ASHLEY REAVER: I am Ashley Reaver. I'm a registered dietician. I own a private practice in Oakland, California, and I teach at the University of California, Berkeley. I love being a dietician and helping people with their nutrition, because it is an opportunity three times a day, or 21 times a week, that you can directly impact someone's life, and their long term health.

High cholesterol is something that is incredibly prevalent in the US. 95 million Americans have high cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death.

So I have oriented my career around cholesterol, because I don't think that the resources are available to help this large population of people lower their cholesterol levels and prevent that cardiovascular disease.

I think in the US in particular, there is a humongous focus on body weight. And often, I find with my clients, even if they know the types of foods that they're supposed to be eating for their cholesterol, they are distracted by the latest weight loss diet. You can lower your cholesterol and lower your body weight at the same time. Eating a diet that has more fiber in it, has more plants in it, has less fat in it, is also a diet that supports lowering your body weight.

Oftentimes, those diets that are weight loss diets, they are not supportive of lowering your cholesterol. Fad diets usually are increasing saturated fat and decreasing soluble fiber. A diet to lower your cholesterol really should be trying to increase that soluble fiber and drop that saturated fat.

Soluble fiber is the type of fiber that swells when it comes into contact with water. So oats, beans, whole grains, chia seeds. Those are things that really should be in your diet at least once every single day. The other big factor for cholesterol is lowering the intake of saturated fats. And saturated fats primarily come from animal products. And it absolutely doesn't mean that every single person needs to be a vegan, that you can never have ice cream or steak again. It's just balancing how they fit into your diet.

The key to a sustainable diet is not deprivation, it really is moderation. It's finding a balance of including all of the foods that are going to be really important for your health, as well as dropping in, occasionally, the foods that maybe aren't the best for your health, but maybe satisfy other needs that you have as well.

Fried chicken, as an example, is probably not something that you should have multiple days a week. But if that is your mom's specialty, and when you go home, she loves preparing that all day, there has to be some sort of concession there where you can still get enjoyment out of your food without necessarily taking it to the extreme where it negatively impacts your health.

A healthy diet is one that you can really stick with for the rest of your life. It is not something that you start knowing that you can only do it for a short period of time. It's one that satisfies you, not only nutritionally, but also emotionally and mentally.

Crash diets, or fad diets, promise very fast results, and you often do see results a lot faster. Always, though, the downside of any of those stricter types of diets is that if you can't maintain the diet, you're also not going to maintain the results of that diet. Eating more fiber and less saturated fat takes longer to lose weight, but it's more of a sustainable weight loss.

Food is just fuel in your body. Stop putting so much emphasis on things being perfect. Good enough is really, really good enough. Taking a step in the right direction, making progress towards your goals, is also more important than not being able to be perfect, and then just deciding not to do something at all.