You want to go on a heart-healthy diet, but the numbers can sound daunting. The Franklin Institute reports your fat intake should be less than 30 percent of your calories, and your cholesterol intake less than 300 milligrams a day. Instead of sweating the math, learn which foods are heart-healthy and incorporate them into recommended meals. Try this process for 10 days, and if you're successful, go for another 10.
Breakfasts
The Mayo Clinic recommends several heart-healthy ingredients associated with breakfast. These include skim milk, fresh or frozen fruit, egg substitutes or egg whites, whole wheat flour and oatmeal.
It's easy to create 10 meals using these items, according to the Eating Well website. For egg dishes, try scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, a spinach and tomato omelet, or an herb and onion frittata. Use whole wheat flour in waffles or pancakes, or get two heart-healthy servings by pouring skim milk over oatmeal. Use fruit in a banana-soy milk smoothie, a yogurt breakfast parfait, apricot-oatmeal bars or mango-pecan bread.
Lunches
Common heart-healthy lunch foods include fish, skinless poultry and whole-grain bread, according to the Mayo Clinic. EatingWell.com recommends getting your poultry in tarragon chicken salad, chicken satay, turkey and vegetable soup, and turkey-sweet potato hash. Your fish can come from tuna salad, a tuna melt, shrimp Louis and curried crab cakes, and your grain can take the form of whole-wheat pita bread with a vegetable salad, or a slice of oat bread with roasted tomato soup.
Dinners
Heart-healthy dinner ingredients are easy to come by, according to the Mayo Clinic. Consider soy products, lean meats, whole grains and fresh vegetables. The American Heart Asso. suggests flavoring the veggies with herbs and spices rather than using heavy amounts of oil for cooking.
Eating Well recommends simple meat dinners of barbecued brisket, pot roast or grilled sirloin. You can get your veggies by eating asparagus with roasted chicken, broccoli with pork stir-fry, peppers with steak, and beets with buffalo meat. Try tofu with peanut sauce for a soy-based dinner, and enjoy grains by eating couscous with Moroccan stew, or brown rice with curry.
