One of the best ways to protect your heart health starts with what’s on your plate.
Diet is a powerful tool for preventing or managing heart disease. These 10 tips — about food choices and habits around food and drink — offer a strong strategy for creating a heart-healthy diet you can live with for life:
- Choose whole grains, not refined grains such as white flour.
- Choose fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks and side dishes. Aim to eat two to four servings of fruit per day, and three to five servings of vegetables.
- Emphasize healthy sources of protein like beans, peas, lentils and nuts. If you do eat meat, choose skinless and lean options. Say yes to fish!
- Choose low-fat dairy products.
- When it comes to fat, look for unsaturated options. Avoid the saturated fat found in coconut oil, butter and fatty meats.
- Make a shopping list before you go to the grocery store to avoid picking up junk food on impulse.
- Read food labels; look at sodium content and choose low-sodium alternatives.
- Stick to a healthy dining plan when eating out.
- Eat fewer processed foods, which tend to be high in salt to mask the taste of chemicals and additives they contain. Examples include hot dogs and frozen dinners.
- Avoid added sugars in beverages and packaged foods.
- Limit alcohol. One drink is defined as one 12-ounce beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces of liquor. Women should have no more than one serving of alcohol per day, men no more than two. Try “mocktails” for something festive to drink that has no alcohol.
Balance what you eat with what you do
When we make a habit of eating healthy food, we’re more likely to feel full and satisfied — imagine trying to overeat on broccoli!
However, it’s still important to have a good sense of how to balance what you eat with the amount of exercise you tend to get as part of your lifestyle. For example, if you have a job where you sit a lot, you would need to eat less than if your work requires you to be on your feet and moving all day.
Other factors like your age, gender, height, and weight all play a role in how many calories you burn in a day.
Knowledge is power. Use an online BMI calculator to find out how many calories you need to consume to maintain your weight. Consider keeping a food journal for about a week to see how many calories you typically consume. See if your current habits align with your goals or if you need to make some adjustments.
If you are gaining weight or need to lose weight, these tools can help you make changes to your diet and exercise routine. You may discover that diet alone is not enough, and you need additional exercise to achieve balance. For adults, the American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week.
