Heart Health Food Ideas #118

I received some encouraging news from my cardiologist today. I can stop taking one of my blood pressure medications, Norvasc. This is good news because my diet and exercise supposedly have done for me what they should.  Lowered my blood pressure enough to where I do not need all of the medications I have been taking.

I tend to stray more frequently from the three basic specific heart patient recovery subjects. Weight loss, exercise, and healthy food diet.  For a heart attack survivor heart patient, there are many continuing stages of recovery.  I am not sure if there is an end, other than the obvious, of living a lifestyle as a heart patient.  Because of the many levels of heart patients, it is sometimes difficult to write about specific information that would apply to every reader.   An example is weight loss.  I currently write much more about healthy foods.  Especially why they are healthy for our heart health, rather than about foods that relate more to weight loss, which many readers would have a greater interest in.  I actually could write more about my weight loss experiences and the foods I gave up and why I gave them up.  Most of you know where I am headed with this and why I brought this subject up.  You readers who are more interested in weight loss, need to be very curious about the most healthy foods and the reasons they are healthy.  Why?  Because what I believe about weight loss for heart patients is to not go on a diet.  You first will have to eliminate your bad eating habits and no longer eat unhealthy foods.  I am not taking a short cut here, but you, the heart patient,  know much better than any of us which foods you eat that are absolutely bad for your cholesterol and heart health.  Many times it is as much as how the food is prepared.  Chicken is my primary source of protein,  I eat it roasted, grilled, or boiled. Skinless chicken breast.  No fried or cooked in a sauce or gravy.  Therefore, you as an individual, obviously know which foods you need to eliminate from your diet to improve and maintain a healthy heart lifestyle.   As you avoid specific foods, you should be considering what healthy foods you are not currently eating that you need to add to your daily diet.  Perhaps  fruits.  Fruits that could replace perhaps treats as ice cream, sugary process snack foods, fried foods?  Maybe rather than adding croutons, bacon bits, and cheese to your salads you could use fruits.  Here is an example of what I do.  Take a basic lettuce and spinach salad.  I add sliced strawberries, grapes, sunflower seed kernels and walnuts.  Optional depending on what I may or may not want would be these.  Tuna fish, chicken breast, sliced banana,  apple, almonds   The healthy options can go on and on.  Salad dressings?  I never let calories in salad dressings be the deciding reason I use it or not.  I look at fats, sugar, cholesterol.  I avoid and do not use the heavy creamy type dressings, Thousand Island, ranch, green goddess, creamy Italian and the such.  I will use a vinegar and oil Italian, balsamic vinaigrette, raspberry vinaigrette, or Natural Fresh brand citrus balsamic vinaigrette which is my favorite.    Now this is one of the best examples that I can give you on creating a new healthy food diet for yourself.   Along with the change to healthier foods you will lose weight.  If you don't, it is only because you are not completely avoiding the foods you know you should not be eating as a heart patient.  You need to consider where  you want your heart health to be in 6 months.  For me the weight loss was secondary, sort of a by product of getting myself healthy.  I am sure a lot of you have taken the same approach at becoming healthy as I did.  Exercise, rest, and medication will be limited to what extent they will improve your heart health if you continue with the same poor unhealthy diet and eating habits.

Squeeze a generous amount of chocolate and follow with caramel syrup into a plastic cup.  Add a lot of soft vanilla ice cream.  More chocolate syrup.  More caramel syrup and top it all off with a large piece of crispy fried bacon. What we have here is Burger Kings new Bacon Sundae.  A whopping 510 calories, 18 grams of fat, and 61 grams of sugar.  These are the kind of foods that many of us use to have great pleasure in eating.   Thank goodness we changed.  You can too.