February is American Heart Month

Let’s just pause for a heartbeat or two.

Can you feel it? Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Constant as the Northern Star. And as dazzling.

February is American Heart Month. An opportunity to feel a bit of gratitude and amazement for our own little, individual perpetual motion machine. And in our moment of gratitude, or month of gratitude as the case may be, let’s make a commitment to taking better care of our hearts. It doesn’t take much. Any little investment we make in our heart health pays back in big time dividends. And unlike most investments these days, an investment in our health and well-being comes with low-risk and high returns.

Take a moment to reflect on what you do, on a daily basis, to heart your heart.

Holding that baseline in mind, think of one small thing you can do to improve that baseline of heart love.

Exercising regularly, eating well, reducing stress, choosing happiness all help the heart stay healthy. What small change you choose depends completely on what your current baseline is. To get your creative juices flowing, let me make a handful of suggestions:

1.    Move more. This one’s easy. There are lots of ways to increase the amount of exercise in your day. Choose to add just 10 minutes of extra movement each day. Follow in your grandparents’ footsteps and take an evening “constitutional” (a walk around the neighborhood after dinner). Join your friend for a spinning class. Start biking. Dance during the commercials.  Jump rope with your kids. Or jump rope during the commercials and dance with your kids. Either way. Just look for every opportunity to be more active.

2.    Eat real food. While we don’t all agree on the optimal diet, there is a lot of consensus about what not to eat. Packaged, processed, refined, or fried foods offer limited nourishment at best and are disease promoting at worst. Empty your kitchen of these foods and increase your consumption of life-enhancing foods. Make healthy foods convenient. Have a bowl of fresh fruit on your kitchen table or office workstation. Prepare carrots, celery, red pepper, and zucchini for ready-to-eat options in the fridge. Expand your options – peruse the produce isles and pick a new vegetable to try.

3.    Eat less. Regardless of what we choose to eat, most of us eat too much of it. Reducing our intake of food, and in turn, reducing our body fat dramatically reduces our risk of chronic degenerative diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Significant results are seen with only 5-10% reductions in body weight – that’s do-able!

4.    Sleep enough. Lack of sleep increases our stress hormones, our appetite, and our tendency to gain weight. Not to mention that it makes us cranky and mentally dull. We often ignore good sleep habits to make time for everything else in our busy lives. In this regard, our body does better with routine. Stick to a regular bedtime, sleep in a dark, quiet room, and wake-up at the same time each morning. A good night’s sleep is the basis for good health. Make it a priority.

5.    Laugh more. We just take ourselves way too seriously. See if you can catch yourself making too big a deal out of nothing. Stop. See the silliness in your seriousness. Laugh. The more you do this, the more you realize that few things are a big deal. Find the lightness and humor and delight in the day around you. It’s there. If you pay attention you are more apt to see it.

6.    Forgive others. Ninety-eight percent of what someone else says or does is about them, not you! Holding a grudge keeps us locked in the past, a very negative, unpleasant past. Our minds tend to play these negative events over and over. Our body cannot tell the difference between the real event and our mind’s continuous review of it. The end product is constant stress and unhappiness. Not a good combination for heart health. Let go. When you find your mind returning to a bothersome incident, stop. And let go again.

7.    Connect. Look at people. Smile at people. Listen. Make a connection. What color are the grocery clerk’s eyes? Did you hear your child as she shared the events of her day? We are so busy thinking about something, anything, except the moment at hand, that we lose the opportunity to connect with others.

8.    Practice awareness. Step outside yourself and pay attention from the observer’s point of view. It’s amazing how easy and interesting life is from this perspective. Stress dissolves. Contentment takes its place.

9.    Love yourself up. Negative self-talk moves you away from your goals and away from good health. Find reasons to pat yourself on the back. Healthy breakfast? Pat, pat, pat. Walk an extra block to catch the bus? Pat, pat, pat. Choose an apple instead of a donut for morning snack? Pat, pat, pat. You get the idea. Catch yourself loving yourself up.

10.    Remember to breathe. Regardless of our best intentions to lighten up, laugh more, and let go, stress has a way of sneaking in, causing mental, emotional, and physical tightening. Take a minute or two throughout the day to sit quietly, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. Take 4-6 slow, deep, comfortable breaths. Feel the breath coming in through your nose, feel your abdomen and your chest expand. Slowly exhale, keeping your awareness on your breath, feeling relaxation replacing stress. These quiet moments of focused breathing are helpful in the middle of a stressful workday or in times of transition. Try it before a big meeting. Or in the middle of a long workday.  Or upon arriving home – let go of the workday and prepare yourself for a meaningful evening at home.

American Heart Month. Love yourself up this month – one small step at a time. And remember to pat yourself on the back with each little step.

To happy, healthy hearts-
Jess

P. S. February 6th is “National Wear Red Day” to show support for women’s heart disease awareness.