Five Ways to a Healthy Heart

1. Size matters: Portion size of your meal plays an important role in determining how healthy your heart would be. Heavy meals may often lead to surge in sugar levels that can disturb your body metabolism. The key here is to not to deprive yourself of food, but to have more frequent meals with smaller portions. This will help in maintaining optimal blood sugar levels, better metabolism, and keeping the hunger pangs away. Try it and your heart will appreciate it for sure.

2. Home is where heart is: These days with fast moving life we often end up eating packed meals, picked up off a shelf of a departmental store or ordering a take-away from a restaurant. And it looks trendy and mod! But, this is what your heart hates the most. The packed meals or restaurant meals are usually high calorie and come loaded with extra salt, oils and hidden sugars. The rule of thumb is anything which you can pick off a shelf and eat it straightway- should not be consumed. Home cooked food is best for your health and heart.

3. Add more fruits , vegetables and fibre in your diet: Fruits and vegetables are rich in fibre, vitamins and minerals like magnesium and potassium which help in maintaining blood pressure, and thus good for heart. Fibres provide roughage to your body which adds bulk to food leading to less food cravings, and also help to control cholesterol levels.

4. Keep a tab on your salt intake. Are you a person who loves sprinkling an extra bit of salt in a soup bowl, or a fruit plate or over chicken breast. Hold on! stop that. This tiny and innocent looking habit can be injurious to your health and heart. The content of salt in your diet should be less than 6g per day. Since we can't keep a tab of how much salt we are consuming in a day- just keep it simple, and remember- no extra salt in any meal, and the rule of avoiding packed meals applies here as well- as they come with extra loaded sodium. Mind all salty savouries you keep on munching throughout the day- keep your hands off those snacks as well.

5. Just move your butt, keep moving: Are you a person, who ignores the doorbell, and waits for your maid to open the door, and ask someone to hand you over the remote, or shouts to someone for a glass of water. Hey come on... physical exercise doesn't mean that you have to spend hefty money in a gym and sweating on a treadmill. Simple moves throughout the day are also very effective. Move move move and lift your butt as much as you can, and don't be a lazy couch potato. See, your heart follows exactly what you do.... if you are lazy, so will your heart be.. and that's what you don't want. Right? You expect your heart to beat non-stop 24x7, help your heart in doing so... are you still sitting? Get up and get moving..