Top tips to a healthier heart - Heart Month

February is Heart awareness month and fact is we all have a heart, some questionable but it’s true and we wouldn’t be here today without it.

I lost my Father to a suspected Heart Attack 8 years ago and he was only in his late 40’s, he used to be in the Army was relatively active working as a head green keeper on a top golf course is Dusseldorf Germany but sadly for reasons unknown to us was taken so early due to his heart.

This majorly hit home for me, being a young father myself and at the time a bit of a lad, bit of a drinker and not really giving a great deal of thought into what I ate or drunk, but I started changing small elements of what I did to get healthier and fitter.

8 years on I’m an active serving Firefighter and Personal trainer wanting to share a few simple top tips to get that ticker lasting longer.

As part of "Heart Month" we have arranged some free events check them out here.

• Keep Active

   

Physical activity can help reduce your risk of heart disease. It can also help you control your weight, reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and improve your mental health – helping you to look and feel great.

Be realistic and keep it simple

Be it a 30 min walk per day or spice it up with our time busting 10 minute workout available for free here, with a free demonstration video.

We have our blog “5 free ways to get fitter for free” to help you with some more ideas available here.

• Eating Healthy

Healthy eating can benefit you and your heart by helping lower cholesterol and allowing to be more active, alert and energetic.

The world of fad diets and contradicting advice is a mind field which leads to confusion and failed attempts of calorie controlled boring food diets.

Taking things one step at a time we are going to recommend a few little steps that will lead to a healthier lifestyle.

These are small changes that can be made to your current eating style, for more bespoke advice or information contact your local nutritionist or we can help here.

• Remove processed foods

  • Frozen premade meals like chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas, crisps and alike

• Fizzy drinks

  • Seriously, get rid of this out of your diet, lemonade, coke, all of it

• Sweets & chocolates

  • Replace sweets and chocolate with fruit, this will take steps towards eliminating your sweet tooth and eliminating the extreme processed sugars found in drinks and cheap chocolate

• Eat more Protein

  • Increasing your meat / fish and egg portion on the plate in all your meals will promote a much healthier food intake that promotes muscle recovery and much more.

• Carb intake

  • Replace starchy foods like Potato with Sweet Potato, white rice for brown rice and decrease your portion of these foods to about the size of the palm of your hand.

• Fats

  • Don’t be afraid of fats but think about them a little, cooking in Coconut oil for instance has a lot of health benefits and fats are good for your skin and can fuel your body too.
    Including avocados in sandwiches and salads can boost your fat intake in a healthy manner.

     

  • Just a few little ideas and small changes that can get your on the healthier road to health.

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• Stop Smoking

Quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do for your heart health.

If you're a smoker, stopping smoking is the single most important step you can take to protect the health of your heart.

Lots more and in-depth information can be found here to help you quit smoking.

http://www.nhs.uk/smokefree#r0eixaw3syG7Tl4w.97

We don’t want to bog you down with tons of stuff, have a go at 1 of these listed areas and see the difference it can make to your lifestyle and health.

We would love to hear from you and get updates so make sure you come say hello on our facebook page www.facebook.com/sussexultracorefitness

If you found any of this information useful how about making a donation to "British Heart Foundation" here via our website

Coach T