By now, most people understand that eating a healthy diet is a great way to stay in good health. This is especially true for your elderly loved one. Eating healthfully and having an active lifestyle can support healthy aging. Hiring home care assistance providers can help with following through with these goals.
But, knowing something and following through on it can be two different things. Fatigue, expenses, and lack of preparation can throw all good intentions out the window as your loved one reaches for that frozen pizza for dinner for the third time this week.
One of the best ways to make sure your loved one eats right is to help her along by meal prepping. Meal prepping can come in a variety of options. It can mean putting together entire meals for a week and then storing them in the fridge or freezer so that they can be reheated when needed. It can also mean, preparing ingredients so that when it’s time to eat, assembly is a lot easier and less overwhelming. Sometimes it’s finding a good balance between the two.
Meal Prepping
Meal prepping can be a fairly large chore, but what’s nice about it is that once it’s done, you’re set for the week (or longer if you make a lot of meals). It usually involved purchasing bulk amounts of ingredients and then using them in various formats for different meals. Many people pick a day of the week for meal prep, such as Sunday afternoon, and sometimes turn it into a social event by inviting friends and family along to help out.
If you live near your loved one, you might find this a great way to spend some time together as you help her prepare healthy meals for the week. If you’re not around, hiring a home care assistance provider to come in once a week and help your parent prep her meals might be a great solution. Your home care assistance provider can also help with the shopping for ingredients beforehand as well.
What often helps make meal prep more affordable and get completed more efficiently is purchasing one main protein to use in all of the meals. You might purchase a bunch of chicken breasts, and then create 5-7 separate meals with those breasts that will be ready to pop in the oven when your loved one is hungry. Or perhaps there’s a specific vegetable in season you will want to incorporate into several meals, such as corn or carrots.
Ingredient Prepping
Depending on what your loved one likes to eat and how much she likes to prepare her own meals, you might just look at prepping ingredients. For the ingredients listed previously, instead of making meals out of the chicken breasts, you could clean, trim, and individually freeze them so they’re ready for your parent to throw into her meal. Or if your loved one has issues chopping vegetables, your home care assistance provider can chop up what she’ll need so it’s at her disposal when mealtime arrives.
Being prepared for when hunger strikes is one of the best ways to ensure healthy choices will be made.
If you or an aging loved one is considering Home Care Assistance Services in DuBois PA please contact the caring staff at Quality Health Services today. 814-251-9044
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