Eating a healthy diet doesn't mean the end of taste—just check out this collection of delicious low-cholesterol recipes. You'll forget you're eating for your health!

Parmesan Potato Pancake

With only 4 milligrams of cholesterol, this potato pancake packs a punch of flavor. Olive oil is a healthier way to fry or sauté foods because it's rich in monounsaturated fat.

Try this recipe: Parmesan Potato Pancake

Ginger-Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream Sandwiches

Instead of buying your own ice cream sandwiches, which may contain saturated or trans fat, use this DIY recipe. And, for a more figure-friendly option, use fat-free ice cream. 

Try this recipe: Ginger-Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream Sandwiches

Sangria

Health experts say that red wine—in moderation—can help raise HDL, the good cholesterol.

Try this recipe: Sangria

Apple-Cinnamon Granola

Whole grains in granola are a tasty way to promote heart health. The oats in this recipe contain soluble fiber, which reduces bad cholesterol. Making your own granola allows you to keep the sugar content lower than store-bought brands.

Try this recipe: Apple-Cinnamon Granola

Lighter Penne a la Vodka

Just because you have to cut cholesterol doesn't mean you have to cut flavor. Choosing low-fat or fat-free milk instead of a cream creates a lighter, lower-cholesterol sauce.

Try this recipe: Lighter Penne à la Vodka

Morning Glory Muffins

Packing in fruits and nuts into a whole-grain muffin provides a boost of heart-healthy fiber. Enjoy this breakfast treat with a fat-free yogurt. 

Try this recipe: Morning Glory Muffins

Arugula and Goat Cheese Pizza

Even if you have high cholesterol, you can still enjoy pizza. This recipe cuts back on cheese, amps up the veggie intake, and adds walnuts, which may help lower blood cholesterol.

Try this recipe: Arugula and Goat Cheese Pizza

Carrot-Ginger Soup

Since cholesterol is found in many animal products, this creamy veggie-based soup keeps the cholesterol count low. Carrots are a great source of beta-carotene. 

Try this recipe: Carrot-Ginger Soup

Jane's Vegetarian Chili

Vegetarian chili is cholesterol free and packed with fiber. Topping it with cheese will add some cholesterol, but choose reduced-or fat-free to cut back on saturated fat. 

Try this recipe: Jane's Vegetarian Chili

Bean and Corn Salsa

Most dips are fat-and cholesterol-laden, but salsa is a light yet savory snack. Serve with multigrain tortilla chips that have about 3 grams of fiber per serving. 

Try this recipe: Bean and Corn Salsa

Lemon-Asparagus Pasta

Meat-based sauces quickly rack up cholesterol, but this tangy pasta keeps it heart-healthy with fresh asparagus and lemon. Try whole-wheat pasta to sneak in some fiber.

Try this recipe: Lemon-Asparagus Pasta

Two-Potato Salad With Mustard-Chive Dressing

Adding sweet potatoes to your traditional potato salad is a great way to get a boost of fiber and vitamin A. Try fat-free mayonnaise to cut back even more on fat. 

Try this recipe: Two-Potato Salad With Mustard-Chive Dressing

Linguine With Red Pepper Sauce

Without meat or dairy, veggie-based sauces get the cholesterol green light. Red bell peppers add a subtle flavor and contain two heart-healthy powerhouses: vitamin B6 and folic acid.

Try this recipe: Linguine With Red Pepper Sauce

Grilled Scallops With Lemon-Chickpea Salad

Scallops are a great source of vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids. And the combination of vitamin C and A in the spinach prevents cholesterol from building up in blood vessels.

Try this recipe: Grilled Scallops With Lemon-Chickpea Salad

Mixed Green Salad With Dried Plums and Toasted Pecans

Fill up on a fresh, green salad and feel healthy and satisfied. Dark greens are rich in folate, potassium, and fiber. Be wary of creamy dressings, which can pack on the saturated fat.

Try this recipe: Mixed Green Salad With Dried Plums and Toasted Pecans

Mediterranean Stuffed Tomatoes

Savor these tomatoes as an appetizer or a snack. They're rich in flavor and high in lycopene, an antioxidant that helps prevent the clogging of the arteries by stopping the oxidation of cholesterol. 

Try this recipe: Mediterranean Stuffed Tomatoes

Marinated Feta and Olive Skewers

These flavor-packed skewers are a great treat. Goat cheese is a great source of calcium, and the serving size doesn't boast too much cholesterol. 

Try this recipe: Marinated Feta and Olive Skewers

Quick Roasted Vegetable Fajitas

This Mexican-inspired vegetarian dish is full of protein and monounsaturated fat. Packed with low-cal spices and salsa, you'll never miss the meat, and fat-free refried beans add a healthy dose of fiber. Choose fat-free cheese to cut out extra fat.

Try this recipe: Quick Roasted Vegetable Fajitas

Lightened Waldorf Salad

By using fat-free mayonnaise and fat-free yogurt, you can cut back on cholesterol and fat. The lighter the dressing, the more you can taste the fruity and nutty flavors.

Try this recipe: Lightened Waldorf Salad

Grilled Zucchini Roll-Ups With Herbs and Cheese

These easy-to-make roll-ups are perfect for appetizers or a light lunch. Each roll packs a punch with fiber, protein, and monounsaturated fat. 

Try this recipe: Grilled Zucchini Roll-Ups With Herbs and Cheese

By Whitney Provost

When it comes to weight loss, the scale can be a good measure of progress, particularly if you have a lot of weight to lose. But if you place too much emphasis on your weight and not enough on your body composition (the ratio of fat to lean muscle), you're only getting half the story. Plus, dreading your weigh-in or obsessing over the number on the scale is unproductive and can lead to unhealthy behaviors such as bingeing or starving yourself. Losing pounds doesn't always mean losing fat. Here's why the scale can be misleading.

The scale doesn't tell you how much fat you have. Your scale does exactly what it's supposed to—it tells you how much you weigh. But in addition to measuring your weight, the scale weighs bone, water, muscle, organs, and undigested food. When the number on the scale goes up or down, it doesn't represent only fat loss or muscle gain. It measures fluctuations in glycogen (stored carbohydrates) and water, and it even measures how much that breakfast you ate weighs.

You may wonder about scales that claim to measure your body fat. These send small electrical currents up one leg, through your pelvis, and down the other leg to determine your body's density. Then a formula is used to estimate your body fat. The problem with these scales is that they're notoriously inaccurate. However, they are usually consistent in their readings, so they can be helpful as a measuring tool. Even though the body fat reading might be off by as much as 5 or 10 percent, if the number trends downward over time, you know you're on the right track.

The scale can't tell if you've gained muscle. A pound of muscle is like a brick, small and compact. A pound of fat is like a fluffy feather pillow, bulky and lumpy. When you gain muscle and lose fat, your body gets smaller and tighter. Building muscle also makes it possible to drop clothing sizes without a big change in weight. Perhaps after a 90-day fitness program, the scale says you lost 7 pounds, which may not sound like much. But what if you actually lost 12 pounds of fat and gained 5 pounds of muscle? That's a remarkable improvement in your body composition, but you wouldn't know it if you only used your regular bathroom scale to track your progress.

You didn't really gain 5 pounds of fat overnight. You may step on the scale one morning and shriek in disbelief because the number is five digits higher than it was the day before. Stop panicking. Unless you ate an extra 17,500 calories the previous day, you didn't gain fat (a pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories). Your scale is registering water, stored carbohydrates, and food. Also, cheap bathroom scales may have measurement errors, giving slightly different readings even when you're at exactly the same weight.

Your body's water levels are constantly changing. The scale can move up or down depending on how much water you drink, how much salt you consume, how much you sweat, and how many carbohydrates you eat. An average person can see a daily fluctuation in water weight of about 2 pounds, without any changes to diet or exercise habits. These fluctuations do not signify fat loss, and watching the scale move up and down every day can be frustrating for many dieters.

If you're trying to achieve a healthy weight and improve the way you look, you should focus less on what the scale says and more on developing the good habits that will produce results. To get lean and strong, with low body fat and nice muscle tone, there are three things you should do:

Cardio plus weight lifting (or other resistance training). Cardio workouts raise your heart rate to help you improve your fitness level, burn calories, and shed fat. Resistance training builds muscle, which boosts your metabolism and helps you burn even more calories. Fitness programs like P90X®, ChaLEAN Extreme®, and RevAbs™ all use cardio plus resistance training to improve muscle mass and burn fat.

Healthy diet. No matter how much you exercise, you'll never reach your fat-loss goals if you don't follow a healthy diet consisting of protein, vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. The right foods in controlled portions will fuel your body as it shrinks.

Track your progress. If you don't use the scale, you need to do something else to check your progress.

One of the best ways to keep track of your changing body is to use a tape measure. Record your chest, waist, hip, thigh, arm, and wrist measurements in a journal or the guidebook that comes with your workout program. Update the measurements every 30 days to see how your body changes.

Pictures are also good indicators of progress. Have someone take front, side, and back photos of you every 30 days and keep these with your body measurements.

Body fat testers can also be used regularly to track your fat loss. Monitoring your progress with tools other than the scale will give you a more realistic assessment of your weight loss success.

Hydrostatic (underwater) testing and DEXA (X-ray) scans use advanced technology to measure your body fat with a high degree of accuracy. An Internet search can help you find testing centers in your area.

Notice how your clothes fit. This is a foolproof way to prove that you're losing weight. If your clothes are getting looser, your body is shrinking, even if you don't see a big change in the mirror yet.

By Monica Gomez

Deep-fried, please! From frog legs to Oreo® cookies, you can find all sorts of goodies battered up and deep fried at the fair. You can even find something called a "cow pile," and no, you don't need a shovel, gloves, and a mask for this pile. You just need a spoon and a few napkins, if you're inclined. What do you know about these culinary delights? Match the fair food with its calorie and fat contents.

1. Giant turkey leg: 1,136 calories and 54 grams of fat. Put the leg down. Walk away. Good news. You're going to live. That calorie count is almost as much as some people consume in an entire day! Let's compare, and I'll even be a little crazy by including the calorie count of a smaller turkey leg with skin. A 4-oz. serving of turkey leg (roasted, with skin) has 192 calories and 6.1 grams of fat (1.9 grams of saturated fat). Leave that giant leg at the fair—the giant everything, actually—and roast (not fry!) your own turkey leg.
2. Funnel cake: 760 calories and 44 grams of fat. According to The Daily Plate, a funnel cake is "batter poured through a funnel into hot oil in a circular pattern and deep frying it until golden-brown, often served with powdered sugar, jam, or other toppings." Sounds like sugary goodness to me, until I realize that 396 of those calories are from fat and the 44 grams of fat equal 68 percent of the daily allowance. Maybe the 80 grams of carbs will give you a nice rush when you brave the human slingshot.
3. Elephant ears: 606 calories and 24 grams of fat. Not the large-leaved plant variety, of course. I mean the fried, cinnamony, sugary, and flattened dough variety that is served up at the fair. Not to be mistaken with the funnel cake, a serving of two elephant ears also contains 844 milligrams of sodium and 90 grams of carbs. Dee-lish!
4. Footlong hot dog with bun: 470 calories and 25 grams of fat. This is before the relish, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, bacon (maybe even chocolate-covered bacon, since it's accessible), onion, and whatever else you find in the condiment section to experiment with. Maybe the salty zing from those 1,220 milligrams of sodium will kill the taste of any experiment gone wrong. Just get on Disk-O when you're done eating that hot dog—you won't know what to blame for that stomachache.
5. Deep-fried Snickers®: 444 calories and 29 grams of fat. And that's just for the regular-size bar. Before batter and oil, that Snickers bar has a mere 163 calories and 8.9 grams of fat. A king-size bar (no batter, no frying) has 510 calories and 27.8 grams of fat. Dip it in batter and fry it, and you end up with something as bad as meat lover's ice cream (sorry, bacon lovers).

By Joe Wilkes

This easy-to-make southwestern salsa can be served as a small side salad, a dip, or a relish for your favorite meat, poultry, or fish dish. It's virtually fat free and loaded with antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

• 2 ears of sweet corn, grilled
• 1 jalapeño pepper, minced
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
• 3 green onions, chopped
• ½ red onion, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. cilantro, chopped
• ¼ cup lime juice
• Salt to taste

Grill two ears of shucked corn on medium heat for 5 to 8 minutes. If you don't have a grill, cut the kernels off the corn and pan-roast them until they're soft and starting to brown. Combine corn with the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl. Refrigerate covered for at least 2 hours. Makes 4 servings.

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Nutritional Information:

• Calories: 75
• Protein: 3 g
• Fiber: 3 g
• Carbs: 17 g
• Fat Total: 0.5 g
• Saturated Fat: 0 g

By Adrienne Turner

FoxNews.com

Fat is a word that most of us do not want to hear on a regular basis, especially when it relates to our own bodies. We associate fat with growing beer guts, tighter pants, and less-than-ideal sex and social lives.

However, fat plays a critical role in many of the processes our bodies go through each and every day, and it has both positive and negative sides.

This three-letter-word has more secrets than you know...

1. Fat cells can swell to as much as six times their minimum size
   
   
   
   When you consume more calories than you burn off, fat cells in the body swell to as much as six times their minimum size, and they begin to multiply — from 40 billion in an average adult up to 100 billion. Everyone has fat cells; they begin to form and take shape before birth. Around the age of 16, the body's fat cells are mature, and then lifestyle and genes play a role in gaining or losing weight as you age.
   
   
   
   Fat cells are critical for survival and help assist the body's "store and management" energy system. Simply put, fat that is not used for fuel immediately is stored for later use. To that end, if you're eating high-calorie meals every day and not burning very many calories, your fat cells swell and multiply, resulting in weight gain.
   
2. Fat cells secrete extra estrogen
   
   
   
   Carrying a few extra pounds may also wreak havoc on your hormonal balance, leading to a variety of illnesses and health risks. Estrogen, the classified "female hormone," is a fat-storing hormone that is also naturally present in small amounts in men. But when you gain weight, estrogen levels rise and other health problems ensue.
   
   
   
   Although estrogen is necessary in men, as it regulates a healthy libido, improves brain function (especially memory) and protects the heart, when the levels are too high, testosterone levels are reduced, and many men experience fatigue, muscle tone loss, decreased sexual function, and in some cases, enlarged prostates. In other words, there are no good side effects to increased estrogen levels in men.
   
3. If you lose a lot of weight, your fat cells shrink, but they do not disappear
   
   
   
   Having 100 billion fat cells in your body from weight gain may sound scary. The good news is that you can still lose weight after your fat cells swell and multiply; in fact, when you lose weight, your fat cells shrink. Although their total number only decreases slightly (if at all), the cells become less metabolically active and remain in your body, waiting for you to pick up a bag of pork rinds so they can expand again.
   
   
   
   This means that it's better to try to maintain a normal weight than to gain and lose weight on fast, "quick fix" types of diets. Someone who has maintained a normal weight (i.e. has been relatively thin) all their life will have an easier time staying at that weight than someone whose fat cells have swelled and multiplied.
   
4. Fat tissue attracts cells that promote inflammation
   
   
   
   Aside from the lousy way you feel when you're packing a few extra pounds, there are also internal complications that result from excess fat.
   
   
   
   Fat tissue attracts immune system cells called macrophages that promote inflammation in the body. So, if you are carrying any extra fat, your body begins to produce an immune response similar to the reaction your body exhibits when you develop the flu or have an injury.
   
   
   
   Inflammation's intended purpose in the body is to fight infection. Therefore, your body sees the extra fat calories that you consume from fried calamari and greasy pizza as an invasion in the body.
   
   
   
   But don't worry: You don't have to give up your favorite foods just yet. Studies show that decreasing your total body weight by as little as 10% (if you're overweight) can improve your health and limit the immune response that your body exhibits from the extra weight.
   
5. Fat cells behave differently in different parts of the body
   
   
   
   Men typically carry excess weight in the midsection; thus, if you gain weight (whether you drink beer or not), most of it will go directly to your gut first.
   
   
   
   Belly fat increases the likelihood of bad cholesterol (LDL), triggers extra fat in the bloodstream, and raises blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Furthermore, abdominal fat tends to be deeper inside the body, as opposed to hip or thigh fat, which is stored directly under the skin.
   
   
   
   Fat cells within the abdomen are metabolically more active than fat cells located in other areas of the body. They release more fatty acids, which can lead to diabetes, coronary artery disease, stroke, and certain cancers. Abdominal fat cells may also affect the healthy functioning of the liver.
   
   
   
   Unfortunately, there is no way to target weight loss in one specific area of the body (i.e. your abs). So, in order to lose your spare tire, you must exercise your entire body. The good news is that excess weight in the midsection is usually the fastest to come off during regular exercise.
   
6. If you consume no fat at all, you will short-circuit your body
   
   
   
   If you avoid consuming any fat, you will short-circuit your body's natural system for transporting vitamins through the body and regulating cholesterol levels.
   
   
   
   As noted above, fats are critical for maintaining your body's natural processes, such as vitamin absorption and energy production. Without these particular fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K), the body cannot suitably absorb calcium, hormone production may be negatively affected, and blood may have difficulty forming and/or clotting properly.
   
   
   
   A lack of fat-soluble vitamins can lead to serious health problems, including night blindness, rickets, anemia, and internal bleeding. Furthermore, when the body cannot absorb calcium, bones can become weak and brittle.
   
   
   
   Fat — the unsaturated type — can also play a role in regulating cholesterol by lowering your "bad" (LDL) cholesterol levels.
   
7. Fat calories should only be 30 percent of your total daily calories
   
   
   
   Despite all of its secrets, fat is not the enemy. A certain amount of fat is needed to maintain the normal functioning of your body's internal processes. Fats aid in the absorption of certain vitamins, and above all, they provide your body with the energy it needs to function every day.
   
   
   
   A healthy diet should take approximately 30% of its total calories from fat. However, keep in mind that fat contains twice the number of calories of a carbohydrate or protein, and that different fats are considered "healthier" than others.
   
   
   
   Saturated fat, which is derived from red meat and dairy products, tends to raise bad (LDL) cholesterol levels more than other types of fat, such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in nuts, olive oil and fatty fish.
   
   
   
   Saturated fat has also been linked to abdominal obesity, as has trans fat, which is found in many processed foods.
   

Coexisting With Fat

Despite its ugly reputation, you can have a healthy relationship with fat and maintain a lean body. Here are some tips:

1. Choose "healthy" fats (olive oil, nuts and fatty fish) and bypass the obvious "bad" fats (fried/fast food, baked goods and sugary soft drinks)
2. Steer clear of processed foods and eat animal products (meat and dairy) in moderation
3. Watch your abs — if you're belly has started to resemble the spare tire sitting in the trunk of your car, get to the gym!