TLC Diet Plan: Benefits, What It Is & How to Get Started

What exactly is the TLC diet plan and how can it help? Many of us have heard about the TLC diet plans, but very few have actually explored the new concept of weight loss on the horizon. TLC is an acronym for Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes that aim to regulate the body’s cholesterol levels by changing, regulating and controlling the diet of a person. The TLC diet has been designed by the National Cholesterol Education program to help people achieve a better state of physical health through better food intake, increased physical activity and reduced weight.

What is the basic premise of a TLC diet?

The TLC diet focuses primarily on bringing down the blood cholesterol levels to reduce the chances of any heart ailments, diseases or problems. The aim is to bring about a change in the eating habits and push towards an overall lifestyle change to ensure the habit of healthy living. This includes more physical workouts to stay fit, adopting healthy eating habits, community service to engage and increase social skills and create awareness. The TLC diet recommendations include:

• Reduce the intake of saturated fats to or below 7% of the total intake of calories for the body
• 200 milligrams or below intake for the body’s cholesterol
• Limit the sodium intake to about 2400 milligrams per day
• Calorie intake to be limited to meet the daily health requirement for the body
• Increase and include physical activity for each day to ensure a healthy weight

How does it work?

The aim of the TLC diet is to reduce the consumption of saturated fatty acids in the day-to-day food intake to a minimum and replace these with unsaturated fatty acids to promote a healthier lifestyle and food choices. The easiest way to tell saturated fats is that these are solid at room temperatures. Some good things about this form of diet are:

• Easy to follow, maintain and relatively simple and straightforward
• It aims to bring about an overall change in one’s food habits and lifestyle
• Aims to educate people to look at the ingredients of what they eat, when they eat and how much they eat to help the person make smarter choices about their food
• One should not simply adopt the TLC diet plan for weight loss, though the first few weeks and changes in diet will lead to weight loss. Yet it is not primarily designed for the purpose of weight loss

A lot of the onus of the success of the TLC diet plan is on the individual following the diet; it calls for self assessment and control. While it aims to reduce the blood sugar and cholesterol levels, it is important to ensure self checks and evaluations. If the TLC diet for high cholesterol does not seem to help, one might need to consult a doctor and even take the necessary medicines to bring cholesterol in check and control.

Success or Failure of the TLC diet plan:

The success or failure of the TLC diet is highly dependent on the person following the diet. It is important to keep in mind that the aim of the TLC diet plan is to reduce cholesterol levels and not reduce weight though the same could be an effect of adopting the health regime. Keep a strict vigil on your own weight and watch what you eat. Will cum determination is the key to the success of the TLC diet and a person needs to keep regular checkups in place to manage and track his progress. Consult a doctor before making any drastic changes to your diet plan.