How Important Is Diet for
Senior Health and Longevity?

Seniors with poor diets show early signs of aging and get degenerative diseases sooner than those who eat the right foods in moderate portions. Diet for senior health is probably tied with exercise as the Number 1 building block for aging well.

Being overweight is one of the biggest challenges seniors face because it’s even harder to go on a diet and lose weight when your energy is lagging or you have diseases and joint pain. But there are some crucial reasons to do so.

Seniors who are overweight are more likely to develop insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and cancer. You can’t be a healthy senior if you aren’t at a healthy weight. Lean leads to longevity.

When it comes to diet and nutrition, however, I’ve been reluctant to give others advice for several reasons:

1. There’s so much hype and contradictory opinions on what we should or shouldn’t eat.
2. Everyone has their favorite foods along with set eating and drinking habits. It’s extremely difficult to get someone to change the way they eat.
3. My own diet has never been stellar, so who am I to tell you what to eat?
4. There is no perfect diet, no perfect food, or magic recipe that will make us feel or look younger.

My Own Dieting Journey

Now, I have a confession to make: I’ve struggled with knowing what to eat over the course of my lifetime. That’s because I was a fashion model and for most of my youth, not eating was the goal. Losing weight and being skinny superseded all nutrition guidelines.

Then along the way, I realized I wasn’t in Paris anymore: I no longer had to diet. Still, throughout my 40s and 50s I played the dieting game. Up and down. At 60, I carried some 15 extra pounds, most of it around my middle.

Re-enter the need to lose weight and diet. Only this time, over 60, it became a real struggle. To say losing weight is harder as a senior is a gross understatement.

That’s when I began learning as much as I could about nutrition so that I could lose the weight and maintain it. Happy to say the last ten years have been successful, but not easy. It was like a staircase, two steps down, one up, but eventually I lost the 15 lbs. Today I’m at 51.5 kg, which is slim for my height. But as my bones and frame have always been small, that’s an appropriate weight for me.

I’ve learned a few things by devouring a ton of books on the subject. Most of what I’ve adopted as nutritional guidelines are appropriate for me (my body, age, BMI, nutritional needs) and not necessarily for anyone else.

There are, however, some general guidelines that may be interesting for you to look into. I recommend each senior investigate for themselves and consult with their doctors, nutritionists, and experts.

Finding the Right Diet Guidelines

First of all, I had to track what I was eating. I was in major denial. You know the jokes about if you eat standing up or between meals it doesn’t count? I now use an app called Cronometer to track everything that goes into my mouth. It will calculate the carbs, protein, fat and nutrients. Check it out.

Then I tried a few of the popular diets like Atkins, Paleo, and Mediterranean. I even had great success with the ketogenic diet, but found it too hard to sustain. Here are the guidelines I use for myself.

1. Track what you eat. (Even if it means weighing portions at first.)
2. Avoid drinks that have calories.
3. Don’t eat after dinner (for me, 7 p.m.)
4. Don’t eat for the next 12-15 hours or until lunch the next day.
5. Except: coffee the next morning and a collagen shake with vitamins and pills
6. Avoid carbohydrates (bread, pasta, processed foods, grains, etc.)
7. Include fats in diet, especially from avocados, olive oil, coconut oil, cheese and dairy.
8. Minimize red meats and saturated fats
9. Maximize fish, chicken breast, but limit protein to 50 grams a day
10. No alcohol
11. Eat nuts, limit fruit servings to apples, strawberries and blueberries daily
12. Include 5-6 portions of vegetables daily like salads, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, onions, celery etc.
13. No sweets, desserts, sugar, (use of stevia in coffee and dressings permitted)

Now, this is what I strive for, not what I actually do on a daily bases. The most difficult part for me is to not eat desserts, candy, and chocolate. Instead, I try to limit them to 200 calories per day. Fortunately, I don’t ever drink any alcohol, not even the supposedly healthy glass of wine. Personally, I not believe that alcohol or wine or beer is good for anyone who is aging.

I offer my guidelines only as an example of what I do, not what anyone else should do. Like I say, everyone has different opinions when it comes to diet and nutrition. Even the doctors and nutritionists differ widely.

The Right Diet Leads to More Energy

What I do know, however, is that if you’re not following some sort of nutritional plan, it’s very easy to gain weight. It’s also very easy to overeat the wrong foods which are toxic to our cells and mitochondria. Much of the energy loss of aging is due to faulty diets. The biggest culprit is probably carbohydrates, especially the ones that come out of a factory (processed foods).

You may not be sick (yet) but if you experience loss of vitality and energy, take a look at what you eat. There’s even one doctor who names it Carbohydrate Syndrome. Brain fog, tiredness, fatigue, muscle and joint aches and pain.

Do not accept such symptoms as “just getting old.” There are plenty of aging seniors who do not feel chronic fatigue and who manage to generate the health and vitality of youth. Fight back. How you fuel your body matters. Diet is important to senior health and longevity.