Key Highlights

10 nutritional tips offer practical strategies to support your overall health and well-being as you age.

  • Colorful Plate: Opt for a diet rich in fruits and vegetables to get essential nutrients and antioxidants.

  • Reduce Sugar: Minimize added sugars in your diet to lower the risk of obesity and chronic diseases.

  • Spice it Up: Incorporate healthy spices like turmeric for their anti-inflammatory properties.

  • Total Recall: Reflecting on your last meal can help reduce snacking and calorie intake.

  • Simplify Ingredients: Avoid products with long lists of artificial additives and preservatives.

  • Portion Control: Reduce meal portions to naturally decrease calorie consumption.

  • Eat Before Hunger: Anticipate hunger and eat before you feel ravenous to make healthier choices.

  • Stay Hydrated: Drink water regularly throughout the day to support metabolism and digestion.

  • Healthy Fats: Include sources of healthy fats like avocados and nuts while avoiding saturated and trans fats.

  • Moderate Indulgence: Enjoy treats in moderation while focusing on smart choices for overall health.

August 09, 2023

10 Nutritional Tips to Help with Ageing Gracefully

Although ageing is an unavoidable part of life, a bit of knowledge can significantly improve our health. While these 10 nutritional tips won’t single-handedly transform your well-being, when combined with a healthy lifestyle, they can enhance how you feel and look. Prioritizing colorful fruits and vegetables, reducing sugar intake, staying hydrated, and incorporating healthy fats are just a few steps you can take to support your overall health as you age

Eat a Colourful Plate

In addition to helping us feel fuller with fewer calories, consuming a colorful diet rich in fruits and vegetables—whether fresh or frozen—provides essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. These nutrients reduce the risk of chronic diseases and combat free radicals, contributing to overall health and countering cellular damage associated with ageing. Opt for a diverse range of colorful produce to maximize the various health benefits.

Reduce your Sugar Intake

Sugar has had a hard time of it lately – and with good reason, too. A diet high in the white stuff has been linked, amongst other things, to obesity, chronic diseases and inflammation.

Consuming sugar is often a habit, rather than necessity: a few spoonfuls added to your morning coffee, pre-packaged, sugar-loaded smoothies, processed microwave meals or even salad dressings, ketchup and the like – they all contain surprising amounts of sugar.

When food shopping, learn how to spot sugar amongst the ingredients (it is commonly labelled as anything from high fructose corn syrup or sucrose to dextrose, maltose and even honey).

Spice up your Life

Do your best to boost your intake of healthy spices. Seasoning your favourite foods with spices will not only enhance the flavour, but will boost your nutrient intake, and help fight the ageing process.

Turmeric, for example, contains the active ingredient curcumin, which has anti-inflammatory properties and helps relieve joint pain. And, for an added boost, seasoning food with spices will help reduce the need to use added sugar and salt.

Practice Total recall

British scientists found that people who thought about their last meal before snacking ate as much as 30 percent fewer calories than those who didn't stop to think. The theory: remembering what you had for lunch might remind you of how satiating the food was, which then makes you less likely to binge on your mid-afternoon snack.

Less is More

If the ingredients on a product’s label are too numerous to count and too difficult to pronounce, that’s your cue to leave it on the supermarket shelf.

Here’s a sobering stat: there are now more than 3,000 ingredients on the FDA's list of safe food additives—and any of these preservatives, artificial sweeteners and colourings and flavour enhancers could end up on your plate.

The long-term effect of these chemicals is not exactly beneficial for your health – or your waistline. So, as a simple guideline: if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.

Try Portion Control

Pennsylvania State University researchers discovered that by simply reducing meal portions 25 percent, people ate 10 percent fewer calories—without feeling any hungrier.

Serving yourself? Think about what looks like a reasonable portion, then take at least one-quarter less than that.

Eat Before Hunger Strikes

We’re all familiar with the hunger pangs that accompany a growling stomach. But by the time those gurgling noises make themselves heard, your body is already craving nutrients - those pangs of hunger – and the accompanying sounds effects - are the body’s last-ditch attempts to get your attention.

Whenever possible, aim to eat before hunger strikes. Why? No matter how motivated or disciplined you are, when you’re physiologically hungry, your body's desires will undoubtedly trump your brain's best intentions; and your hunger-influenced choices will often be larger in both quantity and calories than ones made while content.

Water is Key

Our bodies are about 60% water, so it’s no secret that we need to drink plenty of H2O to keep our body systems running smoothly, optimise metabolism, boost energy levels and promote good digestion.

Don't wait until you're thirsty, though - thirst signals the first stage of dehydration, which means you're already too late. To remain hydrated, drink often throughout the day, and especially before and during a training session.

Not All Fats are Created Equal

Once considered the ‘enemy’, fats are a vital part of any diet. Contrary to previous dietary advice promoting low-fat diets, newer research has confirmed that fats are necessary and beneficial for health.

But – and it’s a big but – they need to be the right kind. Healthy fats such as avocados, nuts, seeds, olive oil and coconut oil will not only satiate you, but they also support brain function, lower the risk of heart disease and, rather pleasingly, can enhance the taste of meals.

Avoid foods with saturated and/or trans fat, though. The latter – which are found primarily in processed foods - are particularly unhealthy and will increase the risk of disease, even when eaten in small quantities.

Indulge Just a Little

Healthy eating doesn’t need to be about deprivation—it's about making smart choices the majority of the time. While fast food consumed on a daily basis is not going to boost anyone’s health, the occasional treat isn’t going to prove too detrimental in the long run. The bottom line: eat foods that you enjoy, just not too much of them.

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