Heart surgery to repair your heart valves or keep your heart beating perfectly can be a life-saving effort. Before surgery, your doctor may recommend weight loss, especially if you are obese. This is because they are at a healthy weight and recover faster and more easily than those who are obese. The Mayo Clinic has launched a diet designed to help heart surgery patients lose weight in a healthy way that emphasizes lifelong health.

Meaning
The Mayo Clinic is a Minnesota-based Rochester clinic known for its innovations in cardiac care. Created to provide a realistic and safe method of weight loss diet, the Mayo Clinic diet emphasizes healthy options to help heart patients lose weight that make recovery after surgery easier, according to ” The Mayo Clinic Diet “. Note that this diet is not to be confused with the Mayo Clinic diet circulating on the Internet that emphasizes days and then days off the diet and increased grapefruit consumption.

From the Program
The initial portion of the Mayo Clinic Diet is designed to help heart surgery patients and other followers of the diet kick-start weight loss for immediate results. This is helpful for heart surgery patients who may have to lose at least 5 pounds. before the surgery. The startup phase is known as “Lose It!” This phase emphasizes making changes in daily habits that contribute to obesity, such as eating high-fat snacks, according to “The Mayo Clinic Diet.” The diet encourages the surgical patient to break five habits that contribute to obesity and adopt five habits that help lose weight.

Maintenance program
If you have more than two weeks before surgery, you can adopt the second phase of the Mayo Clinic diet program, known as “Live It!” This phase emphasizes eating according to the Mayo Clinic food pyramid, which emphasizes eating fruits, vegetables, low-fat protein sources and whole grains, according to MayoClinic.com. This phase also emphasizes eating low amounts of sodium, a heart-healthy practice that can lower high blood pressure.

Food portions
The Mayo Clinic Diet recommends a range of 1,200 to 1,800 calories per day, depending on your current weight, gender, and diet goals. Serving size recommendations include four vegetable servings, three fruit servings, four whole grain carbohydrate servings, three lean protein servings and three “healthy fats” servings, according to “The Mayo Clinic Diet.” Fruits and vegetables represent the largest number of fruit servings as they are low in calories and high in nutritional value.

Foods to Avoid
After the jump start portion of the Mayo Clinic diet plan, no foods are specifically restricted, according to the Diet Channel website. This is because the diet plan is aimed at moderation and not deprivation. Instead, the Mayo Clinic Diet recommends limiting sweets, alcohol, and foods that contain artificial sweeteners — but not necessarily eliminating them entirely.