Tips for Motivation Creating a Eat Healthy Food Diet

The key to healthy eating is to focus on the whole, minimally processed food that your body needs as you age—food that is as close to its natural form as possible. Our bodies respond differently to different foods, depending on genetics and other health factors, so finding the healthy diet that works best for you may take some experimentation. These tips are a good place to start:

Choose calcium for bone health. Maintaining bone health as you age depends on adequate calcium intake to prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures. Good sources include milk, yoghurt, cheese or non-dairy sources such as tofu, broccoli, almonds, and kale.

Vary your sources of protein. As you age, eating enough high-quality protein can improve your mood, boost your resistance to stress, anxiety, and depression, and even help you think more clearly. However, eating too much protein from processed meat products such as hot dogs, bacon, and salami may increase your risk of heart disease, cancer, and other health problems. Vary your sources of protein instead of relying on just red meat by including more fish, beans, peas, eggs, nuts, and seeds in your diet.

Reduce the number of processed carbohydrates you consume—pastries, cakes, pizza, cookies and chips—and replace them with high-quality protein.

Snack on nuts instead of chips, replace a baked dessert with Greek yoghurt, swap out slices of pizza for a grilled chicken breast and a side of beans.

Water. As you get older, you may be more prone to dehydration because your sense of thirst is not as sharp. Remember to sip water regularly to avoid urinary tract infections, constipation, and even confusion.

Vitamin B. After the age of 50, your stomach produces less gastric acid making it harder to absorb vitamin B-12—needed to help keep blood and nerves healthy. Get the recommended daily intake (2.4 mcg) of B12 from fortified foods or a vitamin supplement.

Tips for staying motivated

It’s easy to become discouraged when illness, injury, or changes in the weather interrupt your routine and seem to set you back to square one. But there are ways to stay motivated when life’s challenges get in the way:

Focus on short-term goals, such as improving your mood and energy levels and reducing stress, rather than goals such as weight loss, which can take longer to achieve.