I am so damn confused! As some of you already know, for the past month or so I have been on a mission to reduce my cholesterol levels. My last visit to the family physician was pretty pathetic. Not only was he amused because of my miss-matched socks, but he actually guffawed (and trust me . . . that is exactly what it sounded like) when I said that I would rather try to reduce my cholesterol numbers by changing my eating behavior versus taking another prescription drug. I don’t know what it is about our current healthcare professionals but it seems like I never leave their office anymore without another hand-written order for more medicine. I even have a new prescription for my lack of sunlight….. Technically, I could lock myself up in a dark closet and as long as I took my mega dose of Vitamin D, who would need the solar light?

Anyway, following the doctor’s theatrical performance he conceded to my alternative plan and gave me a list of high-cholesterol food items, as well as a list of suggested foods containing little or no cholesterol. O.K. then, I just need to follow this list and my little suffocating arteries will be happy. Well, not necessarily.

Next, we had to go over the whole good cholesterol (HDL), bad cholesterol (LDL) routine. Neither of mine are particularly great, but that’s beside the point. Evidently, the LDL’s are the nasty little buggers that circulate in the blood and can slowly build up in the inner walls of the arteries that feed your heart and brain. The HDL’s (high density lipoproteins) are the “good” cholesterols because high levels seem to protect against heart attacks. And then there are the triclycerides, which are a form of fat made in the body. People with high triclycerides often have a high total cholesterol level, as well.

Now I understand. Prepared with this knowledge, I can finally attack this problem head on. No more of those little LDL’s in my dietary plans. I’ll just follow the magic list that the good doc gave me and I will be on my cholesterol free way……..

First on my list of no, no’s was “saturated fats!” What the hell does this mean? Fat’s rinsed under the faucet? Wet fats? This was not conjuring up a good picture. Now I have to figure out what saturated fats are all about. So I turn to my good old, online Wikipedia to get a definition: “Saturated fat is fat that consists of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain; hence, they are fully saturated with hydrogen atoms.” Say what???? Carbon atoms and hydrogen? Am I on a diet or making a terrorist weapon?

Maybe there’s a more understandable definition, so I call my doctor back. Snicker, snicker, guffaw, guffaw. He condescendingly tells me that saturated fats are mostly animal based - meats, eggs, dairy products. He then tells me to also avoid “trans fats.” Hello? I can’t even imagine what this means - cows with gender identity issues? “No . . . its food like fast food, frozen foods, commercial baked goods, chips and crackers, and margarine. No donuts!”

Wow . . . the list is getting longer and longer. No donuts?

I’m still not giving up. I’ll take a look at the list of healthy food and I’ll adapt. I can live without donuts, McDonalds and T-bones. So, what are the items that I can eat? Green leafy vegetables. O.K., there’s a start. Lime juice and diluted butter-milk. Hum . . . Lean chicken or fish. Wait, I thought that animal products had that saturated fat thing going on? Egg whites. Pickles. Pickles? Oh yea, one other thing. If you look on the labels of the food you purchase at your local grocery store be aware that “cholesterol free” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free from cholesterol. No . . . really! “Cholesterol free” means it has less than 2 milligrams of cholesterol and 2 grams or less fat. So, what it is free from?

I can tell that this whole cholesterol reducing plan of mine is going to be much more difficult than I anticipated. Just when I thought I finally had a handle on the fact that I needed to eat more like a rabbit, but just not eat the rabbit, I read another article that said that you can, in fact, eat an egg a day and it won’t harm your cholesterol levels because it is so high in protein. Now I am really confused.

I wonder if it’s possible to just live on pickles?