Healthy Habits for Heart Health

February is heart health month.

As we enter the second month of a new year, many of us hope to maintain the momentum of our new year’s resolution to eat healthier. So often we make fanciful goals to “never eat sugar again,” “only eat home-cooked meals,” or “follow a strict diet” that we are bound to fail to meet the mark. This year, let’s talk about ways we can set ourselves up for success; turning wishes into habits.

Let’s ask ourselves why we want to eat healthier.

You may want to lose weight or sleep better or improve skin quality. From a dietitian’s perspective, I know our whole body benefits from eating foods that are healthy for our heart. Heart-healthy foods help us better balance our blood sugar, lower blood pressure, and experience less inflammation. Those are all excellent reasons to decide to eat healthier! Whatever your “why” is, keep it in the front of your mind to stay more on track. 

When it comes to choosing which heart-healthy foods you should eat, try to keep it as simple as possible; eat more whole fruits and vegetables, fiber-rich beans and whole grains, protein like fish, poultry, and meat, and healthy fats like nuts, seeds, olives, olive oil, and avocados. If you are wanting a place to start, look at the Mediterranean-style diet. It regularly incorporates most of the above foods; and is one of the most studied for its health benefits and positive impact on heart health. 

Many heart healthy foods are known as whole foods, which are those that aren’t highly processed. Foods that aren’t as heart-healthy include ultra-processed foods like sugary cereals, crackers, cookies, pastries, ice-cream, soft drinks, candy, chips, etc. (Think, anything with a long ingredient list on the label.) Eating too much of these types of foods can make us more likely to have problems balancing our blood sugar. This ends up being hard on our hearts and lowers our overall health.

Making a change a habit.

Finally, to make healthy changes last, the most powerful approach we can take is to make small changes that we can realistically and consistently stick with over time. Habit experts like BJ Fogg, PhD and Wendy Wood, PhD emphasize the importance of setting up your environment (where you live and the people around you) to make healthy habits easier and unhealthy habits harder.

For example, if you want to eat more vegetables, make sure you always have a vegetable in your fridge, freezer, or pantry so you can easily include it in a meal. Choose a recipe for the week that has one or more vegetables in it. As a registered dietitian, I recommend that clients set out a cutting board and knife (if safe in their kitchen). This visual cue makes us more likely to do the healthy habit of preparing our fruits and vegetables.

If you’re trying to break unhealthy habits, like eating too many sugar-added treats (sugar that isn’t naturally found in a food), make sugar easier to avoid. Make a healthy food-only grocery list and sticking to only buying the food on your list. That way, the healthier choice at home is the easier, more convenient choice.

When you take care of your heart, you’ll be able to do more of the things you love.

With a healthy heart, you’ll be more likely to experience more energy and less pain. Making heart-healthy eating a habit takes repeated small changes. These changes add up to big differences in our overall health for years to come. Heart health is about living a long and vibrant life, so remember to keep that long-term picture in mind whenever you are tempted to give up. You can do it!