Rule 1 – Look before you eat:
- Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables every day (5 servings – they are naturally low in fat and high in vitamins,
minerals and antioxidants).
These best are the highly coloured vegetables and fruits. - Eat a variety of grain products
- Choose non-fat or low-fat products
- Use less fat meats – chicken, fish and lean cuts
- Switch to far-free milk / skimmed milk
Dietary Guidelines
- Limit your intake of foods high in calories and low in nutrition, including foods like soft drinks, sweets, junk food
- Limit foods high in saturated fat, trans-fat and cholesterol
- Eat less than 6 gms of salt a day
- If you are a regular drinker – have no more than 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks a day
Limit/ Avoid:
Foods rich in cholesterol and saturated fats:
- Egg yolk
- Fatty meat and organ meat (liver)
- Butter chicken / batter fried fish
- Milk fat – butter, cheese, ice cream, full cream milk
- Hidden fats like biscuits, patties, cakes, pastries
Cooking Oils:
- Saturated Fats: increase cholesterol – AVOID! – coconut oil, palm oil, ghee
- Monounsaturated Fats (MUFA) – HEART HEALTHY – olive oil, groundnut oil, canola oil, mustard oil
- Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFA) – HEART HEALTHY – sunflower oil, soybean oil
- Omega 3 – Fatty acids fish oil – HEART HEALTHY
Good VS Bad Cholesterol, What you NEED to know
Preventing Heart Disease:
Rule 2 – Exercise
You should maintain a level of physical activity that keeps you fit and matches the calories you eat.
Keeping active serves several functions in preventing and treating those at risk. It reduces obesity, increases HDL
(the good cholesterol), lowers LDL (bad cholesterol), the total cholesterol in your body, helps control diabetes and hypertension.
Keep on Exercising
- Mortality is halved in retired men who walk more than two miles every day
- Regular exercise can halve the risk of heart disease, particularly in men who walk briskly
- Someone who is inactive has a great risk of having heart disease as someone who smoke, has high blood pressure or has high cholesterol
- Exercise significantly reduces the chance of diabetes and stroke
- With regularly exercise, blood pressure in those with hypertension is vastly reduced.
- Moderate to intense physical activity for 30 – 45 minutes on most days of the week is recommended.
Complicated exercise machines or sweating it out in a gym are not essential. JUST WALK!!
