The Therapeutic Lifestyles Changes (TLC) Diet helps to lower the cholesterol of people who have a heart disease or at risk of developing one.
The TLC section of the NHLBI contains online tools similar to those for the Healthy Heart diet. The guidelines for the low-saturated fat, low-cholesterol TLC diet are:
-The person should eat just enough calories to achieve or maintain a healthy weight and reduce the blood cholesterol level.
-Saturated fat should account for less than 7% of the daily total calorie total.
-Fat consumed amounts to 25 to 35%% of the day’s total calories.
-The person should eat less than 200 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day.
-Sodium intake should be limited to 2,400 milligrams per day.
A healthy heart diet helps people age 2 and older reduce the risk of cardiac disease. This is achieved by the consumption of foods that keep total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol at healthy levels.
A healthy heart diet may involve lowering cholesterol levels by reducing the amount of foods high in cholesterol, fat, and sodium. At the same time, people work to increase HDL levels through diet and exercise.
The healthy heart diet is a lifelong process that starts with education about the effects of food on the heart. People on this diet learn to make wise food choices, relying on information including the nutritional labels on processed food. The labels provide information about the calories, fats, sodium, and sugar in a single serving of the product.
