Gather your friends and family and make a commitment to your heart health, together. Read on to learn more about how you can live a heart-healthy lifestyle with the help of those closest to you.

Let's Work Together to Prevent Heart Disease. Join forces with people at home, at work, in your community, or online to stay motivated and commit to being heart-healthy together. Featured Heart Health Resources. OurHearts Are Healthier Together Movement. Taking Care of Our Hearts Together Fact Sheet.

Taking Care of Our Hearts. Heart Health and Pregnancy. Heart Health and Pregnan…. Your treatment plan may include medicines or surgery and lifestyle changes to reduce your risk.

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Choose Healthy Foods and Drinks Choose healthy meals and snacks to help prevent heart disease and its complications. Eating lots of foods high in saturated fat and trans fat may contribute to heart disease. Eating foods high in fiber and low in saturated fats, trans fat, and cholesterol can help prevent high cholesterol.

Limiting salt sodium in your diet can also lower your blood pressure. Limiting sugar in your diet can lower your blood sugar level to prevent or help control diabetes.

Do not drink too much alcohol, which can raise your blood pressure. Men should have no more than 2 drinks per day, and women no more than 1 drink per day. Keep a Healthy Weight People with overweight or obesity have a higher risk for heart disease.

Get Regular Physical Activity Physical activity can help you maintain a healthy weight and lower your blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. Take Charge of Your Medical Conditions If you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes, you can take steps to lower your risk for heart disease.

Check Your Cholesterol Your health care team should test your blood levels of cholesterol at least once every 4 to 6 years. Control Your Blood Pressure High blood pressure usually has no symptoms, so have it checked on a regular basis. Manage Your Diabetes If you have diabetes, monitor your blood sugar levels carefully.

Work with Your Health Care Team You and your health care team can work together to prevent or treat the medical conditions that lead to heart disease. Last Reviewed: March 21, Source: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion , Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention.

In that case you may want to create a number of short-term goals or milestones along the way. For example, quitting smoking for some can be a long-term goal; having short-term goals of reducing the number of cigarettes in a day can be helpful to break down what may seem like a big overall challenge.

Once a goal has been completed, it no longer serves as motivation. Perhaps you want to set another related goal, like running the 5 km faster.

With some goals, you may still need to put in effort to maintain them. Having goals, and a plan to achieve them, is a great way to help you accomplish the things you want throughout life. The SMART way of goal setting can help guide you through making changes to a healthy lifestyle as well as any other goal you may have.

Scott Lear is a leading researcher in the prevention and management of heart disease. Lear also lives with heart disease himself. Follow his blog at drscottlear. Donate now. Home The first step to healthy change.

The SMART approach A common guideline for goal setting is the SMART principle: making your goal Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

Specific means that the goal should be clear and focused.