If you are lucky enough to be healthy and free of dietary restrictions, it still makes sense to use some discipline in your diet.  Find out what the caloric requirements are for someone your age, sex and physical activity level.  If you are gaining weight, adjust your caloric intake.  The following dietary guidelines from the American Heart Association are a good place to start for your meal planning.

Healthy food habits can help you reduce three risk factors for heart attack and stroke

• high blood cholesterol
• high blood pressure
• excess body weight

The American Heart Association Eating Plan for Healthy Americans is based on these dietary guidelines

released in October 2000:

• Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.   Choose 5 or more servings per day.


• Eat a variety of grain products, including whole grains.   Choose 6 or more servings per day.


• Eat fish at least twice a week, particularly fatty fish.


• Include fat-free and low-fat milk products, legumes (beans), skinless poultry and lean meats.


• Choose fats and oils with 2 grams or less saturated fat per tablespoon, such as liquid and tub margarines, canola, corn, safflower, soy bean and olive oils.


• Limit your intake of foods high in calories or low in nutrition.   This includes foods with a lot of added sugar like soft drinks and candy.


• Limit foods high in saturated fat, trans-fat and/or cholesterol, such as full-fat milk products, fatty meats, tropical oils, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and egg yolks.   Instead choose foods low in saturated fat, trans-fat and cholesterol from the first four points above.   (Trans-fat comes from adding hydrogen to vegetable oil, which partially hydrogenates it.   It tends to increase blood cholesterol levels.)


• Eat less than 6 grams of salt (sodium chloride) per day.   That's equal to about 1 teaspoon of salt, or a daily sodium intake of less than 2,400 mg.


• If you drink alcohol, have no more than one drink per day for a woman or two per day for a man.   "One drink" means it has no more than 1/2 ounce of pure alcohol.   Examples of one drink are 12 oz. of beer, 4 oz. of wine, 1-1/2 oz. of 80-proof spirits or 1 oz. of 100-proof spirits.


• Balance the number of calories you eat with the number you use each day.   To find that number, multiply your body weight in pounds by 15 (if you're active).   This means if you weigh 200 pounds, you expend about 3000 calories (200 x 15) calories in an average day.   If you're sedentary, multiply your weight by 13 to find the calories you expend.


• Get enough physical activity to keep fit, and balance the calories you burn with the calories you eat.   Walk or do other activities for at least 30 minutes on most or all days.   To lose weight, do enough activity to use up more calories than you eat every day.

Following these guidelines will help you achieve and maintain a healthy eating pattern.   The benefits of that include a healthy body weight, a desirable blood cholesterol level and a normal blood pressure.   Every meal doesn't have to meet all the guidelines.   It's important to apply the guidelines to your overall eating pattern over a period of several days.

These guidelines may do more than improve your heart health.   They may reduce your risk for other chronic health problems, including type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis (bone loss) and some forms of cancer.

What are recommended amounts of total fat, saturated fat and dietary cholesterol?

For people without coronary heart disease, diabetes or high LDL cholesterol, our eating plan recommends that...

• Total fat should be 30 percent of total calories or less.
• Saturated fat should be less than 10 percent of total calories.
• Cholesterol should be less than 300 mg per day.

Some people misinterpret the total fat guideline to mean that each food or each recipe should have 30 percent or less of its calories come from fat.   The guideline applies to total calories eaten over several days, such as a week.

What about people with heart disease or at high risk of coronary heart disease?

People with coronary heart disease, diabetes or high LDL cholesterol should follow the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet at www.nhlbi.nih.gov/chd/lifestyles.htm