Senior Living LIVE! Meal Planning and Eating Healthy on a Budget

Video Transcription

Hello, everybody, and welcome into Senior Living Live. My name is Melissa. As always, we thank you so much for being with us. Well, we all know a healthy diet is the key to healthy aging, but doing so without breaking the bank these days can be tough.


Today, we are, talking to Ryan King, vice president of culinary services at the Arbor Company. He is here to give you some ideas on how you could do just that, make some smart, nutritious, and affordable choices every single day for you and your family. So get a pen and paper out, and let's take some notes. Ryan will, of course, be available as all of our guests are to answer all of your, food and nutrition questions at the end of his presentation.


To be a part of the conversation, all you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of your screen where it says q and a, click on that button, type out your questions at any time during the webinar, and I will be happy to read those to Ryan at the end of his presentation.


Ryan, as always, it is so wonderful to see you again, a longtime face at the Arbor company. The webinar is all yours.


Great. Thanks, Melissa. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, we're gonna be covering, as Melissa said, kind of the topic of eating healthy on a budget and the best way to do that via, meal prepping. So the the three major topics that we're gonna be discussing, during this presentation are, nutritional changes as we age.


It's super important. You know, the the body as it ages requires different things, and, just kind of knowing what those differences are from when you're twenty versus when you're sixty is important because, as we'll see in the presentation, there are some, you know, major changes just on what your body needs on a day in and day out basis. The next up is going to be, meal prepping and kind of the best ways of going about that. I'll share some personal experiences and kind of, honestly, how I go about doing it in my day to day life. And the last topic is going to be shopping healthy while on a budget. And as with the meal prepping piece, I'll kinda talk about some areas of opportunity that I utilize myself, to ensure that, you know, me and my family stay on a on a budget. Because if were left up to me, we'd probably have no money left at the end of, end of the month.


Alright. So we'll jump right in here to the nutritional needs of seniors. So first area is, your metabolism. So as we age, our body's metabolism naturally slows down, which basically just means that it's requiring less calories on a daily basis to fuel the body.


So, obviously, less calories means that we don't need to eat as much. We don't need to consume as many calories as we did when we were younger, which is important to know because if you continue to eat the same level of calories as we age and the body's not using as many of them, that's where we start seeing, you know, some obesity or people becoming overweight if they're not active enough to kinda offset those additional calories.


Next up is muscle mass. So muscle mass declines as we age.


And as, that decreases, so does the abilities, the body's ability to burn calories efficiently. So muscle is actually, like, one of the major drivers. Muscle mass is one of the major drivers of calorie burn. So if you're losing your muscle mass just naturally, your body is going to, you know, consume less calories on a day in and day out basis.


And then physical activity, typically decreases as we age.


Not physically able to do the things that we were able to do when we're younger. Not to say that's always always the case. There's plenty of outliers and stuff like that. My dad runs triathlons. He's in his mid to upper sixties, and he's not even one of the older people that compete in these competitions. So it's it's not a hard and hard and fast rule of thumb, but, generally, as we age, we typically decrease our physical activity. And this reduction in physical activity requires us to adjust to the diet to prevent weight gain and muscle loss.


So our stomach actually produces fewer natural acids as we age, which can impact the nutrient absorption, especially for vitamin b twelve, calcium, and iron.


It also has a plays a part in slower detection. So the intestinal motility decreases, but this can be offset a little bit by additional fiber and hydration, which will help smooth the smooth out the digestion of foods that we consume.


And then there's a decreased gut bacteria diversity, which can affect digestion and immunity. It's always a great idea to consume some more probiotic rich foods, which help improve the the gut microbiome microbiome.


The easiest one of these to think of is, you know, yogurt's a great source of probiotics.


Super easy to eat. You know, it doesn't matter, if you have any restrictions when it comes to swallowing or anything along those lines. Yoga's pretty much safe for everybody unless you're lactose intolerant.


Our calcium absorption declines as we age, which is, why you're there's an increased susceptibility to os osteoporosis and bone fractures, and then joint inflammation increases. So it's important that, you know, as part of your diet, we have, eat foods that are rich in anti anti inflammatories. Think, fish, nuts, leafy greens, berries, that will help with, joint mobility.


Deficiencies in b vitamins and omega three fatty acids may contribute to cognitive decline as we age. So as as always, you know, that's why you always see about fish oil, eating more, you know, fatty fish and healthy fats like, you know, salmon and avocado, can help with increasing the or decreasing the likelihood of cognitive issues as we age. And we'll talk a little bit later about some of the diets that are specifically designed to to help prevent, you know, cognitive decline as we age.


Poor diet can exacerbate emotional health issues, which can lead to depression and mood changes.


Blood sugar control, declines a little bit as we age as well, which means that we need to be a little bit stricter when it comes to managing our carbohydrates to help prevent diabetes and any other related cognitive concerns.


So next up here, we're gonna be talking about some of the challenges and then the solutions about, aging and what we can do about it. So the first area we'll talk about here is changes in appetite.


As we age, it's natural that we have a diminished sense of taste and smell, which can just naturally make it so that it's less enjoyable for us to eat as it was when we were, you know, younger. If you can't taste and smell what you're eating, it's just not gonna be as enjoyable experience as it once was.


There's also a loss of appetite. It just, basically, that just means that there's a reduction in hunger cues, which, increases the risk of malnutrition. You're just not as likely to eat if you're not, quote, unquote, feeling hungry.


And then the next area is the, medication side effects. Every medication out there has some type of side effects, and some of these can actually alter the taste or, the taste perception of certain foods or actually suppress the appetite, which then impacts whether we're eating and what foods we are eating.


So here's some ways and tips on ways to improve the taste of food if this ever becomes an issue. I'm a huge proponent of spices in food, and I'm not talking that we need to add, like, chili peppers and make things spicy, but, you know, incorporating both fresh and dried herbs for spy and spices. Typically, those are some of the things that do not decrease as much from a a taste perspective with your taste buds.


Another area is, including acidic ingredients when cooking your food. So think, you know, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, vinegar, even the acid in wine. It, for lack of a better term, it helps brighten the flavors and bring it out, and it kind of awakens the taste buds so you're able to taste more of the food.


And counter counterintuitively, just because you add these acidic ingredients doesn't mean that the food's gonna, you know, taste super acidy or anything like that. When you when you do it correctly, it really should bring out the natural flavors in the food.


And last up is, mix up the textures of the food.


Soft, crunchy, and smooth textures work to stimulate the taste buds. Full transparency is one of those things that I'm baking too when I cook. I I I do like a lot of different textures in it. Even if it's something as simple if I make a pasta dish a lot of times, I'll just toast toast off some bread crumbs to sprinkle over the top to get a little bit of that crunch in there as well.


So another area that, needs some attention as we age is is high hydration, which we all know that hydration is super important to, not just your day to day life, but, I mean, it you know, having enough water intake in your body, you know, helps your entire body opt work optimally.


One of the issues that is, encountered with seniors is that there's a decreased their sensation, which obviously would then lead to less fluid intake in less fluid intake and potentially dehydration.


As we age, our kidney functions changes, so it reduces the efficiency in filtering waste, which may require the body to drink additional fluids to help flush all this out.


And just some tips here on ways to increase your fluid intake is, I actually have my wife do this one is, set timers as a reminder to drink. She doesn't drink enough water on a day to day basis, and I yelled over yelled at her about it all the time. So she's actually started setting a reminder on her phone every hour to, you know, take a drink of water to make sure that she's drinking enough water throughout the day.


It's always a good practice to drink out of clear container so that you can actually visually see how much you're drinking.


If you're drinking out of a big HydroMate or something like that, yeah, you can you can tell how much you're drinking by the feel of it, but there's nothing like the actual visual being like, oh, man. I only drank that much water so far today.


And then if this you know, in addition to this is incorporating hydrating foods into your your diet. So think, like, fruits and vegetables. They both have a very, high water content naturally, so you'll get a little extra hydration out of eating those. And then you can also incorporate other foods, think like soups and stews that are a little bit more, broth or liquid based just as another way to add an additional layer of hydration to your day to day life.


So next up here, we're gonna talk about the immune function and nutritional support. So as we age, just our naturally, our immune system starts to weaken.


Also have an increased inflammation risk.


This can actually be increased by eating processed foods. So we'll talk about kind of the whole foods and, you know, trying to avoid those ultra prosperous foods a little bit later on.


But just kind of a a simple rule of thumb is, you know, the less ingredients, the better when it comes to food when you're buying it at the grocery store.


So the ways to improve your immune function and inflammation, first up would be the, increased consumption of vitamin c, zinc, and protein support immune resilience.


Eating whole food helps promote cellular health, and then you wanna be looking to eat anti antioxidant rich foods, which help protect against free radicals, which are highly reactive, unstable oxygen molecules that kinda flow through the body and additional cell damage.


So there are so, obviously, we talked about that the required calories needed decreases as we age, but there are certain nutrients that we should be focusing on to kinda offset some of those issues that we just discussed here. First one is protein. So you wanna be looking to eat about between, a half and point seven grams of protein per pound of body weight. So, essentially, easy math on this one is if if you're a two hundred pound individual, you should be looking to be eating, you know, at least a hundred grams of protein per day.


And that seems like a lot, but, you know, as long as you're incorporating protein into all three meals and any kind of snacks that you have throughout the day, it's it's really not that hard of a number to, to hit. And then there's always you know, if you if you find yourself having trouble getting to that number just based off of eating foods on its own, there's such a wide variety of protein supplements out there, you know, whether it be powders or different drinks and stuff like that that can give you a little added boost of protein. And most of them aren't too terribly high in in calories, so you don't have to worry about, you know, kinda pushing your calorie limit over where it should be.


The next one up is, calcium and vitamin D.


You wanna look to increase both of these to improve bone health and help prevent osteoporosis.


Wanna get more B vitamins, especially vitamins b six, b twelve, and folate.


All these vitamins are crucial for brain function and energy metabolism.


Next up is potassium and magnesium.


These ones are important for heart health and blood pressure regulation. And the last one on here is omega three fatty acids. They help reduce inflammation, and they also have the added benefit of supporting cognitive functions.


Next, we're gonna transition into kind of the nutrition's role in disease prevention, or you might have heard it referred to as kind of, like, food as medicine. I know that's a big, big trend going on. It's kind of buzzy, terminology, but it there's definitely truth behind behind that. I think all of us would much rather control our health via what we're eating than, you know, be put on a, you know, a vast quantity of, prescription medications that we gotta take on a daily basis.


So we'll start with heart disease prevention. It's important to obviously focus on a heart heart healthy diet diet. So in this case, we wanna be focusing on lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats.


We're gonna look to reduce our sodium intake.


Reducing sodium helps to manage and regulate the blood pressure, so puts a little less strain on the actual heart and makes it easier to pump the blood. And then, easy way of doing this is minimize the use of additional salt when you're cooking.


And what's probably more important, obviously, it's easier to control what we're controlling ourselves. We're cooking everything at home. We can control the amount of salt that is going into what we're cooking.


But you wanna make sure if you're buying anything at the grocery store, whether it's snacks, you know, a prepared meal, anything like that, take a look at the ingredients and and look at the sodium content on it.


You wanna just make sure that we're we're not consuming things that are super high and in in sodium.


Next up, we got fiber rich foods.


These can help with cholesterol reduction.


A good thing good area to start with is focus on eating oats, beans, or, other legumes, apples and berries, broccoli and sweet potato. These foods actually help to bind cholesterol in the digestive tract, which prevents the absorption of the cholesterol into the bloodstream. So if you're somebody that, you know, might have had, you know, issues with high cholesterol in the past, it's it wouldn't be a bad idea to start, you know, trying to add a little bit more of those foods into your diet on a daily basis.


Next up, we have diabetes management and prevention.


So the importance of controlling blood sugar with complex carbohydrates and fiber.


The reason is that that both complex carbs and fiber, they're slower digesting, which helps prevent any spikes in blood sugar.


Great sources of this are whole green whole grains, legumes, sweet potato, broccoli, leafy greens, peppers, and then any fruit with, edible skin, so peaches, apples, things of that like.


And then you wanna make sure you're choosing healthy sources of carbohydrates, which means you wanna avoid excess sugar and refined carbohydrates. So, you know, any sugary drinks, soda, juice, sweetened tea, limit processed foods because they contain added sugars. And then when it comes to the the carbohydrates, you always wanna kinda choose whole grain versions of whatever the the carbohydrate is, whether that's, you know, brown rice, wheat pasta, multigrain bread instead of just doing white rice, you know, standard regular white pasta or white bread if you're making a sandwich or toast.


Another area that's important to note is the role of portion control in preventing spikes in blood glucose levels. We wanna ensure that we're, you know, consuming the correct portions of carbohydrates so that it prevents, a quick surge of blood in blood glucose levels.


And then we wanna ensure that if we're eating the right amount, basically meaning, like, we don't wanna eat too many of these in one sitting, it slows down the actual absorption of the sugar in your blood, which also helps prevent any of those glucose level spikes that we're looking to prevent.


So next one up here is going to be the discussion surrounding cognitive health and Alzheimer's prevention.


So we wanna be looking for foods that support brain function. I know we already touched on the omega three rich fish. Also, there's obviously, you're starting to see there's a common theme here when it comes to, you know, the types of food. So whole grains, nuts, or seeds, they're kind of great for all the topics that we just discussed here.


Same when it comes to leafy greens and berries. And then, actually, this should make a lot of people, you know, happy because I if you're anything like me, you can't start your day without coffee. But coffee is, is another one that actually helps support brain function as well as dark chocolate.


So you can kind of if you're looking to need a sweet treat throughout the day, dark chocolate is always a great area to to start with.


But, specifically, dark chocolate. Don't go to the semisweet or the the full sweet chocolate. Just dark chocolate. You'll get that little bit of chocolate taste and, hopefully, keep it moving from there. You also wanna make sure that we're avoiding processed foods. So any of these sugary drinks and, artificial sweeteners, any refined carbohydrates and trans fats, You wanna keep an eye on snacks and ready ready made meals. Not saying that they're all bad, but more often than not, a lot of the snacks and the ready made meals are chock full of added sugars and salts and all the things that we're looking to try and avoid here.


We also wanna, you know, minimize the alcohol consumption and definitely try to avoid those high sodium foods.


Next area to focus on is hydration, which we already kinda discussed, and the healthy fats. Staying hydrated is crucial for cognitive function and ensures sufficient blood flow, which delivers that oxygen and nutrients to the brain.


And then we wanna make sure that we're we're getting enough of the healthy fats. So as we talked about kinda like those omega three rich fish, they're all those fatty fish. So any of those oily fish, olive oil, and avocado, those are three great very readily available options, to make sure that we're getting enough healthy fats into our diet.


So as I promised, there's the next few slides are gonna cover some different different diets that are designed specifically for the topics that we just discussed. So the first one we're gonna talk about is the the DASH diet. So what is the DASH diet? It's basically a balanced eating plan designed to lower blood pressure in individuals.


It really focuses on nutrient rich foods while limiting sodium and unhealthy fats.


The core principles are there's the there's emphasis on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and low fat dairy.


It limits the amount of red meat that you'd consume, as well as processed foods and added sugars, encourages an increase in potassium, magnesium, and calcium intake for heart health. And the health benefits of this diet is for blood pressure, reduction, and heart disease prevention. It also helps with weight management and helps regulate blood sugar and insulin resistance, and it is linked to lower risk of certain types of cancer.


Next one up is the Mediterranean diet, which I'm sure everybody's kind of heard of.


It's basically it's based off of the foods that they naturally eat in the Mediterranean because it's what's available to them, and it focuses mostly on plant based healthy fats and lean proteins. The core principles of this one also emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, uses extra virgin olive oil as the primary fat source for cooking and finishing, encourages fish and seafood consumption while limiting red meat, moderate dairy intake primarily through yogurt and cheeses, and limits processed foods, added sugars, and refined grains.


And health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are heart disease and cognitive health and Alzheimer's prevention, supports healthy weight management and helps regulate blood sugar and insulin resistance, and it's also linked to a lower risk of certain types of cancers as well.


If you're kinda looking for a catch all for all these, the mind diet might be a great one to look for. It's, basically, it's a combination of both the Mediterranean and the DASH diet. It actually stands for Mediterranean DASH intervention for neurodegenerative delay.


Was developed to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline, focuses on brain healthy food while limiting unhealthy fats and processed foods.


The core principles of the MIND diet is that it emphasizes leafy greens, berries, whole grains, nuts, and olive oil, Encourses the consumption of fish and poultry while limiting red meats and fried foods.


Reduces the intake of butter, cheese, and added sweets.


The health benefits of it are cognitive health and Alzheimer's prevention, heart disease and stroke prevention, helps regulate blood sugar and reduce insulin resistance, and it's linked to a lower risk of chronic diseases and improved mental clarity.


So that now leads us into that's great. We got some ideas now. We have a few diets that are out there that are specifically designed to help prevent some conditions that are are common in people that that are, aging. So next up, we're gonna talk about the importance of meal planning. And, meal planning is super critical for for anything. You know? Nobody wants to go to the grocery store without a plan, not knowing what we're gonna we're gonna go for the what we're gonna eat for the week.


So as we jump in here, I'll probably throw in some tidbits about my own personal life.


Full transparency. I got a I got a nine month at home. I travel all the time. So I'm doing meal planning every weekend to make sure that my wife has stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that she can, you know, focus on, you know, spending time with our with our baby and doesn't have to really worry about cooking for herself. She's just gonna take whatever I, you know, made up, put it in the oven, and have a meal once the once the baby's down for the night.


Alright. So the importance of meal planning is that it supports health and nutrition.


If you do this appropriately, it ensures a well balanced diet with essential nutrients, helps manage portion control for healthy eating, and reduces reliance on processed and unhealthy foods.


It can actually help you save time and reduce stress.


It eliminates the daily decisions on what to eat, simplifies grocery shopping with a clear list of ingredients, and it streamlines the cooking process by prepping in ingredients in advance to make the if if you're doing actual cooking, it makes, makes the process a lot more seamless and quicker.


It also can help support weight management and dietary goals, helps maintain portion control and calorie balance, aligns meals with your specific dietary needs, and prevents excess snacking and eating out because you're gonna have stuff that's already readily available for you.


It encourages variety and better eating habits.


It helps incorporate diverse nutrient rich foods into your daily meals. It helps encourage mindful eating rather than last minute unhealthy choices. I think we've all made those before. I'm guilty of it on a weekly basis when I get home late at night.


Don't feel like eating something. It's it's usually something I usually end up eating something I shouldn't eat, and then it helps allow for creativity in recipes and meal combinations.


So the the first step in this whole process of, you know, becoming a quote, unquote meal planner is building out a weekly meal plan.


You wanna make sure that you're creating a flexible yet structured menu.


It should include a variety of protein, starch, and vegetable options that can be mixed and matched.


You wanna make sure that you're incorporating a variety of whole foods.


The predominant amount of ingredients that you're using should be natural foods and have high nutritional value. Ensure meals include fiber, vitamins, and hydration.


Wanna make sure that every meal includes a protein, a starch, a fruit, or a vegetable, which will contribute to a well rounded diet. You wanna make sure that you're planning for snacks and easy prep options as well.


You just wanna look for healthy alternatives to the the prepackaged snacks that are, you know, readily available in the grocery store.


So some strategies to to make this as seamless as possible is, you wanna make sure you cook in bulk and store meals efficiently.


It's a great practice to, you know, stay ahead. You can make soups, stews, casseroles, lasagnas. Those things all freeze really well and can go pretty you know, if you're making a lasagna and you make it in a casserole dish, freeze it. It pretty much can go from the freezer to the the oven, and, you know, in about an hour or so, you'll have dinner.


The soups, stews, and casserole, same concept. You know, freeze them up individually. We're in batches, and you can pull them out when they thaw. Just heat them up.


It's very, very efficient. I can tell you personally that at least at least three or four times a year, I I I I do a ton of soups, stews. I make a bunch of marinara sauce and things like that. I basically do an entire weekend where I do it, and I load my freezers up at the south, and then we're able to just kinda pull it out as as needed throughout throughout the next couple months.


You wanna make sure that you're always, like, pre chopping your fruits and vegetables. Wash and cut the fruit and vegetables for convenience of eating or for cooking. So, you know, if you get a pineapple at the store, you know, when you come home, take it, cut it up, put it in a a Tupperware container, put it in the refrigerator. That way, it's very easy to just grab and go at a later later date. I think that's one of the biggest things where people people are busy. They feel burned out.


They wanna make easy decisions. If your fridge is loaded with, you know, healthy options and you open it up, you're much more likely just like, oh, I got some pineapple in here. Grab that out and snack on that instead of, you know, going in your pantry and finding, you know, a Snickers bar or something like that.


You wanna make sure that you're always fabricating the proteins ahead of time. So so if you're buying chicken breast, chicken thighs, things of that nature, make sure that, like, when you get home, you break all that stuff down into your, you know, preprepared portions.


It'll it'll make the the cooking time a lot more effective because you're you already have everything basically prepped out, ready to go. In the the culinary world, we call this mise en place, which means you have everything in its place so that when you go to need to actually use all these ingredients, you're basically bing bang boom, and you're able to to do it really efficiently.


You wanna look to utilize your leftovers creatively too.


Some great ways of utilizing. If you got some extra protein, you got some extra vegetables laying around, soup is always a great thing to just kinda throw together, with your, you know, odds and ends that you have laying around. So, also, if you got any leftover chicken, beef, or anything like that, you can always, you know, top it with a salad for lunch, things of that nature, just to make sure that we're utilizing the leftovers as if as efficiently as possible.


And then I can't preach this one enough. Invest in good quality storage containers.


They help maintain the fresh freshness, and many sets are designed for easy stacking and organization.


It's if you're gonna be doing a lot of this, it's really important to have some quality ones. All the ones I use in my house are all glass. That way that, you know, they literally can go from the refrigerator to the oven if I want them. So they'll have snap down lids to ensure that everything stays fresh and you don't have to worry about things being oxidized. And the best part is they're all designed in sets that are made to be stacked so you can really organize your refrigerator so that it doesn't look like a a jumbled mess when you open up, open up the refrigerator door.


You wanna make sure that you're staying consistent and flexible when it comes to this. Like, nobody wants to live life completely structured, so you wanna make sure that you have some flexibility built into your your meal planning as well.


You wanna make sure that you adjust your meal plans based on availability and cravings.


I always prefer to be able to try to eat locally and seasonally as much as possible, depending on where you where you are. Like, by me, I have a lot of great farms and things like that, so I can get a lot of, my proteins from local farmers. I try and eat the stuff that's, that's in season as much as possible. So I I'm I'm based out of Philadelphia. So, like, right now, we're coming into tomato season. We got berries that are coming into season right now.


So we always right now, at this time of year, we always have a ton of that stuff on hand.


And if you're ever feeling, like, in the mood for anything specific, just build it into your meal plan. Like, oh, man. I really wanna have pasta this week. Like, I saw, you know, something in a magazine, and it looked really good. Even if it's not what was originally in your, quote, unquote, plan, you can always swap it out to you know, make sure that you're eating things that you actually wanna eat as well.


Embrace simple swaps when necessary.


Like we talked about, it's okay to make changes to the meal plan with similar items. I mean, right, wrong, or different. I think we've all been in a grocery store at times where you're looking for something. They might not have that. It's okay to make the swaps based off of what's available or what you're in the mood for.


Keep some emergency healthy meal options ready. I I've this already. Just keep your freezer stocked with options. You know, I I think soup's always a great one keep in there some easy stews and casseroles. That way if you're you know, you make it to the grocery store, you don't really feel like, quote, unquote, cooking or anything like that, you can always pull that kind of stuff out and have something readily available without having to resort to ordering takeout or ordering a micro purchasing a microwave dinner or something like that where we don't really know what's going into it. It's always better when we're trying to control these things to to do as much of the the cooking process ourselves so we know what's really going into, the meals that we're eating.


And you always wanna make sure that you allow room for the occasional treat to maintain balance. It's it's okay to have a cheat day or a cheat meal as long as it doesn't snowball and become a cheat week or just completely throw you off off your game long term. I think everybody's been in that that scenario before where you're like, oh, I'm doing great on this diet. I just wanna, you know, I just wanna have pizza or something like that. And that's completely okay as long as it doesn't turn into, you know, pizza every single day or something along those lines that really derails your your, your progress when it comes to really emphasizing the the healthy eating.


These are just some ideas that I use in my personal life. They might work for might work for you. You might need to tweak some things, but this is, some of the stuff that I do for myself and my wife on a on a weekly basis. Obviously, I'm not making all these these things every single week, but it's it's some variety of this, on a weekly basis. I usually make a frittata every single week.


It's easy. My wife can bring it to work for for lunch with, like, a side salad, or she'll eat it for dinner sometimes or eat it for breakfast. We also you know, it's easy to kinda mash up, and we feed it to the baby. So it's kind of a a catch all catch all for us. Hard boiled eggs are are super easy to make at home. You can do a million things with them. If you just need a simple snack of I mean, wanna make sure you're getting your protein, you can eat a hard boiled egg.


Put it in salads, make egg salad, things like that. Always make sure that we have excuse me. Always make sure that we have cut fruit and fresh berries in the house.


I'll make yogurt parfaits with some some granola and some of the berries. I usually build this stuff you see on the in the picture, like, mason jar. I'll build it in a mason jar and put the lid on it. That way, it's ready to go in the refrigerator. All my wife has to do is grab it out.


Same thing. I use the the same mason jars for if I make chia seed pudding or overnight oats.


Like I said, it's just very easy. None of them need to be heated up or anything like that. They can just kinda grab and go, and then we can throw it right into the dishwasher when we're done.


Also make, I have a sourdough starter at home, so you can ignore the the sourdough that if you don't have a sourdough starter or anything like that. But I do I make sourdough pancakes to make individual little pancakes, and we, keep them in the refrigerator. And if that's what, we're giving to the baby or my wife wants to eat, basically, just take some wrap them in some tinfoil, put them in the oven for a few minutes, get them warm, and they're good to go. Same thing with the waffles, same concept. We have, actually, couple have two waffle makers. One's a small individual one where you can make individual size waffles. The other one's your more traditional one where it has the the four quadrants.


So I'll make waffles in there depending on the week.


I don't make the smoothies ahead of time, but I have all the ingredients available. That way, just needs to get dropped into the the blender for an easy breakfast on the go. My wife will do that a lot of times. And then I usually always have, some types of, like, bread like, bags bread and bagels laying around in the house. I typically make those myself, but, obviously, you can get some great whole wheat varieties at the the grocery store, especially in the, like, the the store bakery section. I try to avoid getting them in the the, quote, unquote, red aisle in the middle of the store.


Some lunch ideas that we talked about. Obviously, I think you guys understand that I'm a big soup fan, so I always make sure that we have soup playing around.


I'll make some type of chicken and salad, egg salad, or tuna salad, for my wife for lunch. This week, I made she asked me for a smoked chicken chicken salad, so she's got that in the refrigerator at home right now. I always make sure that I have some grilled chicken already predone. She wants to throw it in a salad or heat it up with some starch and vegetables for dinner.


We'll cook off I usually do, like, a grain of the week.


This week, I cooked off farro. So she has that. If she wants to make a a green bowl, sometimes we'll just do some pasta salad with some protein and cheese and vegetables in it.


You can either eat that as, like, a side dish to go with something, or you can eat it as an actual meal.


Roasted chicken or turkey can gotta be sliced down for sandwiches. And then you don't have to make the hummus. There's plenty of, like, very good hummus varieties out there, but keep that in. I always keep that type of stuff in the refrigerator, and we keep some, like, flatbread and some cut up carrots, celery sticks, cucumbers, things like that for dipping.


Moving on to dinner, I'll do like I talked about already. Do a lot of grilled chicken, or I'll grab a pork shoulder or some type of, chuck roast or something like that, and I'll braise those items and shred it. We can individually portion them that way. I keep it very neutral. So depending on what what we're feeling for that week, we can add spices and different things like that to make it whatever cuisine we really wanted to.


Other good ideas are keeping ground beef, ground turkey, or chicken in the refrigerator. It's really quick, especially the turkey and the chicken ones. They're they're obviously they're healthy for you, and you can do anything that you do with ground beef, the same with ground turkey or ground chicken. And then I'll poach shrimp off a lot of times if, my wife wants some some seafood. It's just an easy, easy method of cooking, very easy to cool it down, and then she can use it for a bunch of different applications.


Another one that we do a lot is, stuffed peppers, lasagna, or, like, baked zitis.


In the colder months, we'll do a lot of stews, chilis, or casseroles. I said those are great for freezing.


I'll make, same thing. I'll make, like, salmon, chicken, or turkey burgers, keep out what we need for the week, and then we'll individually freeze the rest of them for a later date.


We'll do stir fries. So this one, we're talking about having all the ingredients ready. If you already have your your rice cooked off and your vegetables already sliced up, then it's usually just that ground turkey or chicken with the whatever Asian sauces you wanna do, your vegetables, throw it all together. It comes together in, you know, five, seven minutes really quickly.


So we always have flatbread around. I always have marinara and mozzarella in my house. So if you wanna build a pizza, it's very easy to to do, about ten minutes in the oven. And then, usually, I kinda rotate through the sides, but either do some roasted potatoes or roasted sweet potatoes. Like I said earlier, I do I'd like a a type one type of grain a week. So, whether that's, like, a farro, a quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, things like that that are just very easy for to to be reheated on the stovetop, having those vegetables cut precut and ready to go. And then we always make sure that we have, you know, a variety of salad greens and salad toppings lying around with, some type of vinaigrette or dressing to go with it.


So I just talked a lot about I'm gonna try and be cognizant of of our time here. Talked a lot about about the the method of meal planning and kind of ideas around what we can what we can make about it. But I'm sure a lot of people are like, oh, man. That sounds like it could get real expensive real fast. And, yes, it can if you are just kinda willy nilly about how you go to the grocery store. But we'll kinda discuss here some best practices about how to, you know, do this shopping on a budget while also keeping, you know, healthy options in there. Eating healthy does not always have to be expensive despite what you might, you know, hear in the news or anything like that.


So, obviously, the importance of, you know, making sure that we're eating healthy on a budget is, you know, eating healthy supports your long term wellness and energy.


The budget friendly shopping helps reduce food waste and financial stress for everybody, and you do not have to sacrifice nutrition for cost.


So some smart grocery shopping grocery shopping strategies.


We talked about this already, but it's super important to plan your meals out for the week to help prevent impulse buys.


Always make a grocery list and stick to it. Like, I'm super, super, super OCD about that. Like, basically, when I build it out, it's, like, by aisle, by section. That way, I can just run run through it.


If you ever go grocery shopping with me, I am in and out as fast as humanly possible. And a lot of that is just due to, like, being organized when I when I go into the store. I do not go into the grocery store without a list and a pen. I am one hundred percent that person, and I'm not ashamed to say it, but it it it really does work.


And then this is super crucial too is always before you go shopping, always check your refrigerator, your freezer, and your pantry just to make sure you're not buying duplicates. We've all done it before where we're, like, gone to the store, bought this, and then you go in your pantry and realize that you already had three three jars of pickles in there. So it's important, like, to always double check these things. So the way I do it is I build out my list, take a look at my list, and then I go in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. If there's something on there that I had written down but I already have, I just just cross it off before I even go to the store.


Some other smart grocery shopping strategies is, first up is you wanna shop the perimeter of the store. This is typically where you should be doing the majority of your shopping. If if your grocery store is designed like most of them are, that means if you shop the perimeter, you're gonna you're gonna go through the the produce section. You're gonna go through the the fresh, the fresh bakery, the seafood aisle, the meat aisle, and then you're gonna move your way down to you know, it's usually dairy. And then further along, you get, like, your cheeses, your yogurts, things of that nature.


Obviously, there's always gonna be things that you need to buy in the the middle of the store, but I always try and the majority of what you're purchasing should be purchased from those kinda perimeter sections of the grocery store. It's also great concept of buying bulk when able if you have lot of freezer space or anything like that or, like, a big brand membership, we have, Costco, BJ's, something like that, and you have the space, it's always more cost effective to, like, buy your proteins and stuff like that in bulk. I'll do that a lot. I'll portion everything out. I'll vacuum seal it, and I'll store it in the freezer.


You can always look to choose store brands when applicable.


A lot of times, the store brands actually partner with bigger companies. So the items are typically extremely similar and offer the same quality, but they cost far less than, you know, the the big name brands for lack of a better term. And then, you know, always make sure you're comparing prices.


Sometimes it's not always gonna be a like for a like. You wanna take a look at not just the raw cost, but, like, the cost per ounce or per pound to make sure that you're actually getting the best the best deal. A lot of times, the larger sizes are more cost of they might cost more money, but they're more cost effective, per unit than they would be, if you were to buy the smaller one.


Touched on this a little bit earlier, but you wanna make sure that we buy local and seasonal produce when available. It's gonna be a better quality, and you're gonna get it at a better price.


If there's something that you're looking for and it's not in season, it's not a bad idea to buy the canned or frozen fruits and vegetables. You just wanna make sure that if you're buying anything canned, canned would be my second one behind the frozen one just because it's very easy to pick something up that, you know, is packed in a soft brine or something along those lines. But if you are gonna buy anything that's canned, just make sure that it's, about the low sodium or no sugar added variety.


And then make sure you're choosing those whole foods over the process.


They have more nutrients, and they actually typically cost less money than the processed version.


So think of the the whole wheat, like, whole wheat breads, the brown rice, wild rice, farro, quinoa, all those more nutrient dense grains that are out there.


You wanna make sure you're never shopping on an empty stomach. This is a really easy way to to lead to impulse buys.


There's absolutely nothing wrong with using coupons and store membership cards to find additional savings. I think we all get the the circulars in our mail. You know, take a look at those types of things, especially if it's products that you typically buy. Always try and buy the ones that are, you know, on sale.


And I know a lot of grocery stores just have natural, you know, sale products as long as you're a member. If you're not a member at your go local grocery store, it typically doesn't cost any money to sign up, give you a little card, or you just input your your phone number when you're checking out. It really does add up when it comes to the amount of savings that you get by being a member. And then you can also look to try apps like Abada, Flip, or Fetch Rewards for additional offers and savings.


Basically, these are just, for lack of better term, they're, like, coupon apps that get scanned and you get some, money back or instant savings up front depending on the individual app.


So when we're looking to to make these choices, some affordable nutrient dense food choices, when it comes to vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, leafy leafy greens, green beans, cabbage, seasonal vegetables like asparagus, corn, eggplant, and squash, fruits, bananas, apples, oranges, pineapple, cantaloupe, honeydew, grapes, kiwi, avocados. And then, you know, when they're in season, always look for seasonal berries, peaches, pears, plums.


When it comes to your animal proteins, you wanna look for chicken legs or chicken thighs, ground beef, chicken, or turkey, pork tenderloin or pork chops. You can find some, no sodium added canned tuna, some Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and another easy source is milk.


When it comes to plant protein, you wanna look for a dry or canned beans, lentils, tofu, edamame, split peas, tempeh, chia, and sunflower seeds, or nuts.


And these are kind of your your best bets for pantry items, Brown or wild rices, some barley, farro, quinoa, oats, whole wheat pasta, rice noodles, nut butter, think like peanut, almond, cashew.


No sugar added. Like, organic's probably your best bet for any of those. And then, you know, if you're like me, you should always keep some canned tomatoes on hand. They're super versatile, and, you know, you're still getting a good bang for your buck. You can get a big thirty two ounce can of tomatoes typically for, like, a dollar, a dollar twenty five. So and that's that's a wrap for my presentation here from you guys.


I am very curious and interested and looking forward to answering any questions that you guys, may have put into the, the chat while I was talking there.


We do have a couple of questions.


First of yeah, that was, a great presentation.


It covered a lot. Thank you for that.


We have a couple questions. We'll get to those, now.


We have about ten minutes remaining to the top of the hour. Great time to get your questions in. I see Glendis has a couple of questions. We're so thankful for you being a part of the conversation today, so let's get to it. Glendis wants to know, what are some samples of healthy carbohydrates?


So the best ones from the healthy carbohydrates, if you're gonna choose between, like, potatoes and sweet potatoes, I would always towards, sweet potatoes.


I'm a big fan of, like, farro, barley, quinoa from a grain perspective. They're very, easily accessible in the grocery store and stuff like that. And if you're a fan of rice, I personally like wild rice.


Brown rice is good too. Just a a note on both of those. The cooking time on, on them is about double what it is for for white rice. So it's about you forty to forty five minutes versus, like, twenty minutes, but they're they're way more nutrient dense.


Perfect. How about green tea or oolong tea instead of coffee to support brain function?


Green tea, definitely. Full transparency. I mean, I know black tea is good for it. Good for you too. And, you know, typically, you know, in the Asian culture, tea is very, prevalent, especially the oolong tea. I don't know, like, specifics on it, but I know that they they typically live longer lives than we do here in America. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna knock that one, but green tea definitely has a lot of health benefits and antioxidant potential.


So if you're not a coffee drinker, green tea is a great option.


Good. And another question. How do I fast without losing protein? And that is a really good question.


So are you I guess we're talking about, like, intermittent fasting or something along those lines. You would just need to kinda condense it down in that window. So if you're if you're, say, doing a sixteen eight where you're, you know, eight hours eating, sixteen hours not eating, definitely make sure that I always say, make sure you eat your protein first. So, like, when you're building out your meals, the first things that you should consume before you get full is that protein.


And then just make sure all your snacks are kind of, especially now as a brave new world, you can find so many, like, protein bars and stuff like that that are all organic. You can get twenty grams of protein eating something, you know, like a granola bar, basically. So make sure that you're getting, the protein in your snacks. And if you're still coming up a little bit short, there's, a lot of readily available protein powders are already, already mixed drinks.


Like, I always keep, the Fairlife.


They have a a protein shake. They have two varieties. One is a twenty six gram one, and then one is a forty two gram one. I actually have them on a monthly subscription that they they come once a month to my house, and I actually will use them and mix them with a, a protein coffee and get, like, fifty, sixty grams of protein in a in a twenty ounce shake.


That's quite a lot.


Yeah. But That's pretty good.


Yeah. So we talk about on the protein side of things where you can supplement with protein shakes, protein bars. There are other options there if you can't meet that, you know, around a hundred grams depending on your body weight. But for for most of us, it's probably gonna be a hundred plus.


So do you agree with the same sentiment on the maybe the vitamins end of things if you're maybe not getting enough in terms of vitamins and supplements through the food you're eating? How how or how or why should we be looking into that if you agree with that? And what are some good sources of getting those things into our bodies?


So from a vitamin perspective, like, obviously, you always wanna try and consume as much things as possible, like, naturally. So, like, for a lot of the vitamins and everything like that, it's, you know, the old adage, eat your fruit and veggies.


I would definitely start there.


By no means am I a doctor. Obviously, have the conversations with your doctor surrounding any of this type of stuff, but, like, a multivitamin is a good place to start. I mean, I take a multivitamin on a daily basis just to assist with some of that. But, you know, a full blood panel type thing with, like, and have your doctor review it is probably the best area because they'll be able to tell you specifically where you're probably lacking in that.


But if you're looking to get some added stuff in in a very easy fashion, I would say, you know, definitely eat your fruits and vegetables. That's that's predominantly where you're gonna get, most of those things. Or if you're worried about, like, calcium or some of those types of things, you know, a glass of milk in the morning, things things like that where you're not upending your your diet or or going too crazy. Because I'm not I'm not a fan of extremes either direction.


You know what I mean? I think everything needs to to have some semblance of balance and be, you know, repeatable.


Sure. And, Glynis, thank you. Fantastic presentation, and I I absolutely agree. One other thing I wanted to talk about, Ryan, and I I I in seeing this, not just in the grocery store, but in restaurants as well, you know, we talk about the price of things. You know, you go in and maybe take the same exact grocery grocery list you had five years ago into the exact same store, and you are paying almost twice as much for the same amount of food.


When it comes to proteins, especially meats, I'm tending to find that in a normal normal grocery stores that the quality is just not seemingly there. I can even go into maybe a higher end restaurant, order a steak, and it the quality just is not there, but you've already paid for it. So what can our viewers do on that end in terms of ensuring quality, for what they are paying nowadays, which, again, is more than it was five years ago?


So I'm trying to think of the best because it to your to your point, definitely, I would agree with you that just the overall quality has kind of decreased.


So, you know, I don't wanna be, like, you know, go to Whole Foods or or something like that. But, like, especially if you're buying your your your proteins and it's gonna be something that you're gonna be paying a premium for, I would recommend going to either I know they're they're not as as around as much as they used to be, but, like, the local the local type of butcher type places where you can actually go in and have a conversation with the people, they're a little bit more knowledgeable.


It's kinda hit or miss on your individual grocery stores about how knowledgeable the the people working in the actual butcher shop are about, you know, where did this come from, where where did that come from. But for me, you know, you don't wanna always be, like, looking at the grading on it, but, like, from a stake perspective, always make sure that, like, you're at least choosing something that's, like, at least rated choice. Ideally, you wanna go with, like, prime if you can find it or afford it, but make sure you start at least Choice. If you see Select, I would try and error on, just spend a little bit more because the quality difference between Select and Choice is it it is noticeable.


On the poultry side of things, I've recently found at least is that the, the organic side of things is a little bit more consistent on the quality than the regular run of the mill Purdue or whatever that you would find in the grocery store.


Yeah. And I I think I agree with you there. It's just it's hard. You know?


We'd all love to go to a farmer's market. Exactly. Some people may not live nearby one, and and that becomes problematic. So they're relying on their, you know, normal chain of grocery stores for all of these things.


It just may not be close enough. You know? Some of our seniors may not have the ability to go out further to, you know, these these other options that are available, just not maybe within the city directly where they happen to live. So thank you.


And so it's a brave new world now. So there are a lot of, companies out there that will do the fresh to frozen, and then they'll ship it to you. So, like, Wildfork or, like, Snake River Farms, they have really good quality stuff, and you can order from them, and it'll be shipped in a refrigerated package and arrive to the house still, like, frozen solid. So that's always a good option. I use it, I'll use it because, you know, some of the full transfer. Some of the stuff I get, you can't get at the grocery store, so I gotta I gotta source it from somewhere.


But it's a great product, and, everything that I've had has always been good. And, you know, I think people give frozen things, especially, like, frozen fish, kinda as a bad rap because it's like, oh, it's frozen. But when it's done right, it's frozen, like, immediately, like, on the boat or right after it was butchered. So it's actually preserving a lot of that, quality, and then you can just defrost it in your refrigerator and cook it, and it's you know, hasn't been sitting there long for lack of a better term.


Yeah. And and and I I agree with you there. So any, tips or ideas to to when they pick up that package to kinda look for so they know when it was frozen, that it was frozen, as you said, pretty much right there at the boat, and then kept as fresh as possible as opposed to maybe those who don't do it that way.


So my my rule of thumb, especially when it comes to the seafood, is I don't care what you see at, like, the seafood counter. Most of that stuff is already previously frozen, and they're just selling it as as as fresh. Because a lot unless you're living right on the coast, most of that stuff is being frozen on the on the boat because it's not like they go out for day trips for, like, fishing for these things. They're going out for days at a time. So they're taking it and putting it on ice and freezing it in these commercial things.


So I would say that if you're if you're choosing between a quote, unquote fresh product at a at the fish part the fish portion of the grocery store versus the frozen one, you're probably gonna get more bang for your buck buying the frozen one. And odds are it probably is coming out of a very similar bag, and they're letting it thaw before it goes in the display case.


Good to know. Yeah.


You know, all the little secrets from somebody who really pays attention, which is why you are here today.


Yeah. And if it ever smell if you if if it smells fishy, quote, unquote, I just I would I'd find a different grocery store. Good quality fish shouldn't smell like anything other than the ocean.


Yeah. And if if anybody out there enjoys sushi and has ever had really good sushi, you can't smell it. Right? So does not have a smell. So, again, really great tips, and we thank all of you for being here. Obviously, Glendis and all of your questions.


Fantastic. It it shows you're paying attention, and we love that for you and all of our viewers.


Any final thoughts or or walk away tips that you have before we close things up here, Ryan?


Just, I mean, for me, it's you know, start thinking about that food as medicine component. It's never too late. It's never too early, to make even small changes could pay dividends down the down the road. So, you know, making the simple swaps and it's like anything else.


Like, don't you don't have to jump in head first. You know? Maybe it's alright. Instead of choosing potatoes this week, I'm gonna choose the sweet potatoes.


Maybe it's instead of going with red meat, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with a chicken or a turkey or something along those lines. Same as, like, instead of getting the normal pasta that I or the normal pasta or the normal rice that I get, I'm gonna get the whole wheat variety or the brown rice. Just this simple like for like swaps and kind of build on that, that would be my recommendation.


K. Fantastic.


We've had quite a few webinars with you, and I know that we'll have plenty more down the road as well. You are, of course, our go to food guy, and we, as always, appreciate your expertise on all things we can do daily to maximize healthy options within our budget.


Thank you so much for being here, and we will, of course, see you soon.


Awesome, Melissa. I appreciate it.


Yeah. Thanks. And then the last question Glendis has, we're gonna answer that here. For those of you who found this webinar informative, you will receive a link, to this video in the email you used to RSVP for today's webinar starting tomorrow.


You can feel free to send that link along to friends, family, anybody you think will, take interest in it. Also, just to let you know, we have videos just like this one and a few more from Ryan, on our website. It's w w w dot senior living live dot com. All of our videos there are free, and they are on demand twenty four seven when you want to watch.


Thanks again, everybody, for being a part of Senior Living Live and for taking the time to watch today. Have a great day, everybody.


Thanks, everyone.