You don’t need to be a doctor (maybe you might need a little biology knowledge though!) to know that your heart is the central muscle in your circulatory system. It pumps blood around your body, keeps oxygen moving around your system and therefore it is pretty crucial that we keep our heart in good health.
But if we asked what you could do to look after your heart, what would you say?
….we were pretty stumped too, until we did some research!
It’s often not obvious what we can do to ensure our heart keeps ticking, is it?
What we do know is that carrying excess weight can affect your heart health negatively and one way we can look after our heart, is to stay in a healthy weight range.
How does excess weight affect our heart?
When you have a BMI in the overweight or obese categories, you are already putting extra strain on your heart – meaning it is under pressure it can’t often cope with.
Being overweight can mean that you build up fatty materials in your arteries, blocking and damaging them. Something I am sure we would all like to avoid, where possible.
In fact, carrying more weight puts you at in increased risk of:
- High Blood Pressure
- Heart Attack
- Stroke
- Cardiac Arrest
- Increased Cholesterol
It’s not just about weight though…
Your overall weight does play a part in you heart health, but your health is also about where you carry your weight and excess fat.
Too much fat around your organs, visceral fat, is what poses the biggest health risks for your heart.
So if you notice that you carry a lot of or most of your weight around your middle and organs – if you’re apple shaped – you could be putting your heart under unnecessary pressure.
If you’re not sure about whether you are carrying too much visceral fat, you can get a better idea by taking your BMI and waist measurement.
You are at an increased risk of heart disease if:
- You are a woman with a BMI over 25+ and have a waist measurement over 31.5” (80cm)
- You are a man with a BMI over 25+ and have a waist measurement over 37” (94cm)
Ways to care for your heart
One of the most obvious things you can do to care for your heart if you are overweight, is to have a healthy weight loss diet and remain within a healthy BMI range.
But there are other things you can do too, that will not only help you with your diet for weight loss, but will help keep you heart-healthy for as long as possible!
- Cut down on your sugary snacks and adding it to drinks
- Use less salt
- Replace saturated fats in processed foods like crisps, pies and cakes with unsaturated fats in things like oily fish, oils, avocados and nuts
- Eat your 5 a day
- Give up smoking
- Stick to, or under, the weekly guidance of 14 units of alcohol a week
- Keep active – cardiovascular activities that get your blood pumping and heart rate up like jogging, quick walking and swimming
- Keep stress to a minimum (easier said than done for lots of us!)
Bottom line
If you are concerned about your heart health and want to do you best to keep it as healthy as possible for as long as possible, speak to a weight loss doctor at The Slimming Clinic.
Tackling your weight loss with the support of a doctor means we don’t just monitor your weight loss, but your overall health too.
We can help you understand health parameters and just how positive losing a little weight can be on your entire well-being.
Getting started is really simple.