Why Should I Change To A Heart Disease Diet?

By Elaine Roles

A heart disease diet should not be thought of as a temporary solution to get you over a difficult time. If you have had a heart bypass, a stent or heart attack or been diagnosed with Coronary Heart Disease then there are lots of things about your lifestyle that the hospital's cardiac rehab team will have talked to you about. One of those recommended changes will have been to change your eating pattern to a healthy heart disease diet.

Ideally your lifestyle should have been assessed and recommendations been made as to the best way forward for you. Switching to a heart disease diet will make a big difference not just too how you feel in the coming months but in the years to come to your quality of life and health.

It's important to remember that there is no rush. Small steps that are taken every day will overtime add up. You may have been told to make lots of different changes not just to what you eat but also to how much you drink and the activity you do. You do not want to change everything at once! If you rush into changing everything you will find it hard to maintain and after a few months be back to square one. Don't think of it as a change in your diet which is a temporary measure and has an end point. A heart disease diet should be thought of as a lifelong commitment to healthy eating.

A heart disease diet plays an important part in your recovery, which once you see and feel the benefits will also affect how you feel in yourself. How you are thinking will affect how you feel and how you feel will affect what you do. Therefore it is important to think about a heart disease diet as a new way of eating for the rest of your life.

How you think and feel about food is often neglected when going on a diet or changing the way you eat. How you were brought up will have an impact on not just your food choices but on how you feel in yourself.

Were you ever rewarded with food? I expect you can remember being told "if you are good you can have some sweets." We all have an emotional attachment with food as it makes us feel good.

Cut out all processed foods and reduce the amount of salt you have. Consider the way you cook your meals, steaming or grilling your food would be a good place to start. Reducing the amount of calories you eat each day is a good place to start and you can do that simply by buying a smaller dinner plate.

The reality is that it only takes a tiny imbalance to make a huge difference. Eating just one extra chocolate biscuit (100 calories) each day, could lead to a weight gain of 5kg (just over 10lb) in a year! Therefore by adding a physical activity program as well as switching to a heart disease diet lines you up for success.

A heart disease diet is about make a small realistic change today. Therefore what are you waiting for? Don't promise yourself you'll start tomorrow, it won't happen, take action today! For more information about being successful in losing weight and obtaining a heart disease diet go now to http://www.heartdiseasediet.biz

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