Here’s a really simple way to lower your blood pressure. Change your diet. That might sound easy. Well, here’s an insider’s tip. It is actually fairly easy to change your diet without too much of a difference in your lifestyle. You’ve heard it before, but fruits and vegetables can make a difference in helping you to look and feel better. Who wouldn’t like that? We aren’t talking about changing everything you eat to fruits and vegetables (though you’d probably be really healthy afterwards). We are talking about changing your diet slowly. All good things happen slowly, so there is no need to rush. Unless you are way overweight in which case you might want to see a Doctor and have him advise you on the best quick way to rapid weight loss (if there is such a thing).
Here is a three part checklist on how to get that blood pressure down gradually.
1) Eat breakfast. We’ve tried this. Between eating and not eating breakfast, we’ve found that keeping our weight off is easiest done by eating breakfast. While this might sound counterintuitive to you, eating breakfast is one of the best things you can do to keep the pounds off. Think about it. You’ve just woke up from 8 hours of no food, most like proceeded by two hours of not eating before bed. If you wait 4 hours until lunch, you’ve effectively starved your body for 14 hours. That’s the majority of a day! When you finally do eat lunch, you are much likely to overeat and you might confuse your metabolism.
2) Eat the right foods when you do eat. Unfortunately, the US is the land of salt and sugar in our foods. While these may really taste great (we like them as much as you do), we’ve found that these delicious ingredients can really pack on the pounds and keep our blood pressure higher than it needs to be. According to some health experts, calcium and potassium rich foods are the best for lowering your blood pressure over time. Off the top of our heads, we can think of several foods in each category. A couple of the foods rich in calcium are tofu and cottage cheese. Try eating some of these types of foods, they might affect your diet in a nice way. A couple foods rich in potassium are carrots and broccoli. It seems like no matter how you slice it, fruits and vegetables are good for you. And come one, while they are definitely good for your diet, they don’t taste that bad!
3) Monitoring. Without monitoring your blood pressure, numbers 1 and 2 above are almost not worth pursuing. You might as well stay on your current diet. Watch for the signs in your blood pressure. Some health experts (and Doctors) have signs they look for in blood pressure. Know them. According to some health experts, they can make a world of difference.