Research suggests that women may be more sensitive to certain risk factors for heart disease. In particular, obesity, hypertension (high blood pressure) stress, depression and smoking all appear to have a greater impact on women than men.
So what is heart disease?
Heart disease is a broad term that describes various conditions, from high blood pressure to heart attack and stroke.
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common occurrence of heart disease, and is the leading cause of heart attack. CAD occurs when plaque, a fatty substance made from cholesterol, calcium and waste, accumulates in the arteries or blood vessels that lead to the heart, narrowing the artery walls. Obstruction of blood flow through the arteries can cause chest pain (known as angina) and, if left undiagnosed, heart attack.
Stay on top of your heart health.
• Make your heart health a priority. See your doctor regularly and ask him or her about your risk factors. Inform your doctor about any family history of heart disease and have your blood pressure and cholesterol checked as part of your annual checkup. If you are feeling unwell insist on testing—don’t shrug it off.
• Exercise regularly. Physical activity reduces bad cholesterol, aids in losing weight and helps prevent high blood pressure. Aerobic activity makes your heart stronger and more efficient.
• Don’t smoke. Smokers are 2 to 6 times more likely to have a heart attack than women who don’t smoke. Smoking also boosts the chance of stroke.
• Pay close attention to your body. Don’t dismiss symptoms like excessive fatigue and chest, neck or shoulder discomfort. Heart attack and discomfort can be indicated by a variety of symptoms including: chest pain, neck and/or shoulder pain, shortness of breath, nausea and stomach upset, clammy hands and skin, dizziness and fatigue.
• Make better food choices. Eat a low fat, high fibre diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Choose olive oil for cooking, eat fatty fish like salmon and mackerel; eat small amounts of nuts and legumes. These are all heart healthy foods, so make them a part of your diet. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats, white flour, and sugars, found in almost all processed foods.
And when you want to remove the nutritional question mark from your plate, invest in quality nutritional supplements, like the ones I recommend from Body Wise in San Diego, CA.
For the month of Feb, I am offering a free CoQ10 with your purchase.
For more information on these and other heart-healthy supplements, contact me at billiesinclair@mybodywise.org
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Is It Just Me, or Is Food Getting Sweeter?
If you’ve gotten the impression that more and more sugar is being added to common supermarket foods – you’re right.
A report in the May 6, 2007 London Sunday Times, based on an examination of an industry handbook on food composition, found that food companies have doubled the amount of sugar they add to their more popular products since 1978.
For example, in 1978, Kellogg’s Special K cereal had 9.6 grams of sugar per 100 grams. This has now nearly doubled to 17 grams. Some canned soups have shown a similar increase.
Interestingly, even fruits and vegetables are now sweeter, probably due to market pressures forcing growers to breed hybrids with higher sugar content. Between 1978 and 2002, the sugar in a banana rose from 16.2 grams per 100 grams to 20.9 grams; pears and carrots got sweeter by a similar percentage.
Is it any wonder that obesity and diabetes are becoming worldwide epidemics?
The only rational response to this situation is to bypass the industrial food complex as much as possible.
1) Buy unprocessed foods from farmer’s markets and health food stores, and, if possible, select non-hybrid, heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables over modern hybrids, which are quickly becoming analogs of sugar beets.
2) Best choice of all: grow as much of your own food as you can.
Thank you, Dr. Weil, for these important points on my favorite subject - food!
The night before you compete in a Body Building show, they hold an Athlete's meeting. All of the athlete's that plan on showing up for the show the next morning must be there to register.
What a sight; buff, tanned, and gorgeous, about 150 athletes showed up for the meeting in November. And one of the most notable features of body builders, each athlete had, in tow, their food cooler! I love body builders!
Anyhow, the couple sitting next to me had elaborate salads, with fancy dressings and toppings. Me, the Natural Nutritionist, could be seen eating green salad right out of the bag, stringless snap peas, and mini-carrots, without dressing.
They asked me how I could stand all those veggies with nothing on them...I replied that I didn't even notice that I was missing anything. I have learned to love the taste of raw veggies, chopped and munched on the spot!
After reading Dr. Weil's words above, you may just want to give it a try.
Take control, people, before the food industry, completely takes control of you!
A report in the May 6, 2007 London Sunday Times, based on an examination of an industry handbook on food composition, found that food companies have doubled the amount of sugar they add to their more popular products since 1978.
For example, in 1978, Kellogg’s Special K cereal had 9.6 grams of sugar per 100 grams. This has now nearly doubled to 17 grams. Some canned soups have shown a similar increase.
Interestingly, even fruits and vegetables are now sweeter, probably due to market pressures forcing growers to breed hybrids with higher sugar content. Between 1978 and 2002, the sugar in a banana rose from 16.2 grams per 100 grams to 20.9 grams; pears and carrots got sweeter by a similar percentage.
Is it any wonder that obesity and diabetes are becoming worldwide epidemics?
The only rational response to this situation is to bypass the industrial food complex as much as possible.
1) Buy unprocessed foods from farmer’s markets and health food stores, and, if possible, select non-hybrid, heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables over modern hybrids, which are quickly becoming analogs of sugar beets.
2) Best choice of all: grow as much of your own food as you can.
Thank you, Dr. Weil, for these important points on my favorite subject - food!
The night before you compete in a Body Building show, they hold an Athlete's meeting. All of the athlete's that plan on showing up for the show the next morning must be there to register.
What a sight; buff, tanned, and gorgeous, about 150 athletes showed up for the meeting in November. And one of the most notable features of body builders, each athlete had, in tow, their food cooler! I love body builders!
Anyhow, the couple sitting next to me had elaborate salads, with fancy dressings and toppings. Me, the Natural Nutritionist, could be seen eating green salad right out of the bag, stringless snap peas, and mini-carrots, without dressing.
They asked me how I could stand all those veggies with nothing on them...I replied that I didn't even notice that I was missing anything. I have learned to love the taste of raw veggies, chopped and munched on the spot!
After reading Dr. Weil's words above, you may just want to give it a try.
Take control, people, before the food industry, completely takes control of you!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
How I'm Learning About the Raw Food Diet
I have slowly changed my eating habits and lifestyle over the last 10 years. In 1999, when I discovered the supplement company that I now consult for, a whole new world of nutritional understanding opened up to me.
Since then, as many of you know, I have virtually stopped having colds and the flu, I've shed 30 pounds of body fat and, at age 48 competed in my first Body Building contest.
Here we are in 2008, and I am researching a possible new avenue of change for my life...the Raw Food Lifestyle.
From her book and website (www.rawnutrition.com), here is an article by Carol Alt about the process of learning and adopting the Raw Food diet. My diet is already about 50% raw, in the way of salads, fresh fruits and vegetables, and nuts. Now I plan to go a little further and see what else is in store in this, apparently supremely, healthy lifestyle.
Just a reminder about my disclaimer that my messages are not meant to replace the advice of a competent healthcare professional. Please don't undertake major changes to your diet without consulting your doctor.
Getting Raw: Ten Steps to the Raw Food Lifestyle
Maybe you’re the type of person who can make radical changes in their lifestyle overnight. Take my boyfriend. When he met me, he’d never even heard of raw foodists. But he was intrigued, and one day – boom – he made the switch. Four years later, he’s still at it.
But if you’re like me, it’s going to be a more gradual process. You’re going to have to help your body (or at least your taste buds) acclimate from the cooked food you’re used to, to the raw food you were meant to eat. Don’t get me wrong, when I say “acclimate your taste buds,” I don’t mean to imply that a raw food diet isn’t delicious. It is – and I wouldn’t go back to cooked foods if you paid me. But being a Westerner, it’s virtually guaranteed that your body is addicted to sugar and starch. The best way to stop craving those foods is to remove them gradually. Eventually you’ll wonder what you even saw in them!
So here’s your own personal roadmap for going raw, based on my experience and broken down into ten easy steps.
1. Reflect on your diet
Turn off the radio, find a comfortable chair and think about your diet for a moment. What do you eat? Not in your ideal world, not if you had time to eat healthy – in your real life. What did you eat over the past three days? Think about everything: the meals, the snacks, the beverages.
2. Track what you really eat
Recalling gives you an idea of what you eat, but tracking what actually goes into your mouth can be an eye-opening experience. So for the next three days, write down every thing you eat and drink. Write down the time you ate it. Just carry a list and keep it with you at all times. Don’t change your diet – we’re trying to get a realistic picture of what your body runs on. Why? Because any change you want to make in your life depends on awareness of how you do things now. Once you’re aware of what you eat and when, you’ll be better equipped to eat the way you were meant to.
3. Notice what’s already raw
It’s been three days and you have your list. Now take a highlighter and highlight everything on that list that’s raw. Maybe you already eat a lot of raw food. Maybe you love salads, or fresh fruit, or sashimi. Or, you could be like I was and subsist on a diet of nearly 100% cooked foods. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you want to make the change to a raw foods diet.
In addition to the highlighted foods on your list, think about other raw foods that you maybe didn’t eat in the last three days but do enjoy. Add those to your list. This is your starting point, no matter how short or long your list.
4. Find creative substitutes
Here’s where the fun starts. People assume that if they eat raw, they can’t have the things they love. But finding creative substitutes allows you to eat the way you like – without feeling guilty!
If you eat a bowl of yogurt and granola with fruit on top for breakfast, it’s easy to switch to raw. Trade your regular yogurt for raw, unpasteurized yogurt, switch out your cooked granola for raw granola made with dried fruits, nuts and seeds (you can find pre-made raw granola or you can make your own), and top with fresh fruit as usual!
If you’re more partial to a bagel with lox and cream cheese, then go for raw, marinated salmon (called gravlax ) instead of lox, substitute raw Camembert for cream cheese, and pile it all on sprouted Ezekiel bread. The bread isn’t technically raw, but it’s made from sprouted grains and is cooked at low temperatures, so it’s the next best thing.
Start thinking creatively and you can find raw substitutes for just about all your cooked food favorites.
5. Adopt the 2:1 ratio
I don’t expect you to go raw overnight the way my boyfriend did. So follow this easy rule: eat a 2-to-1 ratio of raw to cooked foods. In other words, eat twice as much raw as cooked and you’ll be well on your way to better health and better looks.
I recommend you follow the advice Dr. Brantley gave me when I first started out: make breakfast and lunch your mostly raw meals and dinner your mostly cooked one. Why? Because breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day. You want your healthiest, most nutritious meal first thing in the morning so you can have the energy you need to think and work.
Eating raw for lunch carries that energy on through the rest of the day. Most of us don’t really need that much energy after dinner – our day is winding down. So save your mostly cooked meal for the end of the day.
6. Think about each meal
After you’ve gotten accustomed to eating raw, take that 2-to-1 ratio and apply it to each meal. So every time you eat, aim for two-thirds raw to one-third cooked.
Remember, you don’t have to stick to traditional breakfast foods and traditional dinner foods. I love to have a salad with seared tuna for breakfast. You could have a cooked egg for lunch with a raw broccoli salad, accompanied by some raw cheese and crackers. Dinner can be a baked potato with seared steak. When you follow the 2-to-1 ratio at every meal, you are making sure that at all times, the health-giving, vital foods outnumber the depleted, dead ones.
7. Identify your cheats
A stumbling block for a lot of people in the conversion from cooked to raw is that they don’t want to lose their favorite cooked foods – those foods they feel they can’t live without. My answer often surprises them: Don’t!
Look, we’re not aiming for perfection here. We’re aiming for a mostly raw food diet. So identify which foods will be your “cheats,” and then consciously decide – and this step is crucial – what they are and how often you “need” them. Write them down and write down how often you can eat them. Otherwise, you’ll be making exceptions left and right.
Once you know that it’s okay to cheat every now and then, it makes sticking to your guns much easier. And most people find that they only actually want to eat their favorite cooked foods about once or twice a week. Totally doable.
8. Stress the right meals
In America, we’ve got it all backwards. We eat light for the most important meal of the day, grabbing a muffin or cereal to keep us going until lunch, and heavy for the least important, stuffing ourselves with calories right before we go to bed. It doesn’t make any sense!
Follow this advice instead: “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, dinner like a pauper.” In other words, if you want consistent energy, make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, then lunch, then dinner. Think about it: If you eat a small breakfast – or worse, skip it – you’re giving your body very little fuel when it needs it the most. After all, it hasn’t been fed for over 12 hours! Skimp on breakfast, and you’re more likely to grab whatever’s available once you start to crash.
9. Become a hunter/gatherer
Back in our species’ raw food days, we hunted and gathered our food. We never knew what we’d find on that particular day so our diet was naturally varied. These days, we likely shop in the same supermarket, going down the same aisles, buying the same foods and cooking the same meals.
Get back to your hunter/gatherer roots! There are so many different places to shop for raw foods – in your regular supermarket, yes, but also in natural food supermarkets, small health food stores, farmers’ markets, local farms, produce markets, food co-ops, raw food specialty stores and the biggest treasure trove of all: the internet.
10. Trust your body
As time goes on and you experiment with different foods, the list of raw foods that you particularly like will grow. You won’t like everything – I’m sure you don’t like all cooked foods – but you’ll keep adding new and different foods until your list is quite long.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy at first. You’ve been eating cooked food your whole life – of course making such a drastic change is going to have its challenges. But once you make the switch, once you allow your healthy, beautiful raw self to bloom, you’ll be so pleased with the results you won’t want to go back.
And then an amazing thing happens. You get back in touch with your body’s real needs and real desires – not the ones it’s been trained to have, not the things it’s addicted to. Your desire for cooked food will most likely just fall away. And when you do eat cooked foods, you’ll notice your body doesn’t actually like them. You’ll actually feel bad after eating them. Congratulations! At this point, you will have crossed the threshold. Your body will now naturally choose what it knows will nourish it. And you’ll never go back!
Let's gradually go raw together...Billie
Since then, as many of you know, I have virtually stopped having colds and the flu, I've shed 30 pounds of body fat and, at age 48 competed in my first Body Building contest.
Here we are in 2008, and I am researching a possible new avenue of change for my life...the Raw Food Lifestyle.
From her book and website (www.rawnutrition.com), here is an article by Carol Alt about the process of learning and adopting the Raw Food diet. My diet is already about 50% raw, in the way of salads, fresh fruits and vegetables, and nuts. Now I plan to go a little further and see what else is in store in this, apparently supremely, healthy lifestyle.
Just a reminder about my disclaimer that my messages are not meant to replace the advice of a competent healthcare professional. Please don't undertake major changes to your diet without consulting your doctor.
Getting Raw: Ten Steps to the Raw Food Lifestyle
Maybe you’re the type of person who can make radical changes in their lifestyle overnight. Take my boyfriend. When he met me, he’d never even heard of raw foodists. But he was intrigued, and one day – boom – he made the switch. Four years later, he’s still at it.
But if you’re like me, it’s going to be a more gradual process. You’re going to have to help your body (or at least your taste buds) acclimate from the cooked food you’re used to, to the raw food you were meant to eat. Don’t get me wrong, when I say “acclimate your taste buds,” I don’t mean to imply that a raw food diet isn’t delicious. It is – and I wouldn’t go back to cooked foods if you paid me. But being a Westerner, it’s virtually guaranteed that your body is addicted to sugar and starch. The best way to stop craving those foods is to remove them gradually. Eventually you’ll wonder what you even saw in them!
So here’s your own personal roadmap for going raw, based on my experience and broken down into ten easy steps.
1. Reflect on your diet
Turn off the radio, find a comfortable chair and think about your diet for a moment. What do you eat? Not in your ideal world, not if you had time to eat healthy – in your real life. What did you eat over the past three days? Think about everything: the meals, the snacks, the beverages.
2. Track what you really eat
Recalling gives you an idea of what you eat, but tracking what actually goes into your mouth can be an eye-opening experience. So for the next three days, write down every thing you eat and drink. Write down the time you ate it. Just carry a list and keep it with you at all times. Don’t change your diet – we’re trying to get a realistic picture of what your body runs on. Why? Because any change you want to make in your life depends on awareness of how you do things now. Once you’re aware of what you eat and when, you’ll be better equipped to eat the way you were meant to.
3. Notice what’s already raw
It’s been three days and you have your list. Now take a highlighter and highlight everything on that list that’s raw. Maybe you already eat a lot of raw food. Maybe you love salads, or fresh fruit, or sashimi. Or, you could be like I was and subsist on a diet of nearly 100% cooked foods. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you want to make the change to a raw foods diet.
In addition to the highlighted foods on your list, think about other raw foods that you maybe didn’t eat in the last three days but do enjoy. Add those to your list. This is your starting point, no matter how short or long your list.
4. Find creative substitutes
Here’s where the fun starts. People assume that if they eat raw, they can’t have the things they love. But finding creative substitutes allows you to eat the way you like – without feeling guilty!
If you eat a bowl of yogurt and granola with fruit on top for breakfast, it’s easy to switch to raw. Trade your regular yogurt for raw, unpasteurized yogurt, switch out your cooked granola for raw granola made with dried fruits, nuts and seeds (you can find pre-made raw granola or you can make your own), and top with fresh fruit as usual!
If you’re more partial to a bagel with lox and cream cheese, then go for raw, marinated salmon (called gravlax ) instead of lox, substitute raw Camembert for cream cheese, and pile it all on sprouted Ezekiel bread. The bread isn’t technically raw, but it’s made from sprouted grains and is cooked at low temperatures, so it’s the next best thing.
Start thinking creatively and you can find raw substitutes for just about all your cooked food favorites.
5. Adopt the 2:1 ratio
I don’t expect you to go raw overnight the way my boyfriend did. So follow this easy rule: eat a 2-to-1 ratio of raw to cooked foods. In other words, eat twice as much raw as cooked and you’ll be well on your way to better health and better looks.
I recommend you follow the advice Dr. Brantley gave me when I first started out: make breakfast and lunch your mostly raw meals and dinner your mostly cooked one. Why? Because breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day. You want your healthiest, most nutritious meal first thing in the morning so you can have the energy you need to think and work.
Eating raw for lunch carries that energy on through the rest of the day. Most of us don’t really need that much energy after dinner – our day is winding down. So save your mostly cooked meal for the end of the day.
6. Think about each meal
After you’ve gotten accustomed to eating raw, take that 2-to-1 ratio and apply it to each meal. So every time you eat, aim for two-thirds raw to one-third cooked.
Remember, you don’t have to stick to traditional breakfast foods and traditional dinner foods. I love to have a salad with seared tuna for breakfast. You could have a cooked egg for lunch with a raw broccoli salad, accompanied by some raw cheese and crackers. Dinner can be a baked potato with seared steak. When you follow the 2-to-1 ratio at every meal, you are making sure that at all times, the health-giving, vital foods outnumber the depleted, dead ones.
7. Identify your cheats
A stumbling block for a lot of people in the conversion from cooked to raw is that they don’t want to lose their favorite cooked foods – those foods they feel they can’t live without. My answer often surprises them: Don’t!
Look, we’re not aiming for perfection here. We’re aiming for a mostly raw food diet. So identify which foods will be your “cheats,” and then consciously decide – and this step is crucial – what they are and how often you “need” them. Write them down and write down how often you can eat them. Otherwise, you’ll be making exceptions left and right.
Once you know that it’s okay to cheat every now and then, it makes sticking to your guns much easier. And most people find that they only actually want to eat their favorite cooked foods about once or twice a week. Totally doable.
8. Stress the right meals
In America, we’ve got it all backwards. We eat light for the most important meal of the day, grabbing a muffin or cereal to keep us going until lunch, and heavy for the least important, stuffing ourselves with calories right before we go to bed. It doesn’t make any sense!
Follow this advice instead: “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, dinner like a pauper.” In other words, if you want consistent energy, make breakfast the biggest meal of the day, then lunch, then dinner. Think about it: If you eat a small breakfast – or worse, skip it – you’re giving your body very little fuel when it needs it the most. After all, it hasn’t been fed for over 12 hours! Skimp on breakfast, and you’re more likely to grab whatever’s available once you start to crash.
9. Become a hunter/gatherer
Back in our species’ raw food days, we hunted and gathered our food. We never knew what we’d find on that particular day so our diet was naturally varied. These days, we likely shop in the same supermarket, going down the same aisles, buying the same foods and cooking the same meals.
Get back to your hunter/gatherer roots! There are so many different places to shop for raw foods – in your regular supermarket, yes, but also in natural food supermarkets, small health food stores, farmers’ markets, local farms, produce markets, food co-ops, raw food specialty stores and the biggest treasure trove of all: the internet.
10. Trust your body
As time goes on and you experiment with different foods, the list of raw foods that you particularly like will grow. You won’t like everything – I’m sure you don’t like all cooked foods – but you’ll keep adding new and different foods until your list is quite long.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy at first. You’ve been eating cooked food your whole life – of course making such a drastic change is going to have its challenges. But once you make the switch, once you allow your healthy, beautiful raw self to bloom, you’ll be so pleased with the results you won’t want to go back.
And then an amazing thing happens. You get back in touch with your body’s real needs and real desires – not the ones it’s been trained to have, not the things it’s addicted to. Your desire for cooked food will most likely just fall away. And when you do eat cooked foods, you’ll notice your body doesn’t actually like them. You’ll actually feel bad after eating them. Congratulations! At this point, you will have crossed the threshold. Your body will now naturally choose what it knows will nourish it. And you’ll never go back!
Let's gradually go raw together...Billie
Friday, February 01, 2008
February 1st is Wear Red Day!
The American Heart Association and the National Lung and Blood Institute have websites dedicated to your healthy heart. On February 1st, people across North America will be wearing red to support these initiatives.
Go to www.goredforwomen.com and http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/hearttruth for information on National Wear Red Day.
Reduce your risk of heart attack by following these tips:
Incorporate Omega-3 fatty acids:
Omega-3 fatty acids support a healthy cardiovascular system by reducing LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, plaque build-up, inflammation and blood clots while increasing HDL (the "good" cholesterol).
Incorporate low glycemic index (GI), high fiber foods into your diet:
Individuals with diabetes and metabolic syndrome have a 400 percent risk of having a heart attack. Low GI, high fiber foods decrease cholesterol and modulate blood sugar levels which help to reduce inflammation, a known risk factor underlying heart disease.
Minimize saturated fat and trans fat:
Avoid saturated fat and trans fat by staying clear of the center aisles at the grocery store where pre-packaged baked goods with long shelf-lives are found. Stay clear of those packages containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which often contain significant sources of trans fat. According to the Nurses Health Study, women who consumed 2 grams of trans fat per 1000 calories of food were shown to be at greater risk of developing heart disease.
Incorporate Antioxidant-rich foods and Anti-inflammatory herbs and spices:
Fruits and vegetables, dark chocolate (70% cocoa), and red wine (1 glass for women) all contain heart-healthy antioxidants. Anti-inflammatory herbs like curcumin and ginger have been shown to decrease the release of inflammatory molecules by inhibiting the COX-2 enzyme, which is the same way many anti-inflammatory drugs work.
So with those tips in mind, you can get the additional benefit of a partner in health by joining me in my 90-Day program, Get Your Body Back. Over the next 90 days, we'll incorporate healthy habits in the grocery store, the kitchen, and at the office. Then we'll add physical activity to strengthen your heart muscle (which is your most powerful involuntary muscle).
The coaching relationship then insures that you follow the plan we've designed for you. When you know you're being held accountable for your actions, you tend to do what you said you would!
The Get Your Body Back program helps you improve three important facets of your life, which contributes to heart health, but also overall well-being, as you reduce your excess body fat.
1) What you eat.
2) What you do.
3) Your consistency.
So wear red today and support these important heart-healthy initiatives. And for more information on heart healthy habits and the Get Your Body Back 90-day program, e-mail me at billiesinclair@mybodywise.org Let's get you started on your way towards optimal health!
Go to www.goredforwomen.com and http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/hearttruth for information on National Wear Red Day.
Reduce your risk of heart attack by following these tips:
Incorporate Omega-3 fatty acids:
Omega-3 fatty acids support a healthy cardiovascular system by reducing LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, plaque build-up, inflammation and blood clots while increasing HDL (the "good" cholesterol).
Incorporate low glycemic index (GI), high fiber foods into your diet:
Individuals with diabetes and metabolic syndrome have a 400 percent risk of having a heart attack. Low GI, high fiber foods decrease cholesterol and modulate blood sugar levels which help to reduce inflammation, a known risk factor underlying heart disease.
Minimize saturated fat and trans fat:
Avoid saturated fat and trans fat by staying clear of the center aisles at the grocery store where pre-packaged baked goods with long shelf-lives are found. Stay clear of those packages containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which often contain significant sources of trans fat. According to the Nurses Health Study, women who consumed 2 grams of trans fat per 1000 calories of food were shown to be at greater risk of developing heart disease.
Incorporate Antioxidant-rich foods and Anti-inflammatory herbs and spices:
Fruits and vegetables, dark chocolate (70% cocoa), and red wine (1 glass for women) all contain heart-healthy antioxidants. Anti-inflammatory herbs like curcumin and ginger have been shown to decrease the release of inflammatory molecules by inhibiting the COX-2 enzyme, which is the same way many anti-inflammatory drugs work.
So with those tips in mind, you can get the additional benefit of a partner in health by joining me in my 90-Day program, Get Your Body Back. Over the next 90 days, we'll incorporate healthy habits in the grocery store, the kitchen, and at the office. Then we'll add physical activity to strengthen your heart muscle (which is your most powerful involuntary muscle).
The coaching relationship then insures that you follow the plan we've designed for you. When you know you're being held accountable for your actions, you tend to do what you said you would!
The Get Your Body Back program helps you improve three important facets of your life, which contributes to heart health, but also overall well-being, as you reduce your excess body fat.
1) What you eat.
2) What you do.
3) Your consistency.
So wear red today and support these important heart-healthy initiatives. And for more information on heart healthy habits and the Get Your Body Back 90-day program, e-mail me at billiesinclair@mybodywise.org Let's get you started on your way towards optimal health!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)