February, It's All About Love!

February, the month related to our hearts is all about heart health and love. This is why I have decided to combine my usual Valentine message with February's Heart Health Month, because it is all about love, loving ourselves and our loved ones, that is!

Valentine's Day, usually the time for my annual love tip, represents all types of love, romantic or otherwise in my opinion. Many of us celebrated romantically with a loved one over a special dinner or with gifts such as flowers or chocolate. When I was a little girl, my dad used to send me chocolate by the foot from Arkansas, and it was always at least 3 feet! Now even though I ate some chocolate this Valentine's Day (I did!), I'd like to propose that this is Valentine month,  and that we take a moment to think about another way to express our love to others and to ourselves (we can all  eat a little delicious chocolate too, of course!). I call it Alternative Love. If we can practice alternative love, we will impact our heart health as well as express our love to others.
 
How?
 
We can express our love this month by giving a gentle nag to our loved one to make that over-due doctor's appointment or we can  buy our loved one a new gym membership, or an exercise bike, for example. It can even mean our giving someone a new work-out outfit or a pair of sneakers to spur on a healthy routine. Maybe it even means taking over a chore for that special someone so that he or she can get to the gym more often. Do we know someone who smokes? How about we give him or her information about the various "smoking cessation groups"  available and meeting times (along with a love basket of flowers, okay I'm getting carried away!). We can also give a massage as a gift for Valentine's Month instead of chocolate, or we can take a couple's massage to celebrate together.
 
How can we express love to ourselves? Well, how often have we stopped to think about doing something that is an expression of love for ourselves? Do we need to make that over -due doctor's appointment for ourselves? Have we been exercising regularly? Have we been eating a few more healthier foods? One suggestion I'd like to make, is for each of us to eat one new food every week that is known to be healthy (how about we start our day with a healthy high fiber cereal for instance or heart healthy oatmeal?). Or how about we eliminate one food that we know is unhealthy as a way of getting started. We can treat ourselves to that weekly massage for the next few weeks to reward ourselves, especially if stress is a major factor in our life. Many of us eat to cope with stress, so let's try a massage instead.
 
Valentine's day and this entire month is about love, and with so many ways of expressing it, let's pick at least one way that may help our health and fitness. Of course, we can still eat some chocolate too (just a little less), because "It's All About Love" this month and beyond!
 
Happy Valentine's Month!

Follow me every Sunday on Twitter for a new tool from my program taken my book. AND brand new, my screensaver program "Focus on the Tools" is now available for PC users. It features rotating flashing tools from my program with different healthy salads in the background. There's even a calendar that shows the month and date! Reinforce healthy eating habits while at your computer. Click here to go to my services page, for more info http://www.junefit.com/serviceshp.htm

June M. Lay M.S.
www.junefit.com

Try my heart healthy "Hearts of Palm Red Salad" posted now. For more information on heart health, warning signs, and to read about the GO RED campaign go to AmericanHeart.org where we can take an online, 10-year risk assessment, the CheckUp will help women calculate their risk of heart disease. Take the CheckUp and learn how to make healthy habits part of your daily routine.
 
Junefit is included in Google's top ranked women's health resources and is a lifestyle columnist at Health News Digest.