4. Abnormal cholesterol levels. Is your total cholesterol >200 mg/dL? Is your high-density (good) cholesterol <40 mg/dL? Are you on a lipid-lowering medication? Is your low-density (bad) cholesterol >130 mg/dL? If you can answer yes to at least one of these questions, you have this positive risk factor.
5. Prediabetes. Is your fasting blood glucose ≥100 mg/dL and ≤125 mg/dL, and has this been confirmed on at least two separate occasions? If yes, this would be a positive risk factor.
6. Obesity. Is your body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2, or waist girth ≥40 inches for men and ≥35 inches for women? Answering yes to any of these means you are at risk.
7. Sedentary lifestyle. Have you been participating in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity (somewhat hard) physical activity at least 3 days a week for the last 3 months? If not, this would be a positive risk factor.
8. Age. Men, if you are forty-five years or older, this is a positive risk factor. Ladies, if you are fifty-five years or older, this is a positive risk factor.
There is only one negative risk factor, which means it negates a positive risk factor: elevated high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). Is your high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) >60 mg/dL? Since this is the good cholesterol, we would like for this value to be above 60 mg/dL. Having high HDL-C indicates this “scavenger” is cleaning up the plaque on your arteries, which is a great health benefit in the prevention of CVD.
Before we move on, let’s quickly discuss how to interpret these CVD risk factors. For example, if a person is sedentary but has no other positive risk factors, we would say she/he has one positive risk factor. If this person also has an HDL-C of 65mg/dL (which is >60mg/dL) this person also has one negative risk factor. Therefore, in this example, the HDL-C negates the sedentary behavior risk. Having HDL-C >60 mg/dL will negate any one of the positive risk factors—but not all of them. Your goal is to have as few of the positive risk factors as possible.
You will not necessarily develop CVD if you have a positive risk factor. Nevertheless, the more positive risk factors you have, the greater the likelihood that you will get CVD at some point in your life. I highly encourage you to adopt a heart-healthy lifestyle in an effort to lower your CVD risk. Here are the key elements of a heart-healthy lifestyle:
1. Minimize all processed foods, as they tend to be loaded with sugar and salt.
2. Eat modest portions of beef, poultry, and pork, and at each meal, try not to eat a serving size of meat that’s bigger than a deck of cards.
3. Limit sugar, particularly sugary drinks, which are the leading source of added sugar in our diets. These added sugars are linked to obesity, diabetes, elevated LDL (bad cholesterol), diminished HDL (good cholesterol), and elevated fat in the blood.
4. Eat more whole grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and beans. Try to make them staples of your diet. These foods have those all-powerful heart-protecting antioxidants, plus helpful fiber and healthy fats.
5. Fat consumption is not your adversary. Just try to avoid foods packed with saturated fat such as meat, cheese, and butter. Some fatty foods, like nuts, seeds, olive oil, and salmon, are packed with heart-healthy unsaturated fats. Enjoy these healthier fats in moderation.
6. It’s OK to start eating eggs again. The newest evidence suggests that the intake of eggs does not impact your cholesterol levels as we once thought.
7. If you drink alcohol, limit your intake. Women should have no more than one alcoholic drink per day. Men should have no more than two alcoholic drinks per day.
8. Do 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity (somewhat hard) physical activity on most days of the week.
Chapter 8
Let’s Get Up and Start Moving Now!
Before I introduce your HIIT workouts, I’d like to encourage you to start getting up more in your daily life. Yes, that includes standing up from your chairs. If your home is your castle, its chairs have become the throne. It won’t guarantee you bountiful riches, though—at least not of the good-health variety. Over the past few years, a large group of scientists have been studying what happens to our bodies when we sit too much. It is called the science of sedentary behavior. The word “sedentary” comes from the Latin word sedere, meaning “to sit.” In the US, sedentary behavior takes up a great percentage of the waking day for many people. In fact, adults and children in the US spend the majority of their non-exercising waking day engaging in some form of sedentary behavior, such as riding in a car, working at a desk, eating a meal at a table, playing video games, working on a computer, and watching television. You will probably not be surprised to learn that a sedentary lifestyle can have hazardous health effects. Researchers increasingly believe that, as the saying goes, sitting has become the new smoking.
Findings about the harmful effects of too much sitting have their early research roots in the 1950s, when researchers observed that men who worked physically active jobs had less heart disease during middle age than men in physically inactive jobs. The researchers also observed that when physically active men did develop heart disease, it was less severe and later in life. Leaping forward half a century, in 2009, a large study from Canada found that there is a strong association between sitting and mortality risk from cardiovascular disease (and several other diseases, too). This study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, looked at the mortality rates of 7,278 men and 9,735 women aged eighteen to ninety years over a twelve-year period. Surprisingly, the study discovered that even if a person completes her/his 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a day but remains seated during the rest of the day, she/he has an increased risk of heart disease. The bottom line: long periods of sitting during your waking day are unsafe to your health.
Why is it so unhealthy to sit for sustained periods of time on a daily basis? Scientist believe when you sit too much during your waking day, the bad cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) starts to accumulate more plaque in your arteries. Simultaneously, the good cholesterol (HDL cholesterol) decreases, making it less available for cleaning up the plaque. Once a lot of plaque builds up in your arteries, you are vulnerable to cardiovascular disease.
All of the new research on the perils of a sedentary lifestyle underscores the critical importance of getting up and moving much more throughout your waking day. To help you accomplish this, I’m going to reveal a NEW slogan and goal I’d like you to shoot for every day: “For every 30, get your 3.”
Here’s how it works: for every 30 minutes you sit, I want you to get at least 3 minutes of movement. Yes, more is better, but to start let’s shoot for “For every 30, get your 3.” I realize some jobs, due to their nature, do not allow you to take a movement break every 30 minutes. I encourage those of you in such a situation to find creative ways to achieve your movement goals over the course of your workday. However, many of you will be able to get up out of your chairs and move every 30 minutes without any restrictions. You get to decide how far and how fast you move—but just move. So start right now—get up and move! Go for it, and then come back to reading your book. I will do the same.
[A few minutes pass] . . . and we’re back. See, didn’t that feel great?
To help you get moving, here are some options for breaking up sustained sitting periods at work:
1. Standing up and walking around your work office every 30 minutes.
2. Standing up and moving every time you drink some water.
3. Walking to the farthest bathroom in your worksite facility when going to the restroom (if multiple bathrooms are available).
4. Standing and/or walking around the room when talking on the telephone.
5. Getting a standing workstation where you can intermittently stand and work on your desktop computer simultaneously.
6. Going for a walk break during every coffee or tea break.
7. Substituting sending emails to office colleagues by walking to their desks