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Maintaining a healthy diet and active lifestyle are two of the most critical ways to beat heart disease so where you should focus your efforts.
The following are some of the best foods to include in your diet regularly to prevent heart disease.
Avoid Saturated Fat
One of the prime culprits of heart disease is a diet that is very high in saturated fat levels. While trans fats are fats that you must avoid at all costs, saturated fats are not that much better. When taken in larger quantities they are going to increase the levels of bad cholesterol in the body which puts you at risk for heart disease.
Ideally you want to aim to take in less than seven percent of your daily calories from saturated fat, and most diets will contain between twenty and thirty percent total calories from fat to put that into perspective.
The simplest way to reduce the intake of saturated fat in the diet is to watch out for packaged foods, baked pastries, and deep fried foods.
Choose Lower Fat Protein Sources
Another way you can work towards avoiding heart disease is to make sure the protein sources you're choosing are leaner. Often higher fat protein sources such as steak, beef, bacon, eggs, and full fat dairy products will increase cholesterol levels, which also promotes high levels of heart disease.
Better options to choose include chicken, fish, turkey, skim milk products, and seafood.
Choose Fruits And Vegetables With Each Meal
On the other hand, two types of foods to eat as much of as you can are fruits and vegetables. These contain a higher amount of dietary fiber, which is a primary nutrient that helps fight heart disease and keep your weight in check.
Since maintaining a healthy weight is one of the key influences of heart disease protection, everything you can do to prevent weight gain will help.
In addition to this, fruits and vegetables also contain a number of antioxidants that will help to further prevent heart disease development.
Limit Carbs To Whole Grains Only
Making smart choices with carbs will also help to keep your risk down while setting you up for overall good health.
Whole grains are a rich source of thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin D, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, zinc, iron, and fiber, all which help to promote proper blood pressure and energy levels.
Diets completely devoid of all grains often leave you feeling tired. This will not be the best option for better results since exercise is also critical to ward off heart disease. By adding in the right gains in the right quantities, you are doing everything you can to maintain your weight but keep energy levels where they need to be.
Lower Salt Intake
Finally the last thing you should be doing in effort to lower your risk for the development of cardiovascular disease is being sure that you watch your sodium intake. High sodium diets also will increase blood pressure and set you up for heart disease, so choosing wisely is a wise move.
If you take the advice outlined above and place more fruits and vegetables in your diet, you'll be limiting salt intake naturally, but if you're also consuming a fair amount of canned or processed foods, be sure you are reading nutrient labels as these are typically the worst salt offenders.
So keep these points in mind. You definitely can make dramatic improvements to your risk of developing heart disease if you start now and stay on the band-wagon.
Far too many individuals who are concerned about this issue initially make the proper changes to their diet and lifestyle but then over time let that slide and go back to their old ways.
To really see results, you must think of this as a permanent change to the way you live.
