for the most number of push ups reaching a staggering 1033 in just 23 minutes. Although his greatest achievement came at age of 62, LaLanne swam one mile in Long Beach Harbor, handcuffed and shackled whilst towing 13 boats containing 76 people. He set about recreating a similar challenge at in 1980 at the age of 66, this time around towing 10 boats in Miami, Florida. The boats carried 77 people and he managed to tow them for over a mile in just less tan one hour.

Lift Weights – Before LaLanne came onto the fitness scene exercising with weights was regarded as a form of exercise that only bodybuilders used. Through the use of his fitness clubs and his TV fitness show, he changed the mindset of America, in proving that exercising with weights isn’t just for those with bulging biceps, using weights in your workout regime can help to boost metabolism, burn fat and keep you healthy.

It’s How You Feel Not What the Scales Tell You - Jack LaLanne was a firm believer that to gauge your fitness you have to take into account the way in which you feel, how your clothes fit and how strong and physically fit you are rather then relying on your bathroom scales.

LaLanne is a credit to the health and fitness industry, But most importantly, says Carolyn Katzin a nutritionist who was friends with Mr LaLanne, he did it all the natural way. "He was an everyman, and I guess his legacy was to tell people that anyone could get fit. And he always did it with a smile on his face."

LaLanne died of respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia.