This article was contributed by Ann of Elite Sports
Ageing is a natural process, and there is no way to avoid it. Yet it is often considered the basis of every disease. Getting old in itself is not a disease, yet if you look around, almost all health magazines will either sell you products that can reduce the impact of ageing or help you reduce its signs and symptoms with lifestyle change. Most medical health professionals have worked on the impact of age and how you can maintain your youth for longer. With the right techniques, right medications, and some procedures, you can maintain your youth. However, this raises a big question on the financial status of people who want to work on the ageing process but do not have enough financial capability. This is where you will switch to a healthy and organic lifestyle. You will start exercising and get to a healthy diet as well.
Why Diet is Important to Manage the Symptoms of Ageing
No matter what you want to improve, losing weight or strengthening your body, your focus should be on your diet. Since it will be the only way you can fuel your body, you need to maintain a healthy balance. This, however, doesn’t mean you cannot satisfy your taste buds with the food of your choice. If you are able to diet control, this will solve the majority of the issues that you will face as you start the ageing process. You can maintain a good healthy diet plan with a few days where you can eat what you want. Although, with a very slow metabolism, if your food is high in fat and carbs you will instantly feel lethargic. This is the reason you need to see the impact on your health and how your body reacts to certain food items.
With the help of this article, we will mainly look at the food items and diets that are consumed by people from around the world. Although we don’t mean to give a hard and fast diet to follow, this insight will offer you a good idea about the basic changes you need to make in your lifestyle and diet.
Is There an Ideal Diet for the Elderly?
Technically there is no ideal diet for the elderly. This is mainly because every region has a different staple food and there is no way you can simply reject the staple food for a whole region. However, to gain the fundamental nutrition elements you will see that the sources may vary. A simple example is that to gain carbs, most countries use wheat, while others rely on potato, corn, or rice. Depending on the region, you will have access to these food items.
Whilst designing your meal, keep in mind that as you get older your decision process gets difficult and your metabolism slows down, so you will burn fewer calories as compared to when you were younger. Apart from this, make sure to find a healthy alternative for each food item. If you want carbs, do not consume refined flour. Instead, you should consume wholegrain wheat. Similarly, add fibre content to your diet so that your gut health improves. For the protein source, take lean meat with no fat. Finally, reduce the fat. Especially avoid animal or saturated fat. You should however add oil in your meals – especially oil with omega-3 – so your cholesterol can be maintained. You should also add potassium, calcium, and vitamin supplements to your diet.
Sample Meal Plan for the Elderly
To help people explore healthy options without feeling that they are not consuming enough nutrients, you need to make sure that you have some variation in your food.
Start with a healthy breakfast that would mainly consist of an omelette cooked in olive oil. Make sure to add some spinach to your omelette for better taste and extra nutrients. Apart from this, you need some vitamins, so add a fruit cup as well. It is better to use seasonal food or some berries.
For the snack, you can take roasted peanuts, almonds, or any other dry fruit of your choice.
At lunch, you can take any salad but make sure the dressing doesn’t have any extra oil. You could have a chicken salad or bean salad.
For dinner, you can have grilled salmon with a side of greens and a very small side of brown rice. However, it is better to make quinoa.
Bottom Line
To sum it all up, the proverb “you are what you eat” is true. If you can detect the early signs of ageing and fix them right away, you will never face issues like obesity, joint pain, weak bones, eyesight, skin health, hair issues, loss of flexibility, and more. Overall, cutting processed food in your late 30s and eating organic raw food will eventually help you not only in maintaining a healthy BMI, but also preventing major issues that are linked with bone health, muscle health, and any other disease that get in the way of your health.
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