Living a heart healthy lifestyle involves several factors, including diet, exercise, weight management, smoking cessation, and being knowledgeable of your risk factors…just to name a few. Let’s briefly look at some of these factors:

Balancing calories taken in with calories burned is a sure recipe for weight management. A healthy diet is based on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. These foods provide a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytonutrients (nutrients other than vitamins and minerals that protect our bodies from all types of chronic diseases, including heart disease). While these foods should be the centerpiece of our diets, we also need to include low-fat or fat-free dairy foods, lean meats, poultry, and fish. Our goal should be to eat a fat sensible diet that is low in saturated and trans fat and to decrease excess sugar that we get from food and beverages. Last, but not least, we should aim to decrease our sodium, or salt, intake.

Exercise can significantly decrease your risk for heart disease. Your heart is a muscle and needs exercise just like the muscles in your arms or legs. Adults aged 18-65 should aim for at least 30 minutes of daily aerobic activity. Aerobic activity is anything that keeps your heart rate up the entire time you are exercising, such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming, biking, or aerobics. Be creative and come up with fun ways to get moving. Get your children involved; they need the exercise just as much as you do. As an added bonus, any type of weight bearing exercise will help maintain bone density and decrease your risk for developing osteoporosis. Strength training is also important to help control weight and build lean body mass, so try to incorporate some type of weight lifting routine into your schedule as well. The goal is not to become a body builder, just focus on toning those muscles. As always, talk to your doctor before beginning any exercise program.

Cigarette smoking is one of the most preventable causes of heart disease, stroke, and premature death in the US. Within just a few years of quitting, your risk of coronary artery disease and stroke will be similar to that of non-smokers. There are smoking cessation programs across the country to support you as you take this important step. You can also talk to your doctor for medical treatments designed to help you quit.

Diet, exercise, smoking cessation, and weight management are all important factors for living a heart healthy lifestyle, but one of the most important things you can do is be knowledgeable about your risk factors. It is extremely important to be familiar your blood pressure as well as your cholesterol panel. Know what a healthy weight is for your height. Most importantly, dig into your family history and find out if any relatives have suffered from heart disease. If so, it is vital that you make lifestyle changes now to decrease your risk in the future.

Catherine Joiner
Cardiac Clinical Dietician

Catherine Joiner, a registered dietician and volunteer for the American Heart Association, joined the Food for Thought blogging team as a guest writer as Let’s Dish! focuses on heart health in February. Throughout American Heart Month, Catherine will be helping to answer our questions about healthy living, offering practical advice on how to improve your heart health. If you’d like to ask Catherine a question, please email us or add a comment to any one of her posts.