They say you are what you eat. The foods we consume shape our health, wellness and longevity. A direct correlation exists between nutritional needs as we age and metabolic health. In essence, our age-specific nutritional balance significantly influences our overall wellness. Putting the Mid Life Athlete Framework together I was a bit overawed at the prospect of conducting a sort of meta analysis around nutrition because it all seemed so complicated with lots of different strategies being suggested as the best thing to do. Once I had dived in I realised that generally there is a lot of consensus but irresponsible headlines make it seem there is no such agreement.
For those of us in mid life, I think there are two things we should focus on. First, we need to adopt a diet that focuses on our metabolic health. Metabolic health is a term used to describe our general wellness, and includes things like our insulin sensitivity, fat levels, immune system etc. Second, we need to ensure it’s sustainable. Like most mid life athletes you’ll have one eye on the long term plan of wellness and health in old age which means you’ll need to keep this up for another 30 years or so. The good news is that these nutritional principles also work for us in the short term.
Latest research suggests when it comes to nutrition one of the big considerations is gut health. It’s almost impossible to talk about nutrition for the mid life athlete without also talking about the gut microbiome.
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