Tips for making heart health a life-long plan

If you are serious about fending off heart disease and strokes there is a lot of information to absorb, and then implement into your own life. It's worth it because, aside from being healthier, you should be feeling less stressed, more active and energetic, and generally happier.

It is important to take pleasure in your new healthy lifestyle — but it is equally important not to become complacent. It is all too easy in the first few weeks and months to let goals slip as your willpower weakens. Make sure you have the tools you need to keep your plan going and to build in new, positive strategies for lifelong protection.

As you start to experience the benefits of cleaner arteries, reduced cholesterol and lower blood pressure, you will realize that they are a direct result of the well-informed choices you are making every day.

• Keeping your goals and rewards at the front of your mind will help you to stay motivated.
• Remind yourself repeatedly of the benefits of your new lifestyle: you will continue to feel re-energized, healthier and stronger — and you will almost certainly live longer, too.
• Make positive, specific and detailed plans about how you can achieve your aims.
• If you change one element of a carefully thought-out regime, make sure to substitute it with something else that provides equal benefits and is just as easy to organize. For example, if your local swimming pool closes, switch your regular afternoon swim with friends to the pool at the nearest gym — or resolve to go bowling or skating with the same group instead. Don't put it off; make sure that you have something of equal value to do the very next week.
• Enlist the help of like-minded people to help you to stay on course.

• Motivation also relies on the ability to keep moving forward.
• Although you may have made some progress you began on your journey, it is unlikely that you will have achieved all your goals to your total satisfaction.
• Maybe you've lost a bit of weight, but you'd really like to lose twice that. Or perhaps your resting pulse rate is still a few beats short of your target rate.
• Keep going by breaking down larger goals into smaller ones. If you want to lose weight, start by aiming to be a bit lighter by the end of the week and a bit more by the end of the month.
• And, you can always add new ingredients to the mix: new ways to cook healthily, new sports to keep you interested, new activities to pursue and new friends to make.
• That's all part of treating your plan as a lifelong recipe for health and enjoyment, a pursuit that never ends.

• Some of the useful tactics that make it easier to fulfill your aims: using the stairs rather than taking the elevator, eating breakfast, enjoying the sunshine.
• Think of music, olive oil, a glass of wine, yoga, laughter, chocolate, sleep and friendships. The sheer scope of ways towards a healthier life shows that opportunities for boosting your health are everywhere.
• It may help to make a list of the tactics that you've found most helpful, or most fun, and put it up on the fridge or anywhere else where you will see it regularly.
• Don't forget to add to it.
• Part of the enjoyment of your plan is to make it a living, dynamic thing, so always be open to new ideas that could help you on the way.