Healthy Aging: Managing Lifestyle Choices

Taking care of your body is important at all ages, but it becomes crucial for living the life that you want as you get older. Eating a healthy diet and staying physically active are necessities in living a long, healthy, and happy life.

The foods we put into our body not only impact how we look, more importantly they impact how we feel. The benefits of maintaining a healthy diet are innumerable. Providing your body with the nutrients it needs, like vitamins, minerals, fats, protein, and carbohydrates will keep your organs, muscles, and bones healthy. Eating well also gives you the energy you need to enjoy your life, helps you maintain a healthy weight so that you can stay active, and helps with healthy digestion.

Research has proven that staying active benefits people with heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis. Staying active is not only important to physical health, but mental health as well. It provides long-term benefits and can help improve existing diseases and disabilities. Physical activity helps manage stress, improve your mood and reduce feelings of depression.

A healthy diet and active lifestyle may reduce your risk of many chronic ailments, including heart disease, stroke, and type II diabetes. If you already have one or more of these chronic diseases, a healthy lifestyle could help you manage them.

I understand taking care of your body by staying active and providing it the nutrients that it needs is not always easy, but by making these small changes, you can make a big difference:

  • Stop adding extra salt to your food
  • Replace white bread with whole-grain bread
  • Add more seafood, vegetables and fruits to your meals
  • Drink LOTs of water!
  • Take the stairs instead of an elevator or escalator
  • Go for a walk a few times a week
  • Go for a swim
  • Go outside and play with your children or grandchildren

Please tell us: what do you do to maintain a healthy lifestyle?

 

Jaime Venditti, State Coordinator, New York Health Works

Resources:

https://nihseniorhealth.gov/category/healthyaging.html