It's All About the Heart

Back in March, a dear couple of friends gave me a book titled The 30 Day Heart Tune Up.  I finally finished reading the book last week and thought I'd share some thoughts on it below.

One of the key takeaways for me was that you can have arteries or arterial plaque growth within 10 years either way of your age.  So for me, this means I can have the heart capacity anywhere from a 29 year old to a 49 year old, which is crazy to think about.  This obviously depends on how well you take care of your heart.

There were a ton of recipes in the back which I quite frankly rarely pay attention to.  I'm more interested in the guidelines and then going from there, or rather requesting Steffani go from those guidelines since she's the cook in our home.  Some of the main rules were to stay away from processed foods in general and also away from dairy and red meats.  He also suggested fish were good for the heart.

This book was interesting to me because it didn't focus on weight much.  He mentioned of course that you would most likely lose weight if you ate that way, but he was much more focused on cardiovascular health and how diet and exercise effects it.  If I were to guess, I'd guess I was closer to the 49 year old in terms of arterial plaque growth than the 29 year old.

I've always thought of exercise as less important than diet, and it is in regards to weight loss.  But it is every bit as important as diet in regards to your cardiovascular health.  This last week I've done a lot better with exercising as a direct result of reading this book and hope to continue to do so.  

My dad has exercised basically every day since he was 35 and found out his father had been diagnosed with diabetes.  In fact, he's turning 65 this summer and truth be known he's fitter than I am right now as a 39 year old.  I need to be a chip off the old block in regards to exercise.  I have plenty of discipline spiritually speaking with spiritual habits but not so much with physical ones.  I haven't had a soda in 31 days so that's certainly a start with the diet side of things too.

So, here's to our hearts.  We only get one of them, so if you're like me, it's time to start taking better care of the only heart you'll ever have.  The good news is you can even reverse arterial plaque growth no matter your age so there's some light at the end of the tunnel.