If the holidays with your loved one looked like you running from event to event, eating too many cookies, and indulging in delicious but heavy meals much too often, January can be a great time to get back on track with healthy meals and reconnecting during calmer moments together. That’s why every January is National Sunday Suppers Month, advocating for families and loved ones to plan for the connection and great food that happens when they gather together at least once a week for a meal together. Your loved own could have their in-home care provider help with the event.
The Health Benefits of Eating Together
- Whether it’s a daily practice or a weekly practice, eating together has some great health benefits for your senior (and almost everyone else who attends).
- If your senior struggles to eat due to a lack of appetite or taste, eating with others can help to encourage her to eat more. Sitting at the table and having pleasant conversations can make it easier for her to slowly clear off her plate even if she doesn’t enjoy her food as much as she used to.
- Eating with others also improves mental health. Having conversations with others, and talking about feelings or concerns, can help your loved one to reduce her stress and anxiety levels.
- Eating with others boosts a sense of self-esteem. While eating alone can create feelings of isolation or loneliness, having someone join your loved one during a meal reminds her that she still has an important place in the world and is cherished by others.
- Eating with others can reduce the risk of certain diseases. Those feelings of well-being from community meals can reduce blood pressure levels and other health issues that sometimes accompany emotional stress like loneliness or stress.
Tips for Preparing for Sunday Suppers
If your loved one would like to start the new year off right with regular Sunday Suppers, here are a few tips to help it be a successful and rewarding New Year’s Resolution.
Take turns. Once you know who is going to attend Sunday Suppers, divvy them up so no one has to host and create them all. Or if someone like your loved one is homebound, divvy up who brings each course each week, so one person doesn’t have to take on all the work and expense of creating the meal.
During the loved one’s week, you can ask her in-home care provider to help her prepare parts of the meal before the family gathers. An in-home care provider can first help her shop and store what she needs (as well as help her choose a budget-friendly meal). Her in-home care provider can also help her prep by chopping vegetables or browning meat.
Make it something that’ll have leftovers. Your loved one will benefit from leftovers she can enjoy all week if the serving size is plenty big.
Make it casual or make it fancy, whatever pleases your guests the most. There’s no wrong way.
Make sure clean-up is taken care of. If the meal is at your aging loved one’s home, make sure someone stays around to help with cleaning up or a senior home care provider is scheduled to come in and clean up the next day.
Enjoy each other and the food!
If you or an aging loved one is considering In-Home Care Services in Bridgewater, NJ, please contact the caring staff at Expert Home Care today at (732) 937-5320.
Providing exceptional live-in home care in New Jersey, including Monroe Township, Edison, New Brunswick, Red Bank, Lakewood, Princeton, Morristown, Flemington, Stockton, Bridgewater, Hillsborough, Montclair, Livingston, Summit, and surrounding communities.
We have been providing Home Health Care to New Jersey families since 1985, and have grown to become one of the largest licensed providers of Live-In Home Care in the upper New Jersey area. Our many years of New Jersey home care experience has produced a company that over 8,000 clients have come to rely on confidently, for help.
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