Good nutrition means that healthy seniors should eat more healthy fats and avoid artificial fats like partially hydrogenated oils and processed vegetable oils. As I mentioned in my previous post, research has shown the value of good fats, and the decay brought about by artificial fats or low fat diets.
If you’re not getting enough calories on a restricted low fat diet, you will more than likely be hungry and turn to high carbohydrate food and snacks, like popcorn, chips, dips, pasta, cakes and cookies. Rarely do we reach for carrot sticks when we’re hungry.
The Basics of Good Nutrition
How many of these guidelines do you try to follow daily?
- Eat whole, unprocessed foods. If it comes from the sea, out of the ground, off a tree, or an animal, it’s real food. If it’s in a box or package with a nutrition label, at least read the label and know what chemicals you’re putting into your body.
- Avoid sugar. Even honey, agave, and other so-called healthy sugars are still sugar, and too much sugar in the diet wreaks havoc on our cells, liver and insulin functioning. Beware of added sugars in processed food. Skipping deserts and candy is a good step, but don’t forget that corn syrup is added to many of our common foods including cereal, yogurt, breads and almost anything you pick off the grocery shelves. If you do eat something sweet, limit yourself to 200 calories a day.
- Avoid refined grains.
- Eat a diet high in natural fats.
- Balance feeding with fasting. I’ll explain the science of fasting and it’s benefits in another post. But even without fasting, you probably realize that many of us eat too much, and too often. In the U.S. portion sizes are exaggerated, especial in many restaurants. As healthy seniors, we must rethink what is a reasonable sized meal. Some of may need to forego snacks. Many healthy people I know are deciding to only eat two meals a day. The length of time between eating is a key to letting our bodies digest, heal, and become efficient on a cellular level.
If you’re like us, some of these tips for good nutrition are easy to follow and others are challenging. For example, it’s easy for me to avoid breads and pasta, but Rob loves them. I love fish and eat it 2-3 times a week. But I have a weakness for sugar. I can’t just eat a little of anything sweet, it triggers cravings and I give in. Been known to binge on licorice and chocolate.
Luckily for us that where we live (Mexico) there is an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. There is also a high carbohydrate culture so we eat at home a lot. Some experts are now addressing another nutritional problem: people eat too often.
Intermittent Fasting for Healthy Seniors
In almost every recent book on healthy eating, experts are recommending intermittent fasting as a way to detoxify and rejuvenate cellular health. So far I’m not good at going long periods without eating, but Rob has been practicing this for several years now. He doesn’t eat after dinner (7:00 p.m.) until lunch the next day around noon or sometimes as late as 2 p.m.
But that’s been hard for me to do. Yet all the research points to fasting for limited time improves blood tests, and other health markers. More about that in another post.
For now, I wish our U.S. readers a Happy Thanksgiving and all the best!
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