How to improve HDL cholesterol levels

Focus on eating foods in which the calories are easily converted to energy rather than fat. These foods include whole grains, legumes, berries and fruit, lean meats and raw or slightly cooked vegetables.

As you age, you tend to carry more weight around your waist and hips. This type of fat is difficult for your body to process and the "middle age spread" is an indication that your bad cholesterol is high and your good choleserol is low. Including food easily converted to energy will enable you to target the bad fat in your body.

Cutting out fats from your diet will aid in lowering your bad cholesterol. It will also lower your good cholesterol.

Avoid saturated fats and trans fat, but include mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats in your diet. These fats work within your body, patrolling your circulatory system for fatty buildups and breaking them down for your liver to process.

Include foods such as salmon, unsalted nuts, avocados, soybean and canola oils, and seeds such as pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Keep your fat intake to less than 25% of your caloric intake.

Include in your exercise regimen activities to reduce the size of your waist and hip line. Cardio and aerobic exercises are a necessary part of lowering bad cholesterol, but these exercises won't necessarily raise your good cholesterol.

Specific yoga poses and strength-training exercises allow you to focus on sculpting your body shape by burning off the fat that causes lower HDL levels.

Yoga poses include the triangle pose, the cat pose, yoga crunches and the locust pose. Strength training exercises include sit-ups and leg lifts, as well as push-ups.

Integrating yoga in to a weight loss plan

10-minute strength training workouts

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