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Weight Loss Home | Heart Disease | Overcoming Obesity Helps Hearts

The Prevention of Heart Disease Through Weight Loss & Diet

Here's a guide to understanding how weight loss and a healthy diet may help fight heart disease. If you're overweight or obese, you are not alone - you're among nearly 130 million other U.S. adults. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death and is closely linked to conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, gout, asthma, and gum disease. WebMD has created a weight loss clinic to addresses this public health epidemic.

The WebMD Weight Loss Clinic starts with an in-depth assessment of your personal goals, your eating habits, and your food preferences. Then we create a balanced, easy-to-follow meal plan that includes the foods you love -- so you'll stick with it, and achieve your weight loss goals.

Overcoming Obesity Helps Hearts

You've heard it before: Fighting obesity helps protect against heart disease.

But for many people, that's easier said than done.

It can be hard to know where to start with so many diets, surgeries, and workouts vying for popular attention.

That's why a team of health experts recently came up with practical recommendations for weight loss to fight heart disease.

Their findings form a statement by the American Heart Association Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism. The statement, which appears in the journal Circulation, was endorsed by the American College of Cardiology Foundation.

The experts, who included American Heart Association President-Elect Robert Eckel, MD, began by reviewing the hazards of obesity.

Besides heart disease, obesity is linked to health problems including increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance.

However, many of those conditions can be improved or avoided through weight loss and exercise.

"The data demonstrate that weight loss and physical activity can prevent and treat obesity-related coronary heart disease risk factors and should be considered a primary therapy for obese patients with cardiovascular disease," write the experts.

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Practical Tips

It all comes down to burning more calories than you consume, creating an "energy deficit." Here are some tips on how to do that from the experts' statement:

Obese people trying to lose weight should aim for an energy deficit of 500 to 1,000 calories per day. In other words, try to consume 500 to 1,000 fewer calories than you need.
Both diet and exercise are important, although it may be easier to create an energy deficit by restricting calories than through exercise alone.
Eat fruits, vegetables, grains, low- or nonfat dairy products, fish, legumes, poultry, and lean meats.
Limit foods high in saturated fat, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol.
Get at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity most days of the week.
Keep diaries of food and exercise to build awareness of habits.
Set specific short-term goals.
Identify "triggers" associated with poor eating/exercise habits, and come up with new responses.
Learn to handle stress without eating poorly.
Enlist support of family and friends.
Develop skills for staying healthy in challenging situations, such as travel, celebrations, and bad moods.

Weight loss surgery may be an option for obese people with a body mass index (BMI) of 35 to 39.9 plus at least one severe obesity-related medical complication, say the researchers, citing previous guidelines from the National Institutes of Health.

Prescription weight loss drugs might be considered for people with a BMI of 30 or more, or those with a BMI of 27-29.9 who also have an obesity-related medical condition, say the researchers.

Of course, anyone seeking to lose weight or facing heart disease should enlist the help of their health-care provider.

Besides teaching patients these guidelines, doctors could also make their offices more comfortable by providing armless chairs, large gowns and blood-pressure cuffs, and a scale in a private area of the office that can weigh people over 300 pounds, say the researchers.

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed By Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, July 25, 2007.
Medically updated July 25, 2007.

SOURCES: Klein, S. Circulation, online edition, Oct. 25, 2004. News release, American Heart Association.

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