Make this Season of Love a Heart Healthy Diet Time
The season of love is here once again. Those who aren’t already taken are scrambling to find a date while the ones who are in a relationship are trying to hold on to what they have. Affairs of the heart are not an easy matter. And Valentines Day, as romantic and heavenly as it’s supposed to be, leaves a lot of unhappy and deeply wounded casualties.
So how are you faring this season? What are your plans? Maybe you should take a different route and attend to matters that are guaranteed to give you a healthy heart, not put it into unnecessary risks. Valentines Day need not be about romantic love. It could also be about taking care of the one thing that’s precious to you—your heart, the literal mass of muscle embedded deep within your chest.
Maybe you should get started on a heart healthy diet? And there’s no better time to do this than this season of hearts. This effort is definitely more worthwhile than going on a desperate search for a date. That is, if you love yourself enough to take care of your health and figure. You don’t want to make it to fugly.com, do you?
So what is a heart healthy diet?
A heart healthy diet is all about choosing the right food to eat at the right amount so that you keep your cholesterol at a level that is friendly to your heart.
A heart healthy diet plan holds the power to eliminate or at least reduce heart risk factors. You get to reduce you LDL cholesterol (your bad cholesterol) levels, lower your blood sugar level and your blood pressure. And you get one great bonus—a reduced body weight! That means you don’t only get healthier, you even look better and feel more confident with a sexier figure.
So what should a heart healthy diet menu look like?
There should be more fish in your diet. Fish is a great source of protein and other essential nutrients. More importantly, it contains a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 reduces the risk not only of a heart disease but of strokes too.
You should be watchful of you food’s fat calorie content. Always limit the total fat grams. You should keep your intake of trans fats and saturated fats to a minimum. Sources are salad dressings, margarine, butter, sweets, desserts and snack foods. Use fats that are higher in monounsaturated fats instead. Sources are peanut oil and olive oil.
Protein foods such as meat and dairy products are your enemy when working toward a heart healthy diet. You can fight the culprit through a balanced protein food intake. You should keep the portions of the meat you eat at a minimum and eat more fish and vegetable protein sources instead.
You should limit your cholesterol consumption. Dietary cholesterols are especially dodgy to high-risk people. So you must try and limit your intake of simple carbohydrates (sources are sugar, sweets, regular soft drinks, etc.). Simple carbs tend to exacerbate already problematic heart conditions. You may consume complex carbohydrates instead. They make for great energy sources without posing risks to your heart. Sources are sweet potatoes, whole-wheat pasta, whole grain breads and the like.
And don’t get the idea that diet is about starving yourself. Not only is it a difficult feat, it’s 
self-defeating too. Skipping meals will only push you to overeat later. Binge eating is a natural reaction to a history of deprivation, even if it’s just for a single meal. And binge eating will definitely get you fatter and your heart unhealthy. What’s advisable is that you take six mini-meals instead.
The best strategy for an effective heart healthy diet is to focus on what you ‘can’ eat and not on what you can’t eat. Dieting should not be about depriving yourself and especially not about starving yourself. The traditional Mediterranean cuisine or diet is renowned for being a healthy heart diet.
This season of love, be sure to take care of your heart. Never mind if you don’t get a date. Cupid gets busy too, you know. If he’s too busy for you right now, and you already have a healthy heart, here’s a dating review site I use. It’s simply known for reviewing dating sites. A healthy heart deserves a healthy love life.
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