4 Tips to Make Grocery Shopping Easier for Your Senior

Grocery shopping and preparing meals are tasks that some people absolutely love and that other people find really difficult or frustrating. If your elderly family member falls in the latter category, it is definitely time to find solutions like senior home care providers to help her out.

Talk with Her Doctor about Dietary Changes

Before you and your senior get too deep in the weeds about groceries and meal planning, take a little time to evaluate what she’s eating now and whether that’s the right plan for her. Your senior’s doctor can help her to determine if she needs to make any changes to her existing diet so that she can be as healthy as she can be. Even small changes can yield some big results for her in a short period of time.

Make a List of Healthy Meals She Likes

What does your senior already eat that’s fairly healthy? It’s helpful to start making a list of those meals. Some of them you may be able to tweak with small details from the information you get from her doctor. If the list is looking pretty sparse, it might be time to do some exploring of different food sites or cookbooks that fit in with the dietary recommendations from your senior’s doctor. Remember to lean heavily on fruits and vegetables, leaner proteins, and whole grains as much as possible.

Work with Her to Figure Out a Plan for Meals

Does your senior love to cook? Does she find grocery shopping to be difficult or invigorating? Understanding how she feels about all of the various parts involved in helping her to eat as healthfully as possible makes a difference in your overall approach. If she finds cooking exhausting, for instance, then she might not stick with any plan that involves preparing meals from whole foods. That might mean that she falls back on convenience foods or take-out, which can be a less healthy option for her. You need to know what is realistic.

Get Some Extra Help with All of This

The great news is that your senior doesn’t have to do this all on her own and you don’t have to spend all of your time in the grocery store, either. Hiring senior home care services to help with things like grocery shopping and meal preparation means that your elderly family member doesn’t have to do the things she doesn’t enjoy or that are difficult for her to do. Home care providers can help with those parts of the puzzle, and your elderly family member benefits by being able to eat healthy foods on a regular basis.

Your ultimate goal is of course for your senior to have what she needs when she needs it. That’s a lot easier to do with the right help, especially if there are other challenges eating up your senior’s time and energy, too. Senior home care providers can help with a lot of those difficulties, making your senior’s life much easier in the process.