Many people find the idea of heart healthy eating confusing, with so many restrictions and news stories about the latest discovery that’s been supposedly linked to heart disease.
The truth is simpler than we’ve been led to believe: improving heart health isn’t complicated.
If heart disease prevention is important to you, your number one priority should be analyzing what you eat. The food pyramid has failed us, resulting in millions of Americans who believe they’re eating the right foods but are actually putting themselves on a fast track to my operating table.
Modern dietary advice tells us to avoid butter and eat vegetable oil. We’re supposed to avoid eggs and eat cereal.
This is not going to increase heart health!
We are surrounded by foods that lack nutritional density. This means we stay hungry after eating and quickly over-consume. Before we know it, our pants don’t fit and the scales are no longer our friend.
These are what Brian Keith calls “NFOs” – or near food objects. Food created in factories by corporations is cheap and enjoyable, but by no means healthy – even if they write “fortified with extra vitamins” and “proven to reduce cholesterol” on the package.
My approach to food is simple and easy to remember: eat things that grow in the ground, or which eat what grows in the ground. That means whole, real foods like meat, eggs, vegetables, and so on. It doesn’t include Oreos, cheese in a can, or microwave meals.
But picking the right foods requires discipline, especially when we’re surrounded by colorful boxes of NFOs.
To help combat decision fatigue, here are some simple rules for improving heart health.
Curate your food influencers
Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a semi-naked model selling a health food product. These are often supplements with bold, unverified claims about packing on muscle and melting away fat.
They belong in the trash.
Improving heart health is about eating foods that actively contribute to our overall health, not looking for a powdered shortcut. But I’ll admit, the marketing is good. When we see men and women with chiseled abs or a shapely figure moving heavy weights in a gym, our mind tells us they’re ‘healthy.’
There are two problems with this thinking:
- Their physical attributes came from years of consistent training, so no supplement can ever replace that.
- Your physique is not an indicator of health.
It’s possible to eat badly but still be strong and lean. I see many people get led astray because they take bad advice from people who look great but share bad advice.
This also applies to people who perform impressive athletic feats. We assume that, because someone can run a triathlon, they must be healthy. The reality is that when people push their body to limits, they often consume unhealthy foods to get extra calories or fast energy.
Let’s take Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps as an example. He ate 12,000 calories a day – around six times more than the average adult needs to consume. His breakfast consisted of sugar-coated French toast, chocolate chip pancakes, and fried egg sandwiches with fried onions. Lunch included white bread and energy drinks. He’d also eat an entire pizza and two pounds of pasta!
Phelp’s intense exercise schedule meant that he required extra energy and the 12,000 calories didn’t make him fat, but pizza and energy drinks are still not healthy foods. As former Mr. Olympia bodybuilder Jay Cutler said, if he doesn’t eat processed foods and sugars, he can’t eat enough to maintain his massive frame.
So step one is to identify your heart health goal and cling to it. If your goal is heart disease prevention and improving health, don’t look at advanced athletes for dietary nutrition.
Avoid processed foods
This is sadly very difficult in our Standard American Diet (SAD). It’s easy once you know what you’re looking for, but there can be a lot of misconceptions around what processed foods are.
Most people can identify the obvious culprits – cookies, cakes, microwave meals. And yes, eliminating these from your diet can certainly improve your heart health.
But people don’t often realize the staggering amount of food products that contain added sugar or vegetable oils. The cereal and granola you buy as a healthy breakfast option are no exception to this. My advice is next time you’re in the supermarket for your groceries, look at the labels on the foods you usually buy – you might be surprised at what’s in them.
Oils and fats are a particular problem. The healthy options are extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, butter, lard, and tallow. But lower prices mean that less healthy oils are used in processed foods instead, including canola, sunflower, and other seed oils. This is also true in many restaurants, which means even a healthy item from the menu can be cooked in oils we should avoid. This isn’t anything to worry about if you only occasionally eat at restaurants, but it can quickly add up if you frequently eat away from home.
Avoiding the following foods puts you ahead of the majority of people and helps improve your heart health as well:
- Sugar
- Processed foods (if it’s in a box or bag, check the ingredients)
- Oils such as sunflower, canola, vegetable, and more
- Cereals
If you find it easier to know what you can eat instead of what you shouldn’t, my guidelines are to stick with animal products – meat, organs, eggs, butter – along with foods that grow in nature like vegetables.
Carbohydrates are not the enemy if you eat whole, unprocessed foods. A significant problem with carbs is that we often view them as a single food type, but there’s a huge difference between a sweet potato and ice cream.
Remember: there’s a lot of flexibility with what you can eat, and you should be guided by what works for you. If you prefer a plant-based diet, continue with it – just be mindful that many foods sold as vegan are incredibly processed, so it may take some effort to meet your calorie and nutrient needs. Similarly, if you enjoy animal products, there’s no need to force yourself to follow a plant-based diet. The carnivore diet has become extremely popular for this reason.
Home cooking
The simplest way to know what you’re eating is to make it yourself. Improving heart health begins with knowing what’s best to eat, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that’s whole, real food. Armed with this information, you can buy, cook, and eat the healthiest foods for heart disease prevention, and avoid the foods that are damaging your health and expanding your waistline.
While an occasional visit to a restaurant won’t hurt you, the likelihood is they’re using ingredients that you shouldn’t be eating on a regular basis. That makes it difficult or impossible to become metabolically healthy when your food is cooked by someone else.
That’s why I suggest home cooking as much as possible – that way, your heart health is in your hands.
Heart healthy eating explained
If you’re serious about improving your metabolic health and eating heart-healthy foods, you can sign up for my newsletter and receive more tips on heart disease prevention.
If you’re not sure how healthy you currently are, you can also take my free metabolic health assessment to evaluate your condition. I’d be happy to provide suggestions for how you can improve, then direct you to our metabolic health coaching program so you can join a community of like-minded individuals.