One of my goals this year is to prepare more nutitious meals with less meat. I am not overweight with a BMI of 24 I am far from obese but not as slender as I was in my younger years. You can go to http://www.cdc.gov/ and calculate your BMI by just entering you height and weight. Talk to anyone in their 50% and they will swear that they eat less and weight more. I am not a huge eater and in my early years I could eat most anything and stay the same weight. At age fifty my metabolism just seemed to stop. I try to walk or exercise daily. Two years ago when a blood test revealed my cholesterol to be at 200, my MD wanted to put me on statins to manage the borderline high level. I balked at the suggestion and said I could do it myself. Non-fat latties for me. No more blueberry muffins at Starbucks. Nothing processed. But much to my surprized after one year I did not budge the numbers. So to my dismay I went on the statin Lipitor. (5 mg or 1/2 tablet daily) Two months after I started the drug my total cholesterol was down to 138 and the HDL (or the happy lipidproteins) up to 64. I teach pharmacology so I have little hints for my students to remember which cholesterol is good and which are bad. The "bad" cholesterol or LDL should be below 200 mg/dl and the "happy" HDL should be above 35 mg / dl the best being 64 mg/dl. I did question my siblings (4 brothers and 2 sisters) and overall their health is very good but 3 other siblings have high cholesterol and the other three did not know what their levels were. So I thnk some of my high cholesterol may be related to genetic disposition. I am due for my yearly physical in a few weeks and will talk to my MD about maybe doing a short trial off the drug to see if I can keep it within a good range with just life-style management. No one likes medications even me but when I weigh the benefits I keep on taking the 1/2 tablet nightly along wth my 81 mg of aspirin. I prescribed to a new magazine Health and it has rescipes, beauty hints for all ages, and exercises for different parts of the body. I have tried numerous new rescipies and will post some of my favorites. It it very hard to prepare nutritous meals but I am trying. With the abundance of summer berries and fruits I try to keep a supply washed and sliced in the refrigerator. My husband and I have started a breakfast of 1/4 cup non-fat vanilla yogurt, with a tablespoon or two of Trader Joes apple or mango granola and a sprinkle of berries or fresh fruit.