Want to eat for heart health but can’t remember those long lists of heart healthy foods? Then you need to try Fat Fish Fiber Fruit™, the easy effective way to eat for your heart! Pick some up today!
Everyone knows that fruit is good for you: fruit has antioxidants like flavenoids and lycopene that lower blood pressure and fight disease. But did you know that the best fruit is Fiber Fruit? Fiber Fruit has lots of spongy fiber that soaks up cholesterol in the digestive track and bulldozes it out the back door. But wait, there’s more! The best Fiber Fruit is Fat Fish™ brand Fiber Fruit!
Fat Fish™ is the leading producer of unsaturated fat (both mono and poly styles) which your heart craves. Fat Fish™ also gives your body plenty of Omega-3 fatty acids to reduce plaque buildup and triglyceride fat in the arteries, slightly lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of irregular heart beat. But wait, there’s more!
Fat Fish Fiber Fruit™ comes in a variety of flavors like blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, orange, grapefruit, avocado, tomato, and more! Look for our new and improved line of Leafy Green* Fat Fish Fiber Fruit™, full of the fiber and antioxidants you’ve come to love! (*Technically not a fruit.)
Disclaimer: Fat Fish Fiber Fruit™ may misleadingly sound like only fruit is good for your heart. This is not the case, however the FDA (Foundation of Dorky Authors) knows that alliteration and silliness cause memory increase. Side effects include retention of information and possible giggling while grocery shopping. The boring breakdown is as follows:
Fat: Eat good fats (i.e. mono-unsaturated or poly-unsaturated) like those found in nuts, avocados, and some fish. If the fat comes from a plant, it’s good. If it comes from a land animal (cheese, bacon, red meat, etc) it’s bad and should be limited and savored.
Fish: Omega-3 fatty acids abound in salmon, sardines, mackerel, walnuts, ground flax seed, and chia seeds. Too many to remember? Pick one and start eating it.
Fiber: Whole grains are good for your heart because they are plants and therefore full of fiber. Whole grain bread and pasta count too, even if you can’t see the grains; tiny fiber fits in your arteries just fine. Legumes (beans, lentils, peas) have fiber and protein which is a nice bonus.
Fruit: Any fruit or vegetable is good for your heart. They all include vitamins, nutrients, and fiber. Berries and leafy greens have more antioxidants, but any edible plant is a plus for your heart.
Not satisfied with FFFF (Fat Fish Fiber Fruit™)? Feel free to invent your own product to fit your tastes! Simply select one heart healthy food from each category of good fats, omega-3s, fiber, and antioxidants. Here are a few to get you started:
W-WoBBle: Walnuts, Walnuts, Beans and Berries
OFLS: (whether pronounced “Awfuls” or “Offals”, it’s memorable) Olive oil, Flax, Lentils, Strawberries
ASPT: (as in “she aspt her doctor about heart health) Almond, Sardine, Peas, Tomato
ACHOO: Avocado, CHia, Oatmeal, Orange
But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. Luke 8:15
You’ll love next week’s post With All my Heart: Hypertension and Heart Health (Part 1)
References:
Eating for Heart Health https://www.goredforwomen.org/live-healthy/first-steps-to-prevent-heart-disease-and-be-heart-healthy/lifes-simple-7/
Heart Healthy Foods http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20720182,00.html#heart-healthy-foods
Most things in life require maintenance and HeartDOT’s system of oxygenated transportation is no different. When does HeartDOT plow and salt the roads after it snows? At night. When does HeartDOT do construction on busy highways? At night. When are HeartDOT’s rest stops cleaned and restocked? At night.
It’s not just your heart that suffers from little or poor sleep. Short sleepers are more likely to be obese and suffer from type two diabetes as well. Those who are tired are less likely to exercise and less likely to make good food choices. (Duh! We’ve all been there; we don’t need science to tell us that.) When you are sleep deprived, you even produce more ghrelin, a hormone that makes you feel hungry.
Exercise is a storm for your heart. Exercise makes your heart work harder for a while which at first can feel like you’re being keelhauled*, but your heart is a fast learner. Before long it’s so used to the battening down the hatches that when your heart is at rest, it can take it easy. Studies show that the resting heart rate of people who exercise is lower than the resting heart rate of landlubbers*. A lubber’s heart (land or otherwise) is not being challenged, so it’s weaker and has to work harder to do less than an exercised heart. More storms makes for better sailors.
Inactivity (keeping your ship docked, so to speak) is one of the major risk factors for heart disease. Exercise lowers your risk for heart disease by 45%. And that’s exercise at the recommended 2.5 hours of exercise every week level. Even if you’re a landlubber who spends most of her time in the brig and only halfheartedly hoists the mainsail, you’re still reducing your risk of heart disease by a LOT. Anchors aweigh! By the way, those recommended 2.5 hours can be 30 minutes per day five days per week, or 2.5 hours on a weekend, or 25 ten minute bouts of movement sprinkled throughout the week. A bit of climbing the rigging here, a bit of casting off there, maybe a bit of barnacle removal just for fun. Your heart gets stronger with every minute of exercise you do.
Here are some heart-pumping exercise ideas to get you started:
Your heart contracts (or pumps) rhythmically every second of every day of every year of your life. The force of the contraction (labor flashback! Anybody else grimace when they read that phrase?) pushes the blood through the arteries beginning with the big ones near the heart and ending with the teeny tiny itsy bitsy yellow polka dot bikini capillaries in your toes, organs, eyeballs, and everywhere in between.
HeartDOT makes sure that traffic keeps moving. Blood delivers oxygen, nutrients, medical personnel (white blood cells), hormones, repair crews, and a host of other goods and services to the body. It also transports the body’s junk (dead viruses, bacteria, toxins, etc) to the Kidney Export Service for permanent removal from the body. HeartDOT doesn’t make the goods or the trash, it just keeps the flow moving.
Now imagine that transportation around Venice is not shut down, but travel has slowed. Storms have washed silt into the waterways, making them narrower. A tanker sank in the lagoon and traffic bottlenecks as vessels go around it. Priority is given to those carrying food and oxygen, but repair crews are delayed and trash removal is minimal.
When you sleep seven to eight hours at night, your body has the time and rest it needs to mentally process your day, repair cellular damage (that’s body cells not smart phones), hunt down and remove toxins, and wake up with energy for a new day. When you’re deprived of sleep—even short a few hours a night—your body can only partially recoup. You’re left feeling run down because you are run down and we tend to try to fix ourselves with sweets, junk food, or caffeine for an energy boost.
Moving: Regular sleep helps you burn more calories even when you’re not moving. Sleep is when your body builds and repairs muscle, making any exercise you do more effective. Sleep helps your body regulate hormones like insulin and gives them time to do their job. The result is that sleepers burn more fat than non sleepers, even if their calorie intake is the same.
VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ are easy to use! Simply place VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ on a table or kitchen counter or inside a lunchbox or cooler and watch them disappear! As you pass by VISIBLE VEGETABLES™, your hands will automatically reach for the bright colors and cool textures. You’ll enjoy hours of happy crunching!
VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ come in two nifty varieties: Pre-Prepped™ and DIY™!
VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ are great for night binging in front of the television and mindless munching during long car rides. VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ are portable, eco-friendly, filling, and satisfying. Display your VISIBLE VEGETABLES™ today and feel the benefits!
Picture it this way: if you don’t eat plants, you’re like the action hero who clings to the top of a speeding car as it careens through traffic. He’s spread eagle, fingers and toes gripping any crevice in the vehicle’s exterior as momentum threatens to dislodge him. Riding on a car like this is bad for our hero’s health. It’s only a matter of time before the car comes to a stop and our hero catapults over the hood. Injury and death are givens if our hero stays on top of that car.
The documentary Food Choices touches on the topic of pesticides. Dr. Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org, states that if half of Americans would eat one extra serving of fruits or vegetables a day, it would prevent 20,000 cancer deaths per year. All of the pesticides on that extra produce would cause 10 cancer deaths per year. The number of people who potentially get sick from pesticides on produce is statistically insignificant compared with the benefit of those people eating produce…even non-organic non-local produce.
Field Irrigation: Watermelon and sunflower seeds. Sweet and salty, this snack satisfies both cravings. Just make sure you pay attention to which seeds you eat and which you spit.
Mediterranean Berries: Greek yogurt and berries. Fill a small plastic container with Greek yogurt and add a few tablespoons of frozen raspberries, blueberries, or strawberries and your snack is ready to travel without refrigeration.
Cooling Waters: Cucumber 
Sex, Soup, and 2 Fisted Eating 