The Healthy Food Diaries: What to Eat in Your 40's

As you get older your body starts to change. You may start to find that you lose your hair or it thins out a little. Your eyesight may start to fail and you may find that you are relying on your glasses a little more than you were before. A couple of glasses of wine, a drinking session that once was a regular thing for you, now needs more recovery time than serious surgery. There's a reason all this is happening to you. There's a reason you're starting to get aches and pains and your hangovers are starting to last a lot longer than they did before - you are getting older and it's your body's way of telling you that you need to slow things down a little.

Your twenties are for living life. Your thirties are for dedicating your life to husbands and kids, wives and careers, friends and family. Your forties are the years you should be seriously starting to take care of yourself unless you want to deal with a number of serious medical problems later on down the line. And if you want to live long enough to take care of your Grandkids too.

The number one killer for men up to the age of 44 is an accident. After the age of 44 however, the number one killer becomes heart disease, a disease that causes over 36,000 male deaths in the USA every year. If you neglect your health in the lead-up to your forties, you now have the perfect opportunity to turn things around. If you don't you could be facing a number of problems including weight gain, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and much more besides.

If you're female you can help fight back against the ageing process by increasing your consumption of antioxidants. This means that you will need to eat more foods that contain Vitamin A, C and E which includes almonds, red peppers and sweet potato. These foods and vitamins in particular can help to prevent against various cancers, many of the signs and symptoms of ageing, and heart disease too. You could look at taking a daily multivitamin supplement to help increase your vitamin and mineral intake but nothing quite beats the 'real deal' and just by eating a few more of the healthier foods listed above, you could be doing your body the world of good. These vitamins and minerals are meant to repair any damage to the cells and reduce the amount of inflammation that can happen - this is not something easily mimicked with a supplement.

Men should increase the amount of sweet potato that they eat in their forties too. By increasing the amount of cantaloupes and carrots they eat, they could also be helping to keep skin cancer risks to a minimum as well as a number of other medical problems. We all know this but eating fresh fruit and vegetables really is good for you especially when you are in your forties and this goes for both men and women. Studies have actually shown there is a link between increased veggies, fruits, legumes and whole grains in the diet and a reduction in the chances of suffering with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In fact vegetarians had a 24% reduction in the chances of getting cardiovascular disease alone.

To improve your muscle function as you age, and also to ensure that you don't lose muscle over the years, you should be increasing the amount of tuna you eat. This is one of the best forms of protein. Essentially protein is the building block of your body and by increasing the amount you eat, you are giving your body the chance to rejuvenate old/ dead cells, improve the function of its immune system, and lead to stronger, leaner, better condition muscles, skin, and bones too.

Another great tip for men right now is that you should definitely be eating more brazil nuts. Just by eating three brazil nuts every day, you could be keeping the chances of you getting prostate cancer as low as it can be. If you don't fancy nuts, Portobello and brown mushrooms can do the trick just as well.

One final tip and one that the men will prove find quite handy - you should be eating more brazil nuts! By having a handful of these delicious nuts every day could keep down your chances of suffering with prostate cancer and if you're not a big nut-fan, you can achieve the same effect by eating brown and Portobello mushrooms.

Taking care of yourself really does make sense when you start from the inside and work your way out. The easiest way to improve your health is to ensure that you have plenty of exercise but also that you are eating the right foods. In your forties, eating the right foods could mean the difference between suffering with a number of medical condition in your fifties and sixties ... Or not!

J Humphreys is a British born-and-bred freelance writer with over ten years experience.

Well-travelled, well-educated and with a whole load of 'life experience' at the young ol' age of 29, she is able to write in a variety of tones, in a variety of contexts, but specialises in friendly, conversational, dry-humour pieces that get to the point yet inject a bit of humour into the mix. She's not a fan of fluff, or 'filler' to get to her desired word count.