6 Heart-Healthy Date Ideas for Valentine’s Day

Take Care of your Heart on Valentines Day!

Looking for a way to celebrate Valentines day and stay heart healthy too? Here are some great suggestions brought to you by Digifit, a cool cloud and app based way to track your healthy activities!

Mouth watering boxes of chocolates, breakfast in bed with a tall stack of buttery pancakes and a multi-course dinner topped with a bottle of wine have become staples of the Feast of Saint Valentine. Though romantic and delectable, these Valentine’s Day rituals are packed with calories and not exactly conducive to heart health (red wine in moderation excluded, of course).

This Valentine’s Day why not show your sweetheart something truly heart-warming. Here are several healthy date ideas that will keep your heart strong even when it’s skipping a few beats.

1. Saunter by the Sea. The awe-inspiring power and majesty of the ocean is the perfect setting for a romantic Valentine’s Day. Take a long stroll on the beach and watch the sunset. Walking is excellent exercise and essential to heart health. In fact, the American Heart Association recommends taking 10,000 steps daily to reduce risk of heart disease–a goal you will easily reach with this date idea!

2. Dance the Night Away. Hit up a local bar, restaurant, or even your living room to get your groove on! Dancing is not only a great way to have fun with your special somebody, but it will burn major calories. For a more coordinated approach, try a Salsa or Tango class with your pretty partner!

3. Picnic in the Park. Plan something totally unexpected and away from the regular restaurant scene with a picnic. Pack a blanket, a bottle of red wine, vegetables and hummus as an alternative to cheese and crackers, and get hiking to your picnic destination. Find a clearing with a great view and make camp where you can spend plenty of alone time with your beloved.

4. Bike in Bliss. Grab your trusty two-wheeled terrain traveler and enjoy a rambunctious ride through the town for two. Plan a route ahead of time to get the most from your special bike ride. Meander your way to a flower stand, pop by a coffee shop to catch a poetry reading or simply revel in a scenic view of the surrounding landscape with your loved one. Use Digifit’s iBiker app to track your route and challenge each other to further distances next time!

5. Canoodle while Canoeing. Find your way over to a local river or lake and rent a two-person canoe. Enjoy the aquatic wildlife all around you, the arduous effort put towards each move of the paddle, and the antiquated nature of canoeing as a form of transportation. You will be burning calories while having a blast before you know it.

6. Linger in Laughter. Share a laugh (or ten) by drinking in the amusing and occasionally moronic musings of a charismatic comedian. While this immobile event does not seem like a particularly healthy or active activity, the process of laughing actually carries countless health benefits like lowering stress, burning extra calories and is known to bring couples closer together. Pick a date that gets your heart and love pumping for a truly memorable and health Valentine’s Day.

Do something great for your heart and your sweetheart!

This article is brought to you by Digifit, the original heart-rate monitoring app for iPhone.  Digifit offers truly engaging health and fitness solutions using sensors and wearable technology integrated with mobile devices and the cloud so users can track activities anywhere, indoors or out, with a focus on heart rate training and monitoring.

Women’s Wellness Speaker Eliz Greene works with busy women to improve heart health, so they can live longer, feel better, and stress less.

She is a heart attack survivor and the author of the Busy Woman’s Guide to a Healthy Heart as well as 3 other books on wellness. She writes one of the top 50 health and wellness blogs and is a sought-after women’s wellness & stress management keynote speaker. Eliz was recently named one of the Top Ten Online Influencers on Stress.

If you are planning a women’s wellness program, Go Red for Women Luncheon, or Heart Truth event check out EmbraceYourHeart.com to see if Eliz would be a good fit with your organization.