Who Would Benefit from The Thin and Healthy™ Program?
The Thin and Healthy™ program is ideal for people who:
- Want to be healthy.
- Want to lose weight.
- Have a BMI of 25 or higher.
- Are responsible for keeping family members healthy. (Check this BMI calculator for children and teens.)
- Have cholesterol levels <150.
- Have blood pressure <110/70.
- Have inflammation.
- Have periodontal disease.
- Have heart disease.
- Have diabetes.
- Have gall stones.
- Have kidney stones.
My Weight-Loss Story
About five years ago I decided to go on a whole foods, plant-based diet because of the research I was doing for my book, Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection?
The more I studied diet, the more I realized that most restaurant food comes loaded with fats and salt and other things that weren't healthy, so I made the decision to fix my own meals.
I reopened my kitchen and started cooking. During the first year of my new way of eating, I dropped the extra twenty pounds I had been carrying around from previously eating in restaurants nearly every night.
Meal plans were hard to come up with, but I persevered and eventually wrote a book of recipes, Coco's Healthy Cooking.
Fast forward another year and the Thin and Healthy™ program is ready to help you make an even easier transition. All of your meals are planned and the recipes are so simple, even the busiest, professional person can follow the plan.
After five years, I have totally gotten used to eating this way. I have kept those twenty pounds off and I definitely have more energy and stamina - even though I am five years older.
Thin and Healthy™
Thin and Healthy™ is a whole foods program of healthy eating for the entire family. Thin and Healthy™ is also a program for healthy weight loss. Most people know that to be healthy they should be eating a whole foods diet. They also know that to be healthy is to be thin. This is a structured program so all you have to do is choose between one or two options and the rest is figured out for you. It's easy, simple and most of all, effective.
Phil's High Cholesterol Story
Phil was laughing and joking as he headed off to the station. Later that day, Philip collapsed and died suddenly from a heart attack. He was just 30 years old.
It was during a light-hearted game of cricket that Phil complained of feeling unwell and went to sit down. A friend offered him a bottle of water, but before he could take a sip he fell off the chair face first and began convulsing. Despite efforts from his colleagues and paramedics, who arrived on the scene in three-and-a-half minutes, he never regained consciousness and died in hospital an hour later.
The inquest last September gave the cause of death as heart disease as a result of a coronary artery problem brought on by familial hypercholesterolaemia. This is an inherited condition where sufferers have a higher level of cholesterol from birth, unlike the general population who develop it later in life if they have an unhealthy lifestyle. As such, sufferers’ arteries start being affected from a younger age and because this can go unnoticed for many years it puts them at risk of early heart disease.
Although Phil was sporty, didn’t smoke, rarely drank and had a healthy diet, his high cholesterol had been flagged up at a routine work medical six months before his death. ‘He wasn’t that surprised because his mum had always had high cholesterol. He hadn’t done as much sport since the boys were born and had put on a bit of weight but nothing major and his GP wasn’t overly worried,’ says his wife, Kate.
Phil’s GP offered him the option of reducing his cholesterol through medication or diet and Phil went for the latter. ‘He cut out cheese, and managed to bring his cholesterol level down from 8 to 6 [the recommended level is below 5]. The doctor said, “You’re doing all the right things,”’ says Kate. However, a microscopic examination of his heart during the postmortem revealed that by the time Phil’s high cholesterol had been diagnosed, his arteries were already so furred up that it was too little, too late.
Familial hypercholesterolaemia is a genetic condition that affects about one person in 500. ‘In most cases it’s a dominant gene so if one parent has it their children have a 50/50 chance of inheriting it,’ says Dr Michael Papadakis, a lecturer in cardiology at St George’s University of London who has carried out research for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) into screening for inherited heart diseases. ‘If untreated up to 50 per cent of people with the condition will have had some sort of trouble by the age of 50 — whether that’s angina or a heart attack — but only a small minority will drop dead suddenly at a young age.’
If there is a family history of early heart attacks, a family member has been diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolaemia, or you have warning signs such as yellow deposits around the eye or small lumps on the hands or tendons, your GP will first offer a blood test to determine your cholesterol levels. If these are significantly elevated they may refer you for gene testing.
‘If you know you have the condition, the most important thing is to lead a healthy lifestyle,’ says Dr Papadakis. ‘Avoid all the risk factors, of which smoking is the number one. It’s also important to have a healthy diet. Exercise can also reduce cholesterol and blood pressure.
‘Treatment options that reduce cholesterol can range from taking tablets such as statins to mechanically filtering cholesterol out of the patient’s blood and even liver transplantation. In individuals who have already developed disease in the heart arteries, inserting a stent to open up the arteries or even a coronary artery bypass may be necessary.’
The Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) thinks that it is important to screen all 14- to 35-year-olds for heart conditions predisposing them to sudden cardiac death, including familial hypercholesterolaemia.
The CRY has said that children as young as eight have died from similar conditions and if family members have high levels of cholesterol, children should get screened as early as possible.