More than half of elders who rely on assistance to live face issues with poor nutrition or diet. If your loved one has entered a retirement community in Vineland or elsewhere, you should think about how that community handles food.
As people age, their dietary needs shift. Healthy aging tips that worked for people in their 40s or 50s may stop working during their later years. You want your loved ones to eat well, and community plays a role in dietary choices.
If you want to safeguard your loved one’s diet in retirement, keep reading. We’ll tell you about the nutritional needs for seniors and how a community can support them.
Overweight Seniors and Changing Diets
For overweight seniors, a change in diet can lead to a big boost in quality of life. A new difficulty called sarcopenia emerges as seniors age and become more sedentary. This can make it difficult to distinguish good weight loss from bad weight loss.
Sarcopenia occurs when the body begins reducing muscle mass without reducing fat. Body mass index measurements seem to show good signs regarding obesity, but more detailed tests tell a different story. These tests show that patients remain obese but lose more and more muscle mass, becoming weaker and unhealthier.
Diet management helps reduce the risk of sarcopenia and ensures that the weight loss your loved one experiences stays healthy. While nutrition supplements can help, the best results come from a natural diet.
Common interventions include more fruit, vegetables, and lean natural proteins. Making these diet changes provides a platform from which seniors can improve other areas of health.
Exercise and Diet
The human body can’t exercise if it doesn’t get the right fuel, and aging makes those needs more specific.
Senior diet plans should include healthy iron intake to ensure high energy levels. While seniors should get more daily protein from chicken and fish, red meat can address anemia and keep energy levels high.
With a higher energy level, seniors can participate in more community activities. Options like yoga and pilates offer a low-impact, high-reward exercise for seniors. Participating
Diet and Bone Health
Many seniors face issues with their bones, including jawbone loss and osteoporosis. These issues can wreak havoc on a senior’s quality of life and can lead to distress in daily life. It can also make senior diet changes more difficult to handle due to difficulties eating certain foods with lost teeth, weaker jaws, or motor coordination to feed oneself.
Nutritional needs for seniors include higher fruit and vegetable intake and healthier protein options. Plant proteins like nuts and beans can build strong bones. Getting vitamins and minerals like calcium also helps the body build up stronger bones.
If you don’t know how to support your loved one, contact the elder care coordinator. The coordinator can help identify food that will help with bone issues or forward you to a pro.
Dietary Diversity
A senior’s diet should have a wide range of foods. Some Vineland senior communities fail to provide sufficient food diversity in a week.
Eating different foods each day encourages health in all areas. One study conducted in China indicated that daily living activities, mental state, and instrument activities all benefited when the menu changed.
These benefits matter most during the early part of one’s elder years. If your loved one enters an elder care community before age 75, ensure that the chosen community will provide a healthy range of foods.
A Retirement Community in Vineland Should Provide Dietary Assistance
If you don’t know what to look for, the best senior living options can elude you. When considering a senior community with your loved one, look for wellness programs and chef-prepared meals. These programs can help seniors who need more help keeping themselves healthy through diet.
Many wellness programs also offer other forms of health assistance, such as exercise planning and fun activities. A comprehensive wellness approach helps reduce the risk of social isolation and depression and enhances the cognitive benefits of eating right.
Look at the options available within a senior’s apartment as well. Many communities offer kitchenettes and refrigerators within the unit to help seniors maintain food autonomy and eat right instead of hoarding easy-to-eat junk food.
Buying In and Real Dietary Change
Big changes to one’s diet often meet with stubborn refusal. Your loved one might wonder why it’s so important to change habits right now. Difficulties like memory loss and dementia can further complicate the process.
Senior living staff can help. You and the community team should work together to find interventions that best suit your loved one.
Sometimes getting a senior to change habits requires addressing underlying wellness issues. Seniors who can’t cook or struggle with sleep disruption have a hard time changing their eating habits.
Adapting changes to better suit a senior’s routine can also help. If your loved one likes to snack between meals, simple denial won’t help change the habit. Consider providing healthier snacks instead.
Don’t expect overnight habit formation. Treat nutritional changes the same way you’d treat something like quitting smoking or reducing alcohol intake. Gradual reduction of junk food consumption will work better than going cold turkey.
Always find ways to track progress. Sometimes your loved one will need the support of community team members to track this, but it goes a long way in ensuring that better habits stick around. Tracking both whether one’s meeting nutritional goals and the results can provide routine and comfort for your loved one as well.
Healthy Body, Healthy Mind
A retirement community in Vineland or elsewhere should provide real support for all your loved one’s needs. Good food can help maintain personal health, encourage exercise, and reinforce good habits. Make sure your loved one gets a wide range of foods.
If you need a senior living community in New Jersey, give us a call at Baker Place Assisted Living. We have studio and one-bedroom apartments with convenient amenities, give residents transportation assistance, and offer help for veterans. Contact us to learn more if you or a loved one need help finding the right community for you.
