Foods That Are Heart Healthy
Foods that are heart healthy contain nutrients that help maintain heart health. These include vitamins D, omega3 fatty acids, magnesium, CoQ10, folic acid and potassium. Dietary fiber is also important, since it helps lower blood cholesterol levels. While these nutrients are important for heart health, they’re also mandatory for overall good health, so adding them to your diet even if you don’t worry about heart problems can improve your well-being.
Choose dark chocolate for a healthy heart.
You’re probably ecstatic when you read dark chocolate is part of a heart healthy diet. However, it’s not the sugary sweet type of milk chocolate most people are used to eating. The best dark chocolate are those with the fewest ingredients with cocoa powder, cocoa butter, cocoa nibs, cocoa or chocolate liquor at the top of the list. It’s 70 percent chocolate and has not only antioxidants The flavonoids in dark chocolate provide benefits like lower blood pressure, improved blood flow to the heart and prevent clots, while fighting cell damage.
You need healthy fat for a healthy heart.
While fat may have a reputation of being unhealthy for the heart, it’s not true. It started with a flawed study funded by none other than the sugar industry to shift the blame from sugar to fat. Foods that contain healthy fat include avocados, nuts and fatty fish, like salmon. Although these foods contain different types of fat, they definitely boost heart health. Fish contain Omega-3 fatty acids that lower blood pressure and bad cholesterol. Avocados and walnuts provide monounsaturated fat that’s heart healthy and lowers the risk of heart disease. Walnuts also contain alpha linoleic acid—a form of omega-3 fatty acids —that’s extremely heart healthy.
Foods that are high in vitamin D boost your heart health.
Even in North Carolina, getting adequate vitamin D from the sun can be impossible. If you’re low in vitamin D, you face the risk of heart disease. It’s involved in so many functions, including lowering blood pressure. Eating foods high in vitamin D can help when the weather is cold or there’s little sun. They include beef liver, cheese, products fortified with vitamin D and egg yolks.
- Look for food high in magnesium to prevent an irregular heartbeat. Foods that contain magnesium include avocados, dark chocolate, raw spinach and soybeans. Folic acid lowers the risk of heart disease by 20%, so eat lots of Brussels sprouts, asparagus, lentils and broccoli.
- Eat organ meat, such as liver or beef heart to boost CoQ10 levels. It lowers the risk of heart failure and high blood pressure.
- Don’t forget your fiber. It’s important for heart health and lowers bad cholesterol. You’ll get fiber from a bowl of oatmeal or an apple a day.
- The more colorful vegetables you eat, the more you improve your heart health. Variety adds more nutrition and substances like resveratrol into your diet.
It’s hard to stay healthy working at a desk. You sometimes sit for hours and the only part of your body moving is your fingers. It’s not only uncomfortable after a long period, it’s hard on your body. In fact, one study shows that sitting continuously for over 50 minutes at a time can actually wipe out many of the benefits of working out. You need to get up every fifty minutes and move around, whether you’re working out or not. If you don’t workout, the effects of that time are even worse.
When you eat healthy, you get results. It’s true, but many people fail because they don’t consider what they drink as part of the program. Soda can be devastating to a diet. Soft drinks, whether or not they contain sugar can undo all you’ve tried to achieve. Even in sit down healthier eating restaurants in Raleigh, NC, soda is often one of the drink choices. If you want the best results and to be your healthiest, you have to quit soda, even sugar free soft drinks.
The holidays are often one large binge that lasts from the end of November until the next year starts. Recovering from the holidays isn’t easy. You have to start from scratch if all caution was thrown to the wind and you gave yourself permission to sample (sometimes several times) every item on the table and skip a few (perhaps all) workout sessions. You’ll often find that good feeling that you had before the holidays is gone and now you’re left feeling bloated and lacking any motivation.
Healthy and happy do go together. It doesn’t mean you can’t have one without the other, but it does mean that when you have one, the other tends to follow. I want to help all my clients in Raleigh achieve both. While it might not seem I have much input into the happy part of the equation, that’s not true. Most of my clients find that once they start working out, their mood improves dramatically. That’s because exercise burns off the hormones created by stress that leave you feeling tied up in knots. Exercise also stimulates the brain to create hormones that make you feel good, adding to your overall sense of happiness. It’s also because my clients have more energy.
Some people are gung-ho when it comes to getting fit. They know exactly what they want to accomplish, set their goals and start working on it immediately. Others want change, but aren’t ready for a big commitment. Instead of setting big goals, they start by inching into fitness with smaller, easier to achieve ones that eventually become a habit. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. It’s all about what works for you. If you set smaller, easier to achieve goals, it can give you confidence to go to the next step.
If you want to achieve fitness, you’re not alone. Many people either are working on that goal or secretly wish they were. It can be even more fun when you share it. Who knows, you might discover that many of your friends secretly want to get started, but were sure how to do it or didn’t want to do it alone. Part of the fun of getting fit is having someone to share the joy of victories. Working out with others in a group is also an economical way to get the benefits of having a personal trainer, but at a far less expensive price than private sessions.
I’m often asked whether strength training in older women is safe. My answer is always, YES! It’s not only safe it’s extremely beneficial. Whether you’re a man or woman, young or old, fit or out of shape, strength training provides huge benefits. One worry was that some older women are too frail for strength training and if you’re talking about bench pressing 200 pounds, you might be right. That’s not how strength training works. Trainers make sure that each person can safely do each exercise, which for those out of shape, may be as little as one pound weights or even no weights at all at first.
Most people come to our gym in Raleigh to shed a few pounds or get more energy. In reality, what they’re really doing is beginning an exciting journey to health and fitness. Like any journey, it all starts with a destination. Most people refer to that as a goal. It may start out to be shedding a few pounds or fitting into a fabulous outfit for a high school reunion, but I find that once clients learn how good they feel, how enjoyable healthy eating is and how great they start to look, the destination changes. It becomes a lifelong adventure.
There’s a lot to be said for a healthy breakfast. It provides the fuel you need to start the day. That is, of course, if you eat healthy food. Starting the day with a sweet roll and coffee isn’t exactly what a healthy breakfast includes. It should include carbohydrates and protein. The protein will help you shed weight by keeping you feeling full until lunch and providing energy as it approaches. The carbohydrates provide the body and brain with fuel immediately so you have thinking power and energy.