I live in a vegetarian household and have been cooking vegetarian meals for about 5 yrs.

My LDL was a bit high a couple of years ago although my HDL was proportionately high as well. (LDL 150mg/HDL 92mg/Tri 45mg) Since my doc was concerned about the LDL numbers, I just cut back on some of the high in fat dairy products I was using. Now I use low fat milk in my tea, don't eat a lot of cheese, and don't use cream sauces as much as before. I still use butter on my toast and eat boiled or poached eggs almost everyday. I think by eliminating some of the saturated fats from my diet did the trick. I also eat nuts (in salads) regularly as well.

This year my LDL was down and my HDL was about the same as it was before. (LDL 118mg/HDL 89mg/Tri 51mg)

We eat pasta, potatoes, rice for dinner along with vegies (now I steam them as I like that better)and a huge salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dressing. I cook with Canola Oil and occasionally Olive Oil and butter. We rarely eat dessert. I don't do much with soy products so I can't help you on that one. Also I react to beans (gas) so we don't have that in our diet.

It is easy to cook vegetarian. You'll find lots of cookbooks on vegetarian cooking. Since I don't spend a lot of time cooking, I don't use many recipes from cookbooks. I have found some yummy recipes from Real Simple magazine which I have incorporated into our meals. I haven't checked, but I believe they would be on the internet as well.

Keep up your cycling! I'm a strong believer that the more exercise we get into our everyday lives, the healthier we are. When I ride a lot, I tend to want the "healthy" as opposed to the "junk" food!