In my former articles I have been focusing on healthy eating, what to get and what to avoid. In this article I will focus on diet control to keep your heart healthy by eating correctly.

Our heart is the muscle inside our ribcage that take care of our blood circulation. The heart has four chambers whereas the two upper chambers are called atrium chambers and the two lower chambers are called the ventricle chambers. Right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs, and the left one pumps blood to the rest of the body. Blood stream direction is only one way and starts from the atria chambers and then move to the ventricle chambers. We have a left side and a right side of the heart. The two sides are separated by a big muscle.

One of the things we should carefully consider how much cholesterol we eat, and regularly have out blood pressure measured. Too much Cholesterol and high blood pressure will increase our chance of developing heart disease.

So what will help us keeping out heart healthy?

Well, it comes down to two things really.

1. Diet

2. Workout

While diet is the most important aspect, workout should also be a part of our everyday. Workout can be everything from running, to long walks or going to the gym lifting weights. 30-60 minutes a day should be considered. If running is too hard, go for a ride on your bicycle. If you don’t have one, go for a long walk. We can do anything that gets our heart beat rate up to make the heart work faster. Using your muscles in your body increases their need for blood which makes the heart pump more blood.

Now regarding the diet, there are several steps we need to make sure of. First advice is to plan our meals. Not planning meals lead to quick decisions like buying fast food. So make a weekly or monthly plan which will help you eating correctly and most of the time saves you money. Next thing is the portion size. Eating too much food is bad for us, and we should never feel stuffed. Control the amount you eat and you are well on your way. Split your meals up so that you eat five to six times a day. This will keep your digestion working and also your heart.

We have to plan our meals with the right products. A heart healthy diet consists of full grain products which are great for your digestion. A good and healthy advice is to get rid of white bread, rice and pastas and go for full grain instead. To fully understand why this is, we would need to know the details about carbohydrates which are out of scope in this article.

Eat fruit and vegetables in your meals as these normally contain loads of vitamins and minerals. Sodium or salt intake needs to be controlled. Too much salt can lead to high blood pressure which again contributes to cardiovascular disease. There are much salt in our food already, so consider if you really need to toss some more on it. At least you now know what it can lead to.

Lean meat e.g. grass fed beef is what we want. First of all it adds flavor to the meat, but it also contain a lot more Omega-3 fat acids which benefit your body in several ways. Your fat intake should be controlled as well. We all need fat but we also need to be aware of what fat we eat. Try to avoid Saturated and Tran’s fats as we don’t really need it and getting rid of it will help us lower our cholesterol level in our blood.

If you are eating out every day, these advices can be really hard to follow. Consider the places you eat and make sure to talk to the staff if you are uncertain of the content of your food.