Healthier Eating and Lifestyle Change

There are usually two ways that people deal with their health as they age. One is to continue doing what they like to do and rely only on medicine, and the other is to change their habits or diet and see if these changes have an effect.

For young people and middle-aged people, lifestyle change is a viable option because the body learns to heal itself. There are people in my age group (millennials) who are already on maintenance medicines. A few years back, the doctor prescribed my husband statins, but he said it made him feel bad. Consulting another doctor, he was advised to try a change of diet for three months, and so he resolved to change his diet and to exercise more, and today he is not on any maintenance meds.

First, some reading

I’ve always been a believer that the food we choose to eat either heals or harms us. That’s because one of the books I read growing up was a volume published by Reader’s Digest entitled Foods that Harm, Foods that Heal: An A-Z Guide to Safe and Healthy Eating (1996). My mom bought the book; I read it because I thought the illustrations were nice and the stories of real people on the food they ate were interesting. (There was one person who ate peppermints thinking they were enough to keep his teeth healthy—and of course they weren’t—but he sought a dentist and so found a happy resolution.)

I don’t know where that book went, but in our current family library we have a similar book called Healing Foods for Special Diets (2000). We bought it on sale, which is why it is 26 years old, but I think there are insights we can get from it, as it still serves up good advice on healthy eating. To quote:

“Healthy eating doesn’t just mean cutting down on foods that are high in fat, sugar, or salt. A healthy diet is all about balance and variety. Foods can be grouped according to the essential nutrients they contain. To provide the body with the essential nutrients it needs, eat a variety of foods from each of these food groups, in appropriate amounts, every day. For most people, this means eating more fruit and vegetables and cutting down on foods containing fat and foods containing sugar.”

-from Healing Foods for Special Diets (2000)

The usual diet change, and then some

The changes a person who needs a new diet usually makes are basically what the book says: eat more fruit and vegetables and cut down on foods containing fat and sugar. That’s because doing those things has an effect that we can feel right away. Note that the advice above reiterates getting essential nutrients from a variety of food groups in appropriate amounts, so that means you still need, say, fat, but not in the usual quantity you enjoy. Sugar—in terms of sugary food—can be avoided because the body gets plenty of sugars from other sources. (I mean, all carbohydrate foods break down into sugar, don’t they?)

The difference in today’s nutrition milieu from 26 years ago is that today, more studies have shown the effects of how people have been eating (too much sugar, too much sodium, too many additives and other things we can't easily spell in ingredients lists) in the last few decades. That’s why the USDA released new recommendations on what is good to eat early this year. In other words, the more whole foods you eat, the better for your health—granted that these whole foods satisfy the requirements on amount and variety.

Aging better

So, what are the things one can do to be healthy and perhaps try to put off the maintenance meds that come with aging? Here are five tips:

1. Give up sugary drinks and recreational drinks. Sugary drinks are the easiest way to spike up sugar in the bloodstream. So, giving them up is also the easiest way to be nice to your body. The same goes for alcoholic drinks, giving them up is the easiest way to be nice to your body, especially your liver. Instead, enjoy your meals with water… it doesn’t take long to get used to not having a sweet drink at every meal.

2. Cook (and eat) more at home. When you cook your meals at home, you’re sure of what you put in them. You can also manage the sodium levels of your food better this way. (Your heart will thank you later.) If you don’t cook, try to look for a provider of healthy homecooked meals.

3. Exercise. You don’t need a gym membership to do this. Just move around all day: take breaks from computer work, walk to the bank or the store, lift weights (like children or groceries) and carry them with you while walking a distance. Take the stairs. If you can do a few workouts, they will be great for building muscle tone. Aging means we lose muscle tone (use it or lose it!), so it’s good to start on muscle-using habits in your 30s and 40s, because they will help you immensely in keeping fit in your 50s and 60s.

4. Enjoy your coffee as a simple brew. Nowadays, coffee is often a sugary shake. Real coffee is a simple brew. Enjoy it as it is (or maybe with a splash of milk, no sugar), and if you can, just once a day. You’ll feel better, I promise!

5. Sleep early. As the old saying goes: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” It is true today, though not only because rising early will give you a chance to work (which is probably what the adage refers to), but also because it gives you more energy to do things better. Recently, we made a rule at home to sleep at 10pm. Since then, we have noticed that we wake up before the alarm and we accomplish more things as the day goes along. I accomplish more writing in the daytime nowadays because I know I should be sleeping early; I find pockets of time in the day to write as I go about caring for the children and our home.

Those are just some new habits you can adapt to make lifestyle changes. I think that a lifestyle change is the better way to go about being healthier instead of a crash diet or a gym membership (which most people probably won’t follow through). That’s because a healthy resolution is one good thing you can commit to do “from now on,” meaning, it has to be something sustainable. It is for life, after all.

"I’ve always been a believer that the food we choose to eat either heals or harms us."