Should I be doing anything about what I eat?
There are two main things about your eating that can be improved: reducing your weight and lowering your fat intake (cholesterol). Both are important and are usually related, although some thin people can have high cholesterol levels, and some fat people can have normal cholesterol levels.
I am absolutely miserable when I go on a slimming diet – it never works anyway. What is so wrong with being fat?
Being overweight throws a strain on your heart and causes your blood pressure to rise. Fat people are less mobile and have more pain in their bones and joints.
Losing weight sensibly (and not ‘going on a diet’) will benefit your heart and help keep your blood pressure normal. If you are overweight, losing weight may also help reduce the fats in your body. There are guidelines for your ideal weight. Losing weight is about changing your lifestyle and the amount of food you eat. It is not about becoming obsessed with food or going on crash diets.
Would it help if I saw a dietitian?
Yes. Dietitians are extremely good at explaining which foods are best to eat, and they know how to advise different ethnic groups with specific dietary requirements. Ask for an appointment at the hospital or at your doctor’s surgery.
My cholesterol was checked 2 weeks after my heart attack. It had gone right down, but my hospital doctor did not seem as pleased as I was. Why not?
After a heart attack, the cholesterol level will fall and return to your normal level after about 6–8 weeks. If it is tested on the day that you are admitted for the heart attack, this will be accurate too.
Cholesterol measurements taken after the first 24 hours and up to 2 months after a heart attack are unreliable; tend to be low and therefore falsely reassuring. Whatever your cholesterol was, you will be placed on a statin (forever!) as the benefits are overwhelming. Your response will be checked to make sure that the dose is correct and that the targets have been reached.
I have read a lot about what I should do, now that I am home after my heart attack, but there seems to be too much to do at once. It may seem that way at first, but it is important that you change your lifestyle. Don’t get obsessed by the need to change, tackle each point of the diet, in a gradual way.
Get the whole family into healthy eating – pick up any hints or tips from family and friends, or leaflets from your pharmacist.Begin with the simple tasks of reducing sugar, switching puddings to fruit, snacking sensibly on fruit and not biscuits, and then gradually switching from saturated to unsaturated fats.
