Welcome to Healthy Aging Support and Positive Encouragement

I believe in aging in your own home and doing everything you can to help yourself stay there so long as you are able to manage and want to remain independent.
I supported my own Mother for as long as she was able to manage and felt very sad for her when she had to move into residential care when we were unable to cope and keep her safe and well. It was a very sad time.
Unfortunately the main reason she wasn't able to cope was because of her weight. She stopped cooking and ate mostly carbohydrates and dairy and was not able to get out of bed without assistance.
If only she was prepared to eat the meals, which were able to be delivered to her through our health system instead of refusing to-I think that would have been her lifesaver.
I have worked for a service called Age Concern and would visit the elderly in their own homes. I was often concerned about their refusal to have meals delivered.
My mother was certainly not the only one so I was able to accept her choices.
I know other aging people who are also getting larger as they get older. My father is but he still drives a Taxi at 84. He was never a Taxi driver-he was a self employed cut flower grower and orchard and fruit and vegetable shop owner. He is refusing to retire because he enjoys meeting people and staying active. He drives a long old Mercedes Benz and is well known in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Keeping physically and socially active are key to aging well. According to Age Concern and Positive Aging social isolation is one of the main causes of decline in health as we age.
My father wants to be like his father who had a heart attack sitting on a bar stool having a whisky just before he was about to board a plane to Dallas to judge an international chrysanthemum show at the age of 86. He was known as the King of Chrysanthemums-Joseph Hollows. He was an example of aging well in many ways. Into his eighties he still took big strides when he walked. When I commented on it he explained that he made himself take bigger steps because it kept his mobility better.
I lived with my grandad for a while and another way that he impressed me was by never saying anything bad about always managed to look at things calmly, logically and philosophically. He was a great believer in trying to follow the way of Christ.