What Are Examples of Health Goals? Setting Quarterly Goals with Monthly Habits to Achieve Heart Health

Published January 15, 2025 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

Improving your heart health is a journey that takes planning and steady effort. By setting goals and breaking them down into quarterly milestones with simple monthly habits, you can create a realistic path to a healthier heart. This method helps you focus on small, manageable steps while building habits that last.

Why Quarterly Goals Are Effective

Quarterly goals offer a focused, manageable approach to health improvement. In 90 days, you can see meaningful progress while maintaining flexibility to adjust for challenges. This structure provides clear direction and keeps motivation high as you reach milestones.

The Importance of Monthly Habits

Monthly habits serve as the building blocks for achieving your quarterly objectives. By concentrating on specific, actionable behaviors each month, you develop consistency and create lasting lifestyle changes. These habits accumulate over time, leading to significant improvements in cardiovascular health. For example, focusing on drinking more water in one month lays the foundation for better hydration, which can support endurance activities in the following months.

Each habit builds upon the last, creating a cumulative effect—you don’t stop one habit when adding another, but instead integrate them for a stronger foundation.

What Are Examples of Health Goals?

To illustrate this approach, consider the following framework for improving cardiovascular health:

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Posted in Heart Health

Simple Steps to Boost Your Heart Health Every Day

Published October 30, 2024 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

I completed 3 marathons in 3 days at elevation in the Sierra Nevada. It was an incredible event. I started training in April and it’s hard to believe the experience was almost a month ago.

Prior to this, I hadn’t even run one marathon. The furthest distance I’d gone was a half marathon and that was about 15 years ago.

Now, I’m not suggesting you sign up for an ultra-endurance event but there is real value behind signing up for an event that is several weeks/months in the future and you commit yourself to the training.

There’s no reason you cannot set a goal and take steps to reach it.

Start Now, Start Small to Build Healthy Habits

Starting a journey toward better heart health can feel overwhelming, especially with busy lives and packed schedules. But the truth is, heart health improvements don’t require radical overhauls. Instead, they come from small, steady steps that build momentum over time. The first and most powerful thing you can do for yourself is simply to start—today. Think about the smallest thing you can do that aligns with heart health: a brisk ten-minute walk, swapping out a sugary snack for a piece of fruit, or spending five minutes practicing deep breathing to lower stress. It takes time to build healthy habits. These little actions add up.

It only takes 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, which breaks down to about 20 minutes daily, to make a real difference in heart health. The beauty of starting small is that it’s sustainable. Once a habit is formed, it becomes easier to increase the intensity or duration of your activity. The key is consistency, even if the steps seem tiny at first.

Tracking Progress for Heart Health

One of the most motivating aspects of improving your health is seeing tangible progress. When it comes to heart health, progress might not always be immediately visible, so tracking is especially helpful. Whether it’s through a journal, a fitness app, or a simple checklist on your fridge… keep track of your efforts. For the 3 marathons/3 days event, I printed off the training plan and crossed out each day’s activity as I completed it. That paper stayed in the middle of my desk the entire 6 months where I saw it constantly.

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Posted in Heart Health | Tagged accountability partner, build healthy habits, heart health, tracking progress for heart health

The Impact of Exercise in Heart Disease Prevention

Published December 21, 2023 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

Guest post by Dr. Rachelle Sultana, PhD, AEP, M Clin Ex Phys, B Ex Sp Sci

By now, the role of physical activity and exercise in promoting better health is universally accepted. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 27% of adults do not meet its recommended levels of physical activity. If we factor in adolescents, the figure jumps to a staggering 80%.

Physical inactivity is among the most important behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) such as heart disease and stroke. It is clear that exercise, along with a healthy diet, is crucial in preventing heart disease.

Best exercises for heart health

Exercising regularly offers many positive benefits for heart health. Exactly why is exercise good for the heart? Well, it can help lower your blood pressure, support you in maintaining a healthy body weight, and reduce inflammation throughout your body.

Having said that, what type of exercise is best for your heart? Studies show that 3 kinds of exercise can boost your heart’s health:

Aerobic exercise

Aerobic exercise pumps the heart and can help improve circulation, lower your blood pressure and heart rate as well as improve your overall aerobic fitness. Good examples of aerobic exercise include walking, cycling, swimming and aquatic exercises, and racket sports.

Resistance/strength training

Training with resistance can help reduce body fat and build lean muscle mass. You can do resistance training using your body weight, free weights such as dumbbells, exercise bands, or exercise machines.

Studies show that combining aerobic exercise with strength training may help lower LDL or bad cholesterol and raise HDL or good cholesterol levels.

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Posted in Heart Health

The Skin Issues That Could Indicate Poor Heart Health

Published December 20, 2023 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

Contributed by Ryan Peterson.

Photo by Vasiliy Skuratov

Who knew that your skin, your body’s largest and most fabulous organ, could be a tattletale when it comes to the health of your ticker? That’s right, people, your skin can be like that one honest friend who tells you that yes, indeed, those pants do make you look funny.

Now, before we jump into this, remember: I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. I’m just a curious soul with access to Google and a penchant for connecting dots – sometimes in a very abstract, Picasso-like manner. So, if you suspect something’s up with your heart, please see a real doctor and not just WebMD yourself into a frenzy.

Dry Skin: More Than Just a Moisturizer Issue

Let’s start with one that is maybe not so obvious: dry skin. We’ve all been there – slathering on lotion like it’s an Olympic sport. But did you know that extremely dry skin could be a sign of poor circulation? When your heart’s not pumping blood like a champion, your skin might throw a dry and scaly tantrum. It’s like your skin is passive-aggressively telling you, “Hey, I need more nourishment here!” But don’t worry yet because it could be something totally benign, for example, dry skin on side of mouth can be nothing more than the result of you licking your lips a lot!

What You Can Do

If you’re drier than a British comedy and it’s not just the winter weather or your love for hot showers, it might be worth a chat with your doctor. And maybe invest in a good humidifier.

Xanthomas: The Skin Bumps You Didn’t Sign Up For

Xanthomas, which sound like a villain in a sci-fi movie, are actually cholesterol-filled deposits that can appear on your skin. They’re like little yellow flags saying, “Hey, check your cholesterol levels!” They often pop up on eyelids, joints, and tendons and are about as welcome as in-laws on your honeymoon.

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Posted in Heart Health | Tagged Heart Disease, heart health, skin health, skin issues, skin issues and heart health

Kidney and Heart Disease: How They Are Connected

Published November 6, 2023 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

Guest post provided by Michael Spigler, Vice President of Patient Support and Education, American Kidney Fund

When it comes to taking care of your health, think of heart disease and kidney disease as interconnected partners. If your kidneys don’t function properly, it can lead to issues like high blood pressure and inflammation, putting your heart at risk. Additionally, heart problems can negatively affect your kidneys by reducing blood flow to them.

Having chronic kidney disease (CKD) means that you’re more likely to get heart disease. The reverse is also true: heart disease can cause CKD. In fact, heart disease is the leading cause of death among people on dialysis, a life-saving treatment for people in kidney failure.

However, many people don’t know that the best way to prevent heart disease is to prevent or treat the problems that can cause it, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and anemia.

Consider these facts:

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Posted in Heart Health | Tagged cardiovascular disease, Heart Disease, kidney, kidney disease

Getting Through Seasonal Affective Disorder with Hiking

Published October 30, 2023 | By Lisa Nelson, RD

Contributed by Ryan Peterson.

Photo by Dziana Hasanbekava

Seasonal affective disorder is now recognized as a genuine medical issue. If you aren’t sure what it is, you may already be experiencing it. In the past, it was called the Winter Blues and was dismissed as something trivial. However, recent studies have shown that it can be very detrimental to your health and well-being, as well as affecting your social life and work. You can combat SAD with physical activity and nature, both of which you get en masse with hiking.

What the Heck is SAD?

Commonly known as the Winter Blues, SAD is a depressive condition that feels much like any other. Not much is known about why most people don’t experience it, and some do, but it can be demanding in your life. There is some suggestion that SAD happens because of the shorter days and less exposure to natural light, with some evidence to support this. However, it can be a symptom of other disorders that also require mental health treatment, such as depression.

Why Does SAD Happen?

There is some suggestion that SAD is a response to lack of sunlight. This prevents a part of your brain from working as it should and lowers the amount of melatonin your brain produces. This causes an imbalance among other hormones, such as cortisol and serotonin, which leads to a depressive feeling. The feelings of SAD are very similar to other depressive disorders, such as severe depression and anxiety, and are made worse if you have an existing depressive issue.

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Posted in Heart Health | Tagged sad, seasonal affective disorder