Healthy Heart Challenge
February is not only the month of Love but also National Heart Awareness Month. According to CDC stats, 1 in 3 people die of heart related illness in North America. Try for the rest of this month to focus on the health of your own heart. The American Heart Association is in full swing with their healthy heart campaigns. The bottom line? You can improve the health of your heart through a number of lifestyle changes – increasing your exercise, decreasing your stress, lowering your salt, fat and cholesterol intake and of course, STOP SMOKING. If you happen to fall into several or all of these categories it may seem too daunting a task to undertake; and it is. Best successes come from slow, controlled and small changes cumulatively made over a period of time. My suggestion? Pick ONE category – the one you feel would be the easiest to alter and maintain – and start there. Once you feel you have mastered one change, start working on another area. By slowly pecking away at these poor habits you can successfully alter your lifestyle into one of health and hale.
If you need a little booster, try the AHA’s 21 Day Sodium Swap Challenge. This foucses on lowering your salt intake. This one little habit is broken down to a 3-week process to enable your assured success – whittling down or eliminating the “Salty 6” just two at a time.
