Healthy Eating Advice for Over 50s

A large part of our health depends on what we eat. In the young age it’s natural to ignore this and eat whatever we feel like. But the consequences of our bad eating habits start showing their effects as we start heading towards what is called old age! Roughly this may be called after 50s. Can something be done for this? Yes, of course! You can rectify your eating habits. Even if you are suffering from some illness and are under a nursing home care, you don’t have to be depressed as you can speed up your recovery by eating right. Here are some tips.

Changing Your Needs

A prevalent reason for age-related obesity is slowing down of our metabolism with age. We wonder how we used to eat anything and able to digest it all when we were young. But we should understand that with age this power of ours decreases. Consequently the extra calories you take in get stored in form of fats.

Balanced Diet

If you were not taking a balanced diet all through your life, now it’s time to start it. You should not aim at losing weight. You should aim at a healthy body and a healthy body needs all food ingredients. Therefore a balanced diet is what you require. Following are some hints:

• Take five portions at least of fresh fruits and veggies in a day
• Let your meals be based on starchy foods like rice, bread, pasta and potatoes – all grains whole and not refined
• Drink a lot of water and stay away from soft drinks, carbonated drinks, colored waters and sodas
• Minimize intake of sugar, saturated fats and trans fats, like butter
• Choose lean (low-fat) meat like poultry and fish
• Take in at least two portions of fish in a week; this should include one portion of oily fish like fresh tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel or trout
• Minimize alcohol
• Minimize salt intake – take six grams per day at the most – try to keep away from adding it to your food and watch for the extra salt in readymade meats, fast foods, etc
• Never skip meals, especially breakfast
• Keep a variety in foods so as to get all the nutrients and not getting bored of monotonous foods

Connection between Eating and Workout

Three keys to good health during old age are avoiding overeating, eating a balanced diet and eating only the right. Studies show connection between food and exercising and many diseases like cancer and coronary heart disease. Even if you walk regularly, you can cut the rate of physical breakdown by half.

FirstCare.ie is a chain of personalized care homes for the elderly. They have created a clean, loving and healthy environment for their clients who can spend a happy and healthy time there.