Garner Healthy Living
With Coach G.
Heart Health DOs and DON'Ts
February 1st, 2008
Kudos to Marie Osmond for getting in the news by encouraging women to be more conscious about their heart health. She was talking about the importance of eating healthy food and getting regular exercise. Great advice! However she is pushing for women to go to a website to learn more. The website is goredforwoman.org
After visiting the website it became apparent that though compassionately motivated, it lacks true insight into health. The page on living a heart healthy lifestyle contained all the traditional advice we have been used to hearing from the medical community for decades while heart disease continues to rise.
Let's go through their lifestyle points and make a few points. (Their points marked with "§".)
§ Get a checkup.
It's always good to know how your levels of this or that are doing. If some particular level is way off the charts, that's good to know. But don't freak out if your levels are not considered normal. Everyones normal can be a little different. As you learn to eat good wholesome foods your body will naturally balance those levels.
§ Get off the couch. Exercise for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week.
Excellent advice. Get the body moving. Exercise is one of the most important things to do for your health. Find an exercise that you can enjoy and stick with. Even better, find several different exercise you can enjoy and take turns doing them. That way you won't burn out on doing the same thing all the time, and you'll exercise different parts of the body in different ways, leading to better overall health.
§ Quit smoking.
Absolutely.
§ Drop a pound or two.
Another good idea if you happen to be overweight. The problem is they suggest you do this by cutting calories. See my article "Calories Do Not Matter" for further explanation.
§ Become a salt detective.
Not bad advice for most people. We do tend to have way too much salt in the Standard American Diet. However if you cut the salts too much that can be detrimental as well. One very good way to make sure that your salt intake doesn't get out of hand is just to make sure that you are drinking plenty of water. If you are drinking around a gallon of water a day the salt problem pretty much takes care of itself. Salt is a much bigger problem if you are dehydrated.
§ Learn how to read food package labels to help you make healthier choices.
This is a major problem. I've been reading labels for a long time and the more I learn about food, the more it becomes very plain that food labels tell you very little about what's inside the package and how it will affect your health. The best way to make healthy food choices is to buy foods that don't have labels. Whole, natural fruits and vegetables and grains. Of course if you do buy food in packages, you should read the labels to avoid substances that are toxic to the human body.
One problem is that when people tell you to read labels, they don't tell you what to look for. Or they may tell you to calculate calorie or sodium or fat amounts. Ignore those. They don't really matter.
What you want to look for is toxins. Here are some of the major ones to avoid:
Sugar
bleached flour
enriched flour
hydrogenated oil of any kind
high fructose corn syrup
mono sodium glutamate (MSG)
artificial flavors
artificial colors
All in all, the advice isn't too bad, but it could be much better.
Just eat a high quality natural foods diet, exercise, drink plenty of good clean water, make sure you get fiber (whole raw foods), get plenty of sleep, breathe deeply and have a gratitude attitude.
Your body will take care of you, if you take care of it.
Coach G.
Success in health comes from lifestyle described here.
Tags: food labels, health, Heart Health, Marie Osmond, nutrition, women's health
Catagories: Basics, Heart Health, In the News, Solutions, lifestyle
After visiting the website it became apparent that though compassionately motivated, it lacks true insight into health. The page on living a heart healthy lifestyle contained all the traditional advice we have been used to hearing from the medical community for decades while heart disease continues to rise.
Let's go through their lifestyle points and make a few points. (Their points marked with "§".)
§ Get a checkup.
It's always good to know how your levels of this or that are doing. If some particular level is way off the charts, that's good to know. But don't freak out if your levels are not considered normal. Everyones normal can be a little different. As you learn to eat good wholesome foods your body will naturally balance those levels.
§ Get off the couch. Exercise for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week.
Excellent advice. Get the body moving. Exercise is one of the most important things to do for your health. Find an exercise that you can enjoy and stick with. Even better, find several different exercise you can enjoy and take turns doing them. That way you won't burn out on doing the same thing all the time, and you'll exercise different parts of the body in different ways, leading to better overall health.
§ Quit smoking.
Absolutely.
§ Drop a pound or two.
Another good idea if you happen to be overweight. The problem is they suggest you do this by cutting calories. See my article "Calories Do Not Matter" for further explanation.
§ Become a salt detective.
Not bad advice for most people. We do tend to have way too much salt in the Standard American Diet. However if you cut the salts too much that can be detrimental as well. One very good way to make sure that your salt intake doesn't get out of hand is just to make sure that you are drinking plenty of water. If you are drinking around a gallon of water a day the salt problem pretty much takes care of itself. Salt is a much bigger problem if you are dehydrated.
§ Learn how to read food package labels to help you make healthier choices.
This is a major problem. I've been reading labels for a long time and the more I learn about food, the more it becomes very plain that food labels tell you very little about what's inside the package and how it will affect your health. The best way to make healthy food choices is to buy foods that don't have labels. Whole, natural fruits and vegetables and grains. Of course if you do buy food in packages, you should read the labels to avoid substances that are toxic to the human body.
One problem is that when people tell you to read labels, they don't tell you what to look for. Or they may tell you to calculate calorie or sodium or fat amounts. Ignore those. They don't really matter.
What you want to look for is toxins. Here are some of the major ones to avoid:
Sugar
bleached flour
enriched flour
hydrogenated oil of any kind
high fructose corn syrup
mono sodium glutamate (MSG)
artificial flavors
artificial colors
All in all, the advice isn't too bad, but it could be much better.
Just eat a high quality natural foods diet, exercise, drink plenty of good clean water, make sure you get fiber (whole raw foods), get plenty of sleep, breathe deeply and have a gratitude attitude.
Your body will take care of you, if you take care of it.
Coach G.
Success in health comes from lifestyle described here.
Tags: food labels, health, Heart Health, Marie Osmond, nutrition, women's health
Catagories: Basics, Heart Health, In the News, Solutions, lifestyle
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