This February, Make Creativity The Heart Of Your Fitness Routine

Wrong.

For Judy Hinderliter, taking care of friends means refusing to talk to them on the phone.

Instead, when friends want to chat, Hinderliter, a dietitian and personal trainer at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont, encourages them to join her for a brisk, heart-healthy walk.

That's just one of the creative strategies for maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system that Hinderliter and her husband, Alan, a cardiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, share with their patients.

Despite advances in medical care, heart disease has remained the leading killer of Americans for the past 80 years. Each year, about 650,000 Americans die from heart disease, a term that refers to problems such as heart arrhythmias, heart failure and coronary artery disease, which can lead to heart attacks...

But he cautioned that the rise in obesity and diabetes, important risk factors for heart disease, has cut into these gains. Meanwhile, children exercise less than they did in previous generations, thanks to the prevalence of video games and cuts to physical education classes.

If you want to succeed at your fitness routine, make COMMITMENT the heart of it.

And stick with it.