Cookies PSA

I have high cholesterol. My doctor has put me on a lower-your-cholesterol diet. No one wants me to take meds, and I really haven't been trying to lower my cholesterol--just feeling guilty about not trying. So, today marks the end of one week of trying.

This hard if you like cheese.

• I'm supposed to exercise for 30 min. 5 times a week.
• I did exercise for 30 min. 1 time this week, the day I went to the doctor.

• I am supposed to limit my cholesterol to 200 mg per day and my saturated fat to 13 g per day.
• I went over my limit once. On one day, we had pizza at school for a special event, and then I ate pizza that night because lunch pushed me over my fat limit and Husband and were both too tired to clean the nasty kitchen in order to make a healthy dinner.

• I am supposed to eat 25 g of fiber per day, half soluble fiber.
• I've hit 20 all but one day. I haven't hit 25 yet. But I eat lots of beans, so I'm getting the soluble fiber.

I really don't have to worry about the cholesterol because I'm a vegetarian and only get the cholesterol from cheese and eggs. And I hit the fat limit with cheese before I hit the cholesterol limit. And one egg is 212 mg cholesterol, so on a day I eat an egg, I just forgo the cheese. And I rarely eat eggs. That's easy.

Fat, however, is in everything packaged or cooked. I think if I only eat cheese once a day, I should be okay.

And, now, the cookies. I just made chocolate chip cookies. Partly as an experiment to figure out the fat/cholesterol content, but mostly because I wanted them. I used the Nestle recipe (because really, why would you use anything else? The only way to make that recipe any better is to not use Nestle chocolate. And halve the salt).

We normally use Smart Balance, but I had some butter, so I used a blend with this batch, but I figured out the numbers for with all butter and all Smart Balance.

With butter, 1 cookie has 5 g saturated fat and 22 mg of cholesterol.
With Smart Balance, 1 cookie has 2.5 g of saturated fat and 10 mg of cholesterol.

1 cookie is 1 rounded tbsp of dough. According to the bag, this should result in 60 cookies. I got 40. Apparently I have giant tablespoons. If you have Nestle-sized tablespoons, you will have more cookies, but your cookies will be smaller, I guess.