Elder Dieting

My friends in college tagged me with the nickname Hoover, not because I kept my dorm room meticulously clean, but rather because of how I sucked down food at the dining hall.  For much of my adult life I told folks I adhere to a quantitarian diet, eating large quantities of food at meal time.  My body tolerated such a diet because of extensive physical assertion.  Now I see the sense in what I once scoffed at, senior citizen food portions and discounts.

My diet suits the elder phase of life for a person focused on brain health, blood pressure and staying physically active.  The physiological and experiential differences between people means what one person eats might not be best for another.  I am sharing my diet to provide general guidelines rather than specific meal plans.

What Not to Eat
A wide range of foods can satisfy our nutritional needs.  I am more stringent about staying away from the foods most likely to erode my health.  The big three that I avoid are high fructose corn syrup, trans saturated fats and processed foods.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is both the most ubiquitous yet easily avoidable of the three.  As a sugar substitute, one can find HFCS in foods such as bread, cereal, ice cream and soda.  People turn to diet soda as an alternative, but artificial sweeteners have problems as well, plus diet soda does not effectively curb calories.  Our bodies tell us to stop eating for one of two reasons:  we have been fully nourished or our bellies are busting.  Since diet soda possesses zero nutrients, losing calories means either drinking large quantities or eating nutrient packed food apart from the soda, which one should be doing anyways.

You can find justification for anything on the internet.  Lately I see articles “debunking” the bad rep high fructose corn syrup gets as studies reveal little caloric difference from other sugars.  That is not the point.  Unlike other sweeteners, HFCS contains the inflammatory C-Reactive Protein (CRP).  You avoid HFCS not to curb obesity, but conditions such as arthritis.

Inflammation also provides cause to stay away from processed and trans saturated foods.  For my situation I am most concerned about impacts on brain health and arthritis, but there is a wide variety of illnesses caused by inflammation.  Though my routine diet avoids these foods, they are not as easily avoided when eating out, which gets to my next guideline.

When to Eat
The 5:2, 14:10 and 16:8 fasts have been popularly recommended for losing weight.  The 5:2 fast refers to days out of the week, as in eat for five days and fast for two.  I do a variation of eating my routine diet for five days, then treating myself to something different once a week, which might spill into two days with leftovers.  Some dietitians recommend letting loose once a week as a way of being better motivated to stick to an overall diet.  That strategy always sounded good to me!

The 14:10 and 16:8 refer to fasting for either 14 or 16 straight hours overnight.  You might try this for losing weight, but for the sake of brain health alone I usually fast for 12 hours overnight, with no food for three hours before bedtime.  This allows enough time for the body to flush toxins from the glucose metabolism that fuels the brain.  After burning through sugars our energy thirsty brains shift to ketones during the night.

For this reason I concentrate the sugars in my diet mainly at breakfast.  I might eat birthday cake during the time of the celebration, but will partition out all sugary leftovers for my morning meals to kickstart the brain I starved from its preferred source of energy overnight.  In contrast, I consume most proteins and fats during my last meal of the day.  Carbohydrate metabolism releases water, fats and proteins bind with water, meaning I urinate less during the night with this strategy.

What to Eat
Once again, I am not here to tell you what to eat, but as we get older we have an increased need for antioxidants relative to other nutrients.  Antioxidants curb inflammation.  Chia seeds are the main antioxidant I use, which adds crunch without affecting the taste of any food.  Chia seeds also absorb moisture, which helps fix the texture of any food prep that came out too runny.

For my routine diet I prepare big batches of what I call brain health soup and smoothie.  The soup contains our daily nutrients from vegetables and chicken, along with savory spices good for brain health, namely black pepper, turmeric and ginger.  I also sprinkle walnuts on top of the soup, similar to how people add croutons.  The smoothie contains daily nutrients from fruits, including the powerful antioxidant provided by blueberries, along with cinnamon, kefir and flaxseed.  Kefir is a probiotic that maintains a healthy gut.

A Special Note on Coffee
Caffeine enhances brain performance, but too much increases blood pressure and erodes brain health.  After experimenting with different approaches, I have settled on drinking coffee four mornings a week, on the days when I have the most coverage and might accomplish the most things.  The other three days I allow for a mini detox.

Those are the main guidelines for my elder diet.  Next up: elder rest.