The Right Incentive Can Help You Fight Heart Disease

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

08 Jun 2008 12:33 PM

Are you at risk for heart disease? Are you already suffering from some form of heart disease -- like high blood pressure or high cholesterol?

Here's a more important question: what are you doing about your heart disease risk, and why? Are you losing weight, eating a healthy, balanced diet, and exercising regularly? Or are you just coasting along and not making any lifestyle changes in order to reduce your risk?

Cardiologists report that having the right incentives for fighting heart disease are just as important (sometimes more important) than anything else. Look at my mom, for example. She has high blood pressure and high cholesterol. But because she has a family -- because she doesn't want to leave us one second before she has to -- she took the bull by the horns. Her lifestyle changes (like losing forty pounds on Weight Watchers and keeping it off for close to a decade now) have ensured that she'll be around for a long time to come.

Your motivations are entirely your own. Maybe you don't care as much about the heart disease as you do about looking stunning at your next high school reunion. Maybe you're more worried about being around to meet your grandchildren than you are about blood pressure numbers.

Here are some things that might motivate you to lower your heart disease risk:

• Family and friends. Your children, grandchildren, and so on. Don't you want to be able to keep up with the little ones?
• Working at a job you love. The hobbies you love.
• The things you want to do "someday" -- if heart disease sidelines you, you'll never get to do them.

Losing momentum? Try something like this:

• Spread the word about your efforts. Encouragement from friends and family can help renew your strength.
• Connect with others who have the same issues. Trade tips and ideas; commiserate about the things you don't like. Maybe you'll find a new exercise buddy or a great new recipe to try.
• Bribe yourself. Set a short or long term goal (or both) and make the rewards too good to resist.

Learn more about Aimee Amodio

Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

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