It's never too late: basic lifestyle changes you can make today for a healthier heart.

Janet Tapp was a certified member of the "clean your plate club." Her parents wouldn't tolerate food waste, what with nine mouths to feed three times a day. But that 18-year club membership left the Canadian native grossly obese by her teenage years.

Even after she'd had a heart attack and a stroke by age 35, the 200-pound Tapp, who lives in Ontario, Canada, didn't take the hint. She continued her membership in the "clean your plate club," with a side order of prescription heart and blood medications, for another 7 years. She tipped the scales at 216 by the time she had her second stroke last summer. That's when her doctor gave her an ultimatum: Start eating right, or prepare for an early death.

"I had lost total contact with healthy living," admits Tapp, who now weighs in at a slender 135 pounds after making dramatic lifestyle changes. "I was eating garbage and plenty of it. I was allergic to exercise."

Risky Business

Tapp's not the only one at risk. Heart disease and stroke are the first and third leading causes of death, respectively, for women, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). They represent just two of the many cardiovascular diseases that kill nearly 500,000 women each year. And men aren't immune, either, despite the fact that heart attacks are declining in the male population.

That's what Bob Darby found out--the hard way. He and his wife both are good ol' Southern home cooking for 50 years. But he was the one that ended up in the hospital having heart surgery to open up his clogged arteries.

"I thought I had to eat meat twice a day," said the retired pastor, whose home is in Tallapoosa, Georgia. "I never drank water; only tea and coffee. I never are raw foods. We just flied everything to death."