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I have been a Somewhat Regular McDougaller for over 5 years but always cheated a bit and usually ate nuts and some peanut butter. No surprise that I could never lose weight or saw my cholesterol budge below the 180's, it was usually over 200.

Last spring I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and now that is being treated. Over a month ago I sat at a funeral dinner for my elderly aunt and saw all the aunts and uncles who had various health problems, all centered around vascular disease. There were also cousins who had health problems too. Two cousins from that side of the family have already died of heart attacks in their 40's. I decided to get really serious, really fast.

I bought Dr. Esselstyn's book and realized I needed to get all oil and fat out of my diet. I returned to McDougalling with a vengeance and stuck with it. I have probably over-indulged on fruit but my chocolate banana "ice cream" has helped me avoid the real thing.

So, the point of all this is that in May of '07 my cholesterol was 205 and the latest test - two weeks ago which was just three weeks after getting serious - was 137!!!!!

I am just blown away. I haven't lost much weight over the past month, I have about 50 to lose and have only lost about 6 pounds. I never thought I would have a cholesterol below the magic 150 this soon.

There is no emoticon on the list for happy dancing!

Congratulations, Mrs. DP! That is a real accomplishment.

Your experience is similar to mine. The cholesterol drop is substantial and very rapid when the Esselstyn plan is followed 100%. I had a blood test scheduled only 16 days after starting the program. My previous chol, which was of the lowest ever, was 247. My number after 16 days was 120, which was amazing.

Dr. Esselstlyn's experience is that just about everybody will get below 150 pretty quickly if they are compliant. I can't recall where I saw the graph, but cholesterol drops very rapidly with the program.

They do work if you work the program. Some of us may have to add some walking in there to achieve those kind of results though.

And yet, Esselstyn and McDougall are essentially the same. I did what I thought was the right thing for so long with mediocre results, but it turns out I was not doing it "right" because of my frequent cheats with peanut butter and nuts. It has to be 100% all the way, all the time. MWL all the time with "cheats" into 12 Day, like Dr. McDougall says. My hypothyroidism no doubt played a role too.

What did it for me was seeing the pictures of the open arteries and Dr Ess saying No oil, Not A Drop. Oh, and seeing my relatives all with varying degrees of dementia and cardiac insufficiency and needing more stents helped too.

Faith, I have NOT been walking but I really need to get going on that. In the past I have done Leslie Sansone and just love it. Tomorrow morning, I promise myself to start!

And yet it was so easy. I just came back home to McDougalling and my potatoes. The Eat and Be Happy Diet.

Mrs. DP -

After reading your message this morning, I went to my library and got Dr. Esselstyn's book. After a quick peruse, I noticed no mention of olives in the "no" or the "yes" to eat section.

Can you (or others) shed some light on his view of olives? BTW, not olive OIL but actual olives ... Kalamata olives, green olives, black olives, Greek olives, Country olives. Yup, I like the olives BUT I want more to be health and thin than I do want to eat olives! But if I don't have to take them out .....

I'll look it over too, but I'm pretty sure olives are to be avoided. They are usually pretty high in sodium too which with heart patients is avoided.

I'm glad you got the book! It really hit me between the eyes when I saw those angiograms.

Flipped to the pictures ---- WHOA!!!!!

That's what is happening to the BIG veins .... what is going on with the littler ones???????

I do like his simplified approach .... no oil, not one drop. Very little to confuse there. Sometimes I get stuck in the wide range of possibilities in the "occasional" or "moderation" .... I do much better with "no oil, not one drop."

This approach works very well for me, maybe not others ---- different strokes for different folks.

See what I mean? Really makes you sit up and think.

No oil or fat helps you in other ways, you lose your taste for it and don't crave it any more. I found it out this week after an indiscretion and will not do anything like that again.

It is the smaller arteries that cause problems in most cases. I know that is the case for my father now. He will not adopt a low fat diet and has been told that his larger arteries are OK, it's the tiny ones that they can't do bypasses or stents in that are narrowed.

Imagine if a small artery has a thickening in it, and that goes away. Dr. McDougall says that within a few hours of starting a genuine low fat diet those plaques shrink a bit and become more stable.

Congratulations!! That's wonderful!! Question for you -- I was wondering about the "taste for fat" thing, whether "whole fats" like nuts and peanut butter keep that alive, as well as oils. It sounds like your experience was that they did, am I reading that right?

Thx! Pam

Most definitely. I did "raw" last summer for about 3 months and ate nuts and almond butter quite a bit. After that I tried Eat To Live for a while and couldn't shake the nuts and almond butter. I was always looking for something to eat.

For me, definitely nuts are like butter and cheese in keeping my taste for fat alive and well!

Aha!! I suspected as much. I wonder if other ETLers have this issue? For me, it was as much looking for something to fill me up as anything. If I were just starving, an apple with almond butter (or just the almond butter ) would fill me up a heck of a lot more than a pound of broccoli (or at least it seemed that way intuitively). But that would always lead to a binge on *really* bad fats -- and not even always vegan. My ETL attempts have always been a disaster anyway.

Thanks so much for the confirmation! I'm not crazy.

Tx. Pam

In all fairness to Dr. Fuhrman, he does say that someone with heart disease shouldn't eat as many nuts. At least I think he said that, he said if you're trying to lose weight you have to watch the nuts.

What works best for me is starches and no fats. I do put flax seed on my oats or in my smoothies but don't have flax every single day.

If you enter all of your daily food in the CRON-ometer it really helps see the breakdown and the impact of a little bit of high fat food.

Thanks, Mrs D -- I meant no disrespect at all to Dr F or his program, which is a terrific one and does work really well for a lot of folks. I was just glad to see you give me a clue to one of the reasons it hasn't worked well for me -- fat is something I have *big* trouble moderating, and I thought whole fats should work differently for me from oils, but they just don't.

Thanks, and congratulations again!!