Living longer is, hopefully, a side-effect of a healthy lifestyle. But the best benefit is feeling better during the life you have.

We know you’ve heard it all before. Part of the problem is the way people perceive things – we see fat-packed foods as "treats" and inactivity as the only true relaxation. Too much of this behavior (and we’ll talk about what constitutes "too much") increases not only your risk of heart disease but many other afflictions as well. This risk increases with age, and doubles when several risk factors are combined. Some treat!

A healthy diet and exercise is just the beginning of really treating yourself – think about the basic maintenance of your car, an oil change, a tune-up. Do you do more to keep your car healthy than you do to keep your body healthy?

In trying to change your lifestyle, it may help to change the way you think about things. In other words, begin to Change your focus:

• Eat to get healthy, not to lose weight.

• Exercise to feel more energetic and give your heart a workout, not to look better at the beach.

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