BEIJING, Oct. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Fad diets, fewer fatty foods, more fruits and vegetables or more exercise simply won't do the trick for those seeking a healthy heart. The key is excess weight and getting rid of it.

    "What I find happens is that people tend to focus on one thing," says Riska Platt, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the American Heart Association. "They just add in fish to their diet and feel that they've taken care of everything. There are selected foods that have excellent properties in the management of heart disease but you've also got to look at your total diet."

    While cardiologists still recommend cutting back on salt and fat, in the past few years their advice has shifted for the average patient. Rather than encouraging people to eat certain healthy foods, doctors, more than anything, want patients to consumer less calories.

    "The point for people in the U.S. is to eat less," says New Jersey-based Dr. Augustine E. Agocha, lead physician at Advanced Heart, Lung and Vascular Care and chief of cardiology at Deborah Heart and Lung Center. "It's about calories."

    Agocha says too many people who attempt a high-fiber diet, for instance, overdo it and give up after two months. He tells men to limit themselves to 2,500 calories a day, and women 2,000. If you can't resist a cheeseburger, that's OK, he says, as long as you cut back the rest of the day. You can always buy yourself more calories by exercising, too.

    This is important because excess weight negatively affects cardiovascular risk factors, increasing LDL, or bad cholesterol, triglyceride levels, blood pressure and blood glucose levels and lowering HDL, or good cholesterol. It also increases the risk of coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and cardiac arrhythmias, according to the American Heart Association.

    "Weight isn't the only thing that determines whether you get heart disease," says Dr. Thomas H. Lee, editor in chief of the Harvard Heart Letter and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. "But if I were to be given one wish with patients, my first wish would be that they maintained normal body weights."

    (Agencies)