Staying on Track with Your Heart Healthy Diet During the Holidays

Podcast Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Love Your Heart, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic’s Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart Vascular and Thoracic Institute. These podcasts will help you learn more about your heart, thoracic and vascular systems, ways to stay healthy, and information about diseases and treatment options. Enjoy.

Julia Zumpano:

Hello, my name is Julia Zumpano. I'm a registered dietician with the Department of Preventive Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. The holidays are among us and we all know that it's very challenging to follow any sort of diet, particularly a heart healthy diet around the holiday season, so I have four easy tips for you to follow this holiday season to keep you on track.

Tip number one is portion control. Oftentimes, holiday meals can be very heavy in fat and sodium and even sugar, so we want to offset by keeping our portions controlled. What we consider a heart healthy plate would be a standard nine inch plate, you'd cut that plate in half visually, so half of that plate you want to be filled with vegetables. Vegetables should take up the largest portion of your plate. The other half is cut in quarters, so the quarter of your plate, we want to choose a lean source of protein about the palm of your hand if lean protein is an option, so thinking something like a chicken or turkey breast, a piece of fish, but whatever protein is available to you, you just want to make sure it's lean. Try to avoid any heavy gravies or sauces too, because that can add a lot of extra sodium and fat. If you want a little extra flavor, you could always drizzle some extra virgin olive oil or even a mustard would be a good choice because it's low in sodium and fat.

The other quarter of the plate would be a complex carbohydrate if possible. Complex carbohydrates are made from grains, so it'd be a whole wheat pasta, a brown or wild rice. Complex carbs also include starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes, red skinned potatoes, corn, beans, or peas. Whatever the starch might be in that meal we want to keep it controlled to about a cup or the size of your fist. Again, avoid unnecessary toppings or additives to that starch to make it higher fat or sodium, such as butter or cream or cheese. Try to keep it as simple as possible. Sour cream, things like that. We really want to limit condiments because that's when we can add up a lot of extra fat and salt and calories in the meal. That would be ideal is trying to keep that visual picture of what we consider a heart healthy plate to keep your portions controlled during the holiday season. That portion control also helps you naturally just keep the sodium and fat down because we're consuming smaller portions of the heavier foods.

On to tip number two. Tip number two is bring a healthy dish to share. Wherever you may go, it's always a great idea to bring a vegetable or a fruit or both. That's most commonly where we don't see as many options at holiday meals, and we're really trying to consume a majority of our plate or meal with vegetables. A veggie tray, a hardy veggie soup that's made low sodium with a low sodium broth, some roasted veggies, a nice fresh salad where you can even throw the fruit in there. We really want to bring a healthy dish to share so we have something to snack on, and we're also providing other people there something healthy to snack on.

Tip number three, limit drink calories or calories from your beverages. We want to limit high caloric beverages like soda and juice, alcohol like cocktails, beer, or even coffee beverages can add up some calories. You really want to focus on drinking enough water, tea, just some plain coffee, maybe with a cream or milk. Those beverages are fine, but really consuming mainly very low or no calorie beverages. Especially given that we're going to be consuming so many extra calories, we really don't want to add any additional drink calories to the picture.

Last tip, tip number four is movement. Very important to get as much movement during the holidays and even on the holiday itself. There are a lot of Turkey Trot winter runs and walks and things that you can get involved with as a family or as a group, plan to get up a couple minutes early or a half an hour earlier to get a little bit of exercise in at home, whether it just be light stretching, walking in place, using any exercise equipment you have at home, taking a walk outside. Certainly making it a point to get some movement in either before and after the meal. There's nothing wrong with doing it twice in that day. This would carry on throughout the entire holiday season but really exercise is key to offset any of those additional calories. It also makes you feel better and to show that people who exercise tend to make better, healthier food choices, so that's also very important to consider.

Thank you today for joining me. Just in summary, four tips to keep your heart healthy this holiday season. Tip number one, portion control, tip number two, bring a healthy dish to share, tip number three, limit drink calories, and tip number four, get some exercise.

Announcer:

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