TLC Diet: Recipes

What types of meals should you eat on TLC Diet?

Exactly what you eat is up to you, but for the diet to work, you need to follow some rules. Cut saturated fat to less than 7% of your daily calories – which means eating less high-fat dairy, like butter, and ditching fatty meats like salami. Make sure you get no more than 200 milligrams of dietary cholesterol a day, or the amount in about 2 ounces of cheese. And to further drop your bad LDL cholesterol, add in plant stanols or sterols, which are found in vegetable oil and certain types of margarine. If you follow the diet correctly, you'll be eating lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat or nonfat dairy products, fish and poultry without the skin.

TLC Diet Meal Plan

Here's a typical one-day, 1,800-calorie menu on the TLC diet, per "Your Guide To Lowering Your Cholesterol With TLC."

Breakfast

1 cup oatmeal (with 1 cup fat-free milk and 1/4 cup raisins)
1 cup honeydew melon
1 cup calcium-fortified orange juice
1 cup coffee (with 2 tablespoons fat-free milk)

Lunch

Roast beef sandwich
1/2 cup pasta salad with 1/4 cup mixed vegetables
Apple
1 cup unsweetened iced tea

Dinner

Orange roughy
1 cup rice
1/2 cup broccoli
1 cup strawberries topped with 1/2 cup low-fat frozen yogurt

Snack

2 cups popcorn cooked with canola oil
1 cup canned peaches