Category: Staying Healthy

An active lifestyle is important for people of any age, but as you head into your senior years it becomes a vital tool for battling and preventing age-related health issues. A regular program of moderate-intensity exercise can help control blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, and reduce your risk for heart attack and stroke. Working your muscles, tendons, bones, and joints helps to fight osteoporosis, lower your everyday risk for injury, and helps to manage back pain and arthritis. Exercise truly can add years to your life, and people who follow a regular exercise plan report feeling happier and experiencing less stress.

If you’re like most people, the biggest obstacle to their fitness goals is simply getting started. It can be difficult to know just where to begin, with what exercises, how to do them properly, for how long, etc. That’s where this guide from the National Institute on Aging comes in, entitled “Exercise and Physical Activity: Your Everyday Guide,” it is a comprehensive online book that covers all aspects of engaging in exercise as a senior. From evaluating your current ability levels to setting goals and finally to implementing an exercise plan and getting moving, this guide is a great resource–and its free!

Check out the guide here, and check back on the blog later for more fun, beneficial exercises.

Here is a great, healthy recipe to satisfy both your sweet and savory cravings this fall. From eatingwell.com, these maple roasted sweet potatoes look delicious! Try out the recipe for dinner or add it to your menu for Thanksgiving this year and lose the guilt–with only two grams of fat and stocked with nutrients like Vitamins A and C, they are a healthy treat!

Check out the full recipe here.

With issues like heart disease, cancer, and high blood pressure on the rise in recent years, being health-conscious is more important now than ever. For people over 50, these risk factors become greater and maintaining a healthy lifestyle becomes a key component to managing risk. What does being healthy really mean? It isn’t an easy question to answer because there are many approaches to a healthy lifestyle, but diet and exercise are always at the forefront. As you age, however, your needs in these areas evolve, and so should your approach.

Helpguide.org has a wonderful guide to nutrition and diet tips for the individual over 50 that lays out what you should be paying attention to and what benefits you can expect to gain. Click here to check out the full article and then be sure to check back on the blog tomorrow for a fun and healthy fall recipe!