by Kerry Taylor
As all of you may be aware of by now, it’s Heart Health Month! To help show support of a healthy heart, we want to encourage everyone to wear red as much as possible all month. To up the ante, I want to give you some great practices you can put in to place to keep your heart healthy and strong. If you already have these three things under control, kudos! If you don’t, let’s not wait any longer and do something about it!
Your heart is the engine that keeps you running on all cylinders. It’s responsible for pumping blood to every part of your body, carrying with it oxygen and nutrients you need to function properly. So you see, it’s extremely important we do things to keep our heart healthy and strong. Heart disease is the number one killer of people in the world. Let’s take some stock and inventory of these three areas of our life to see how we can improve your heart health.
EXERCISE
We all should be doing some form of exercise everyday. It can be something of high intensity, walking, playing soccer, having a pick up basketball game with your friends, going for a hike or a swim. The important thing is that you’re moving and keeping your heart rate up. If this is new to you, remember, it’s never too late to start. Give yourself a few minutes a day and build on that. Exercise will help improve our blood circulation and help lower our blood pressure. Let’s get moving!
EATING
As with any goal aiming at changing our bodies, eating is very important. Aim for nutrient-dense foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins like chicken, fish and turkey. Try to stay away from processed foods, sugars and saturated fats. Make your plate as colorful as the rainbow with veggies! Still keep in mind to keep your portion sizes normal. Eating too much of anything, whether it is good or not so good for you, will lead to weight gain and then we are back at square one.
Need help with your eating or don’t know where to start? Look in to getting some nutrition coaching to get you in the right track.
STRESS AND ANXIETY
A big one here, why?? It’s not something we can truly measure until it’s too late. The constant increase in stress and anxiety can lead to a steady climb in blood pressure and heart rate. So, we must find ways to manage it. You can look at assessment area #1, exercise, it’s a great tool to manage stress and anxiety. Other things we can try to partake in are meditation, speaking to a therapist, walking in the great outdoors, or taking time to do some deep breathing and shut the rest of the world out. These are just some suggestions, stress and anxiety can be managed many different ways. It’s all dependent on how that activity makes you feel. Only you can answer that.
When you get a chance, take a seat and rate yourself in these 3 areas of your life on a scale of 1 - 10. 1 being, “I’m in trouble” and 10 being, “My heart is as strong as an Ox”. This will help you see what you need to work on. Just aim to move the needle one notch forward and progress from there.
Remember, your heart is counting on you to do the right thing so it can do the right thing for you. Take care of yourself. Until next time continue to live life, 1 degree above the rest!