To spare you the boredom, the science and the ever-changing facts on why heart disease emerges in the first place, today’s post will be mainly focused on the solutions; the solutions in which you can start implementing and using right away for a happier and healthier heart.
By focusing on what’s truly important – your nutrition – you’ll be able to mitigate the chances of getting any form of heart disease through various time-tested principles and recipes.
As with any post here at SeniorHealthy, we’re always focused on crafting what’s best for you as a lifestyle, not as a temporary, quick fix solution.
You don’t want to wait for the symptoms to show to take action.
Remember, prevention is always better than cure, so here are a few principles for you to easily implement right away:
Principle #1 – Eat Traditional, Healthy, Saturated Fats
Not all fats are created equal. If you’re relatively new to nutrition, you may be wondering “I’m trying to get slim, so why am I eating fats??!?”
Fats are merely a macro nutrient, just like carbohydrates and protein. And just like those other nutrients, there are good as well as bad versions of each type.
You need to be focusing on the good fats, as eating an excess of the wrong type of fats may result in it being stored in your arteries – eventually clogging it up and causing a dreaded heart attack.
As humans, we all need fats.
We don’t need to be fat, but we need fats. (Don’t mistake this as us giving you permission to eat that bunch of doughnuts you’ve been eyeing for the past week. We’re keeping an eye on you 😉
The key here is to know which types of foods provide you with the healthy fats as opposed to the unhealthy ones.
Here’s a general list of ingredients which contains healthy fats:
- Coconut Oil
- Ghee
- Leaf Lard
- Duck Fat
- Grass-fed Butter
Again, the key here is not to go in excess with this, but just to be aware of them and make the necessary replacements in your usual meals if possible.
To make things even more simpler for you, here are a couple of recipes filled with healthy fats for you to try out:
- Wasabi Salmon Burgers
- Orange and Avocado Salmon
- Mediterranean Tuna Panini
This post is already long enough, and will not be covering the recipes in detail, so if you’d like to delve deeper into the recipes, click here.
Principle #2 – Eat Complex Carbs (aka less sugars/simple carbs)
Probably the most-heard and constantly preached advice out there, but for good reason – it’s simply a fact that simple sugars do not help your heart (and overall health) in any way.
Other than leaving you happy momentarily and probably soothing your soul with comfort food from time to time, these types of foods should be minimized by all means necessary.
Simple carbohydrates (for eg, rice, pasta, potatoes) can cause spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels, which both contribute to oxidative damage, inflammation and eventually increase the risk of heart disease.
Instead of following a low fat, high carb diet which most dieticians preach, follow instead a low carb, high (healthy of course) fat diet.
A high carb diet has actually been proven to increase the risk of heart disease as well as diabetes.
A low carb diet on the other hand will actually help you to trim your belly effortlessly, as carbs (sugars) are mainly used as energy stores for your body.
If you minimize your energy intake (aka a low carb diet), your body will naturally use up its stored energy source (aka your stored belly fat) as fuel for your daily activities.
To have a good idea of the type of recipes you can prepare using complex carbs, check out this article by Live strong which lays it all out for you perfectly: Click Here.
Principle #3 – Eat Nutrient Dense Foods
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If you follow principles 1 and 2 closely, this shouldn’t be much of a problem, but just to drive our point home, we thought it was worth mentioning.
Whenever we mention the term ‘nutrient dense’, most people immediately think of vegetables, and while that’s true, the spectrum for what classifies as nutrient-dense is much more wider than mere vegetables.
For example, did you know that a serving of beef liver has up to 100 times more vitamins and minerals than your standard carrot or apple?
Yeap, beef liver. Who would’ve thought right?
Now, we know that not everyone has tons of beef liver lying around their fridge to be cooked, so another, more common nutrient dense food which you can start adding to your daily diet is egg yolks.
Egg yolks typically get a bad rep, and it has been drilled in our heads that we should ‘Never Eat Too Much Eggs In 1 Day!!’
And while yes, we should always have everything in moderation, this egg yolk myth needs to be busted once and for all.
Throw away conventional wisdom – it is perfectly safe to eat 3 eggs per day (of course, that may be too much for you, in which case just eat at whatever level you’re comfortable at), as well as any grass-fed, organic animal and raw dairy products (i.e. butter, milk etc)
For other surefire, nutrient dense recipes, check out this in depth meal by meal diet plan.
It is more plant-based, but definitely gets the job done.
If you’re not used to those type of recipes, nothing wrong with experimenting am I right? 😀
Conclusion
Your heart is literally the only thing keeping you alive at this moment. Skip a beat, and well, you pretty much won’t live to tell the tale of that experience after.
Of course, there are plenty of other practices and principles you need to follow if you really want to take your heart health to the next level.
But instead of overwhelming you with a bunch of facts which won’t get you anywhere, we’re more focused on you taking action – which is why we’ve laid out these 3 principles coupled with simple ingredients which you can implement into your daily nutrition right away and see gratifying results from.
Remember: your heart is a precious gift, so let’s take the necessary measures to ensure it fuels our body efficiently for years and years to come. 🙂
