Eat well. Exercise. Get enough omega-3s. Chances are, you’ve heard tips on making heart-healthy choices before. But how do your good decisions affect heart function? Read on to discover how common advice has an extraordinary impact on heart health.

I’m Dr. Louis Ignarro, a research pharmacologist and Nobel Laureate* in medicine for my research into Nitric Oxide, an important molecule Susan Bowerman described in detail in a recent article about heart health. I’ve spent the last decade focusing on educating others about the impact of nutrition and lifestyle on the heart, and you know what I’ve found? Many people don’t understand how their good decisions affect heart health and overall bodily wellness. And for good decisions to have staying power, it’s important to understand the impact they’re having.

When you lose weight, you can see the difference. But the results of a healthier heart are more difficult to measure. Let’s take a look at five healthy choices and how they impact your heart.

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Heart health expert Louis Ignarro, PhD has a tremendous amount of practical advice about how each of us can look after our hearts, so we’ve invited him to share some of his knowledge with us over the next few weeks.  If you have any questions then let us know in the comments section below and we’ll make sure to pass them on.

Hi Louis, thanks for joining us today.  It’s a pleasure and an honor to welcome you to our Herbalife offices.  We all know you as an eminent heart health expert but can you tell us a little about your background?

Louis Ignarro: Of course. I grew up in Long Beach, NY and was always active. I enjoyed swimming in the ocean and one-on-one stickball but I always had an interest in understanding how things worked and delighted in constructing and deconstructing things – if I could get them to work again then even better!

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Have you reached a weight loss plateau? If your weight loss has stalled, take a look at my top 5 tips to get help you avoid a weight loss plateau and achieve your dream weight.

One of the more frustrating parts of weight loss is the inevitable weight loss plateau.  Everything seems to be going along fine, and then all of a sudden – no matter what you do – you find that the scale just doesn’t budge.  When you find that your weekly weight loss has stalled that’s often known as a ‘weight loss plateau’ and many dieters find the sudden lack of progress deeply frustrating. Let me help you understand why your weight may plateau and give you some ideas to make sure you continue to meet your goals so that your weight will start moving again.

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One key to maintaining a healthy weight is to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn.  But that’s sometimes easier said than done.

Balancing your calories sounds deceptively simple.  Eat more calories than you burn and you’ll gain weight. Take in fewer calories than you burn and you’ll shed some pounds. Keep your “calories in” and “calories out” about the same, and your weight should stay pretty stable.  So why is it that hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t complain to me that they’re “exercising like a madman, but not losing any weight” or, “eating like a bird but the scale won’t budge”?  It simply boils down to this: when it comes to counting calories accurately – the ones you eat and the one you spend – there are so many ways it can go wrong.

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Think keeping a food journal is a waste of time?  You might want to think again.  Study after study consistently tells us that self-monitoring – that is, keeping track of what you eat, how much exercise you get, and how much you weigh – is one of the key components to successful weight loss.  In a recent review of 22 studies¹ on the subject, the authors concluded that, across the board, there was “a significant association between self-monitoring and weight loss.”

What the studies tell us is that when you’re accountable to someone – not just to yourself, but also to a healthcare provider, a life partner or a friend – you greatly improve your chances of losing weight and keeping it off.  And, the more often you keep track, the more successful you’re likely to be. In one study involving nearly 1700 people², those who kept food journals six days a week lost double the weight of those who kept food diaries only once a week or less.

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Happy Valentine’s day!  I know many people are thinking about their romantic heart today but did you also know it’s Heart Health month?  

The story around diet and heart health has been around long enough that you probably know the drill pretty well.  Watch your weight, keep your total fats and saturated fats down, and don’t be too heavy-handed with the salt shaker.  Sprinkle in some soluble fiber – from foods like beans and oatmeal – and you’ve got a pretty good dietary strategy.

All good advice, to be sure.  After all, a high-fat diet can put weight on you, saturated fats can bump up your blood cholesterol levels, and too much salt can drive up blood pressure – all of which can increase your risk for heart disease.  But there are a couple of other pieces to the heart health puzzle that are getting more attention these days – a fatty acid “balancing act”, and a little molecule called nitric oxide.

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An occasional indulgence isn’t really cheating – especially if you’ve planned for it.

Cheating – on your taxes, on a test, on your partner – is just plain wrong.  And chances are, even if you were to consider cheating, you probably wouldn’t ask for permission from your accountant or your teacher…or your mate.  So why are people always asking me if it’s “okay to cheat” on their diet?  Does it feel “good” to be “bad”? Do they want to place the blame on my shoulders if their cheating doesn’t lead to weight loss?  Or are they simply saying, “I just can’t be this strict with myself every single day – I need a break!”

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January is all about resolutions and “turning over a new leaf”.  So all this month, we’re talking about the big nutritional benefits you can get from making just a few small changes.  Now let’s take a look at ways you can start to eat less without leaving your tummy grumbling.

We started with little adjustments you can make when you’re buying food, and in the last post I suggested some ways in which you could make changes in the way you prepare your foods to shave calories and make them healthier.  You might already be reaping some benefits if you’ve been trying to make these changes – and you may even be thinking that there isn’t a whole lot more tweaking you can do.  Maybe you haven’t given it much thought, but a little fine-tuning in the way your foods are served can also affect your food intake, too.

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Small changes to your recipes can lead to big calorie cuts.  A few ingredient swaps can make home-cooked dishes so much healthier.

Now that the holidays are solidly behind us, the reality of those New Year’s promises we made to ourselves are starting to settle in.  Many of us start out the New Year with big plans for big changes…which is why all this month we’re focusing on the ‘little things’.  That’s because small steps – taken together – can add up to big results, and are often easier to handle than huge sweeping changes that can be unsettling. In the last post, I made some suggestions for small changes you can make at the grocery store – that is, after all, where the path to healthy eating begins.  But now that you’ve brought your healthy ingredients into the house, you want to make sure to keep them that way when it’s time to cook. And with just a few small changes, you can make every dish you prepare at home a little bit better for you.

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New Year’s resolutions – don’t make promises you can’t keep. This year make a few small changes in your eating habits that can yield big results instead.

Do you remember the New Year’s resolutions you made last year? Let me guess…. if you’re like most people, you probably vowed to eat better, get more exercise – and maybe floss more often. So, looking back, how did it go? Did you accomplish all you set out to do? Or, did you start the year out strong – then fall back on your old patterns, so that you’re making the same resolutions again this year? This may surprise you, but I think that’s okay – and here’s why. If you make the decision every January to shape up, it says that taking better care of yourself is important to you. If it weren’t important, you wouldn’t keep working at it. And just because you make the same promises to yourself every year, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t accomplish anything last year.
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Want to change your diet behavior? Break through these diet barriers first! Getting out of your usual comfortable routine is hard and the first step is figuring out why you’re resisting change in the first place.

When my son turned 5 years old, we had an “inside-out, upside down, backwards” birthday party for him.  We handed his friends their goodie bags and waved goodbye as soon as they arrived at the house, and we ate cake and ice cream before the pizza.  The parents had a lot of laughs, but the kids were totally bewildered – in no small part, I’m sure, because we were also wearing our underwear over our clothes.  So why am I telling you this?  Because sometimes when I’m talking to clients about the lifestyle changes they need to work on, I see that same bewilderment – as if I’m suddenly turning their world inside-out, upside down and backwards.  Why is change so hard for some people?

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What happens if one person needs to diet and the other one doesn’t? This week, I’ll look at how couples can support each other throughout a lifestyle change.

Do you remember the old nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat who ate no fat, while his wife “could eat no lean”?  As the tale goes, things with Jack and his wife worked out pretty nicely – he ate his foods, she ate hers – and between them, they “licked the platter clean”.  But what happens in real life?  How do couples work it out when one person needs to lose weight and the other one doesn’t?

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If you regularly skip breakfast, try these small steps to establish a healthy breakfast habit.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” 

“Eat breakfast like a king!” 

“Eat diamonds for breakfast and shine the whole day!”

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Find out if you’re drinking enough water by watching out for these five signs of dehydration

It’s shaping up to be another summer of record-breaking high temperatures.  And the news media is beginning to sound like a broken record, too – over and over again we’re reminded to keep ourselves well hydrated by drinking plenty of water.   But it’s an important message – not just during a heat wave, but also throughout the year because water serves so many critical functions in the body. Read more »

You’ve Lost the Weight – Now What?

I begged him not to leave me.  Right now, he needed me more than ever.  But I’d been through this before, and I knew he’d be back.  And I would be waiting for him….

His name was Frank.  He’d been my patient for nearly a year, and with plenty of guidance on my part, and a lot of hard work on his part, he was 60 pounds lighter.  But the day he hit his goal weight, he decided we were through.  In his mind, his weight lost task was accomplished – like something he could check off his ‘to do’ list – which meant he could push all thoughts of dieting aside and move on.  As we said our farewells, I left him with only this:  “there’s a reason they call it weight management, Frank.” Read more »