5 Shopping Rules of Heart Healthy Diet
At the heart of preventing heart disease is a healthy diet. The foods that you choose to eat and how you plan to cook or prepare it can determine your risk of developing heart disease. And when it comes to stopping heart disease long before it starts, a heart healthy diet is the strongest defense line you can ever build. But where to start?
Rule 1: Know what is good for you
Experts at Mayo Clinic believe that the key to creating a heart healthy diet that works is planning. Forget about being spontaneous if you really want to be friendly to your heart; adopting a heart healthy diet can be really challenging – but should not be difficult.
One way to begin is to determining which foods can benefit your heart. And you know that this include a lot of fruits and vegetables and whole grains and less of what we know to be unhealthy heart-foods, such as baked goods, processed items, and red meats.
Rule 2: Shop healthy
Fruits, vegetables, whole grains: you know you can’t find them just about everywhere but in the grocery. A heart healthy diet requires a lot of shopping – without the “try it on” women love. Eating heart-smart involves frequent trips to the supermarket and tons of decisions between what tastes good and those that are heart-perfect.
Rule 3: Learn to compare
At times, shopping for heart-healthy foods can be overwhelming. But it shouldn’t stop you from doing what is good for you and your heart. Beginners often find themselves making decisions they rather not make, such as between:
- Bakery products and high-fiber breads
- Tasty, high-fat dressings and delicate, reduced-fat vinaigrette
- Grilled and fried
- Red meats and white meat
- Leaner light meat and fattier dark meat
- Cooked beans and mashed potato as a side dish
- Nuts or seeds and chips for snack
Rule 4: Buy with a purpose
It is easy to get lost in a sea of aisles with tasty and enticing food items. There is temptation everywhere you look. It is really easy to be swayed when you’re out shopping for food. Running away from shelves containing everything but heart healthy foods is not the solution.
Shopping should be fun — even when you are at the supermarket. Schedule grocery shopping, and be there with a purpose. The key: a shopping list. Find time to plan your menu for a week — from breakfast to dinner and everything in between. Snacks, healthy snacks, that is, are as important as breakfast. Imagine doing portion control without snacking in between major meals. Terrible, even impossible. Include them in your budget.
Stick to what you have planned and go for it. A post-dinner pudding every now and then won’t hurt. But bagging bags and bags of chips is.
Rule 5: Head to the Farmer’s Market
Your wallet and your heart will thank you for it. The surrounding may not be as polished and trendy as your fave supermarket, but a Farmer’s Market boasts of the freshest and cheapest produce. And you know that things can’t get any better than that.
Plus, it’s fun hopping from one stall to another. Everyone shows up in a festive mood and is in for some serious sort of bargain hunting mood. It is a great place for those who are low in budget and planning to save on the grocery bill.
Have a Farmer’s Market nearby? If you are living solo, encourage your friends to shop with you. Shopping at a Farmer’s Market is really buying in bulk. You have to shop by the case. Buy everything that you need in one trip and split what you have afterwards.
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