Lifestyle Vital to New Heart Diet

June 19, 2006 --The key to a healthy heart is lifestyle, not a strict diet, according to new guidelines from the American Heart Association.

About every five years the AHA updates its diet advice. This year, for the first time, the guidelines emphasize lifestyle as much as diet.

Tufts University researcher Alice Lichtenstein, DSc, chairs the AHA nutrition committee that wrote the new recommendations.

"We wanted to present recommendations that would be easily adopted by the general public," Lichtenstein tells WebMD. "There is a de-emphasis on numbers, and more on answering basic questions: What can I do? How do I do it? How do I make changes right now?"

The new guidelines don't lay down the law about how much to eat, what to eat, and when to eat. They instead focus on healthy diet and lifestyle patterns. And they offer practical ways for real people to make lifesaving changes, says WebMD's director of nutrition, Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD.

"Eighty percent of heart disease is preventable with healthy lifestyle: good food, fitness, and normal weight," Zelman says. "Dietary patterns are what it's all about. The AHA says, 'This is the gold standard.' But you don't have to get there overnight. It is not about perfection -- it is about making progress toward the healthier lifestyle. And the payoff is huge."

The guidelines appear in the July 4 issue of the AHA journal Circulation.

In Balance: Food and Activity

Lichtenstein says it's all about balancing the food one takes in with the energy one puts out.

"If you have the best diet, but get no physical activity or if you smoke, it is going to impact your heart health," she says. "When one makes decisions about food choices and activity patterns, it is important to make sure they are balanced."

In a nutshell, the AHA says you can avoid heart disease if you:

• Eat a healthy overall diet.
• Balance calories consumed with calories burned.
• Get at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day.
• Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
• Choose whole-grain, high-fiber foods.
• Eat fish -- especially oily fish such as salmon -- at least twice a week.
• As much as you can, avoid saturated fats and trans fats.
• Cut back on cholesterol by choosing lean meats and fat-free or low-fat dairy foods.
• Cut back on beverages and foods with added sugars.
• Cut back on salt added to food -- especially if you're middle aged or older, African-American, or have high blood pressure.
• If you drink alcohol, drink in moderation.
• Make healthy choices when dining in restaurants.

Don't let this list overwhelm you, Lichtenstein and Zelman say. The idea isn't to burn out after two weeks of strenuous effort, but to gradually adopt healthy habits for the rest of your life.

"We're talking about making small, incremental, permanent changes in your habits," Lichtenstein says. "This is the only way to make enough of a change, for a long enough time, to accrue benefits."