New senior

lindasahn7276

I’m relatively new to fitness pal. I welcome support and friendship. I am an active senior woman, in good physical shape who would like to improve my nutrition . I am looking for advice regarding how to determine nutrition needs.

AnnPT77

Hi, @lindasahn7276 ! I'm also an active senior woman (67), at a healthy weight after losing from obese to healthy weight about 7 years back with MFP.

This is a good start on nutritional basics with MFP:

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/819055-setting-your-calorie-and-macro-targets

You can get personalized USDA recommendations for nutritional needs here:

https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dri-calculator/

Personally, I believe USDA's protein recommendations for seniors are lower than optimal based on recent research and expert recommendations, especially for those of us who are active (and/or losing weight). This is one significant basis for that opinion:

https://www.jamda.com/article/S1525-8610(13)00326-5/fulltext

This evidence-based site is well-respected, and has a protein calculator, plus a guide that explains their recommendations:

https://examine.com/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

Personally, I find that I do OK if I target a daily protein minimum, a daily fats minimum, a calorie goal (try to get close most of the time), plus eat a boatload of varied, colorful fruits and veggies daily. (I'm 5'5", 128 pounds, shoot for daily 100g protein minimum, 50g fats minimum - with an emphasis on getting some monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats plus some Omega-3s daily not just saturated fat. I target 10 x 80 gram servings of varied fruits/veggies daily, with a minimum of 5 servings (but I usually reach 10+). With those veggies/fruits in the picture, I find that fiber and micronutrients pretty much fall into place without much explicit attention - I do spot check occasionally on micros I'm concerned about that MFP doesn't track.)

You'll want to be careful to pick MFP database entries that have accurate nutrient values, by checking against food labels or the USDA Food Central Database:

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/

Once you use an MFP database entry, it'll be in your recent/frequent foods, and come up first for you when you log, as long as you keep eating that food semi-regularly. Doing the checking seems effortful at first, but once you get the recent/frequent foods populated, it's much quicker. There is a learning curve in other ways, too. Don't get discouraged! These days, I spend way less than 10 minutes logging food most days, and to me that's a worthwhile investment. It's a matter of learning the tools (recipes, meals, etc.) and getting into a routine.

I'm sure this all seems like a lot, but you can chip away at it gradually: Humans are adaptive omnivores, after all. If we're not starting out with a diagnosed deficiency, we have some time to dial in better nutrition as we learn more, especially if starting - as I suspect you are - with a generally healthy diet.

I'd also point out that we needn't be exactly exact every meal or every day. On average, over a day or few, should be fine, especially if no wild swings in there. After all, full digestive transit can take up to 50+ hours, and our bodies are pretty smart - they have ways of juggling some nutrients in the body to keep them available over short time horizons, it's not just eat it now, and it's all over until the next meal. It is true, per the link above, that we seniors may do better spreading protein through the day (because we metabolize it less efficiently as we age), and - who knows - that may turn out to be true for some other nutrients of concern as we age, too. Still, I don't think obsessed perfectionism is healthy, psychologically if nothing else!

Best wishes, hope this may help!