Healthy Eating Patterns – Diet and Nutrition

As we get older, healthy eating and regular exercise became important and even more beneficial in the retirement stage to keep our body fit and healthy. It doesn’t mean we need not adopt a healthy habit in pre-retirement but post-retirement demands a more balanced diet to let it will better equip the immune system will be better to fight off infection and illness. This can be simple and fun to experiment with different healthy foods you may not have tried before.

Why should I think about my diet now?
Well, when you think about retirement, it’s time to focus on what you’d like to do with your free time–even if that means finding more work. To do that, you need to be active, energetic and healthy by eating well. You should eat nutritious foods regularly.

What is nutrition?
It’s the food you take in, the process of getting food into your body and using it as raw materials for growth, fuel for energy, and vitamins and minerals to help keep your body working properly. The ‘nutritious meal’ is a meal that’s balanced with a good amount of vitamins, fats, and sugars, proteins, minerals, carbohydrates and fiber with the perfect right amount.

So what should my diet include?
Good health advice starts from Eat well and explains how your diet should comprise a variety of:

• Carbohydrates–bread, rice, potato, pasta
• Protein–Meat, fish, eggs, beans
• Fats–cheese, milk, yogurt
• Vitamins and minerals, fruit and vegetables

You don’t have to have all of these food groups with every meal, but it’s good to try to incorporate them into your weekly intake. If this sounds like hard work, don’t worry. Most of the retirees once touch their retirement start budgeting and planning weekly meals to cut off the extra expenses. The benefits of a healthy diet and proper nutrition are as follows:

• Increased mental acuteness to outsmart your grandkids.
• Higher energy levels to do all you wanted to do in retirement.
• Faster recuperation times.
• Resistance to illness and disease.
• Better management of chronic health problems.
• Greater independence by increasing the length of time you can live on your own.

As we age our total energy requirements decrease and we require fewer calories while still needing the same amount of nutrients. The rewards of good nutrition are priceless and quite easy to attain by taking a few healthy steps. A good start is always healthy and constitutes a well-balanced and nutritious diet. This path to healthy eating isn’t easy but what you need to do to make your diet a healthy and nutritious one.

If I want to lose weight, how can I do that?  
The truth is, it’s not about dieting – it’s about changing what you eat as part of your lifestyle. Crash diets rarely work and weight loss often results in short-term stress, more often than not, the weight comes back. Most experts concur that the best way to achieve sustained weight loss is by making changes that you can sustain in the long term. So, particularly if you’re thinking about setting a budget and sticking to it as you get older, it’s a good idea to:

• Simply eat less–you’ll be surprised how full you felt on less food.
• Avoid eating food full of sugars and carbohydrates, it’s tempting to have chocolate, biscuits, and cakes but at the same time, it’s unhealthy. 
• No more snacks between meals.
• Be on vegetable and fruit diet (5 portions each day).
• Plan your meal, eggs for breakfast could be one small but essential change, as we all know protein is good for health and make you feel full for longer.

Will eating healthy?
Forget about the misconception of a healthy diet cost more than our regular normal diet, a healthy balanced diet ensures you to have proper nutrition and vitamins in every meal each day without blowing your retirement income. Here are some great healthy tips with a range of excellent results to keep you healthy in your retirement.

• Don’t skip breakfast, breakfast is the best time to have nutrients for the whole day but plan three meals/day with 1-3 snacks/day.
• Make sure you eat at least the minimum amount of food of servings every day, depending on your appetite and level of energy you consume.
• Plan your meals as per 2/3 of your plate with fruits, vegetables, and grain products. 
• Add a variety of foods every day. Make sure you have a good amount of vitamins, nutrients, and proteins all the healthy body needs. 
• We all deserve to enjoy different food but if we pair our craving of food with a good amount of exercise to have long-lived a healthy life. 
• Limit your portions of high-calorie foods, go for qualitative and small quantity meals.