(HealthDay News) -- If you want to improve your heart health, it may require a long-term commitment to changing your lifestyle.

The American Heart Association offers these heart-healthy suggestions:

• Replace your bad habits with healthier habits.
• Creating new habits takes time, possibly as long as 90 days.
• Approach these changes as replacing bad habits, rather than as depriving yourself.
• Create several small, short-term goals out of one big one.
• Be accountable to a friend you trust.
• Let yourself indulge every once in a while.
• Replace TV with daily exercise.

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