Food & Diet Changes I've Made to Be Healthier at 50 Than at 45

✅ Intentionality with more protein and a framework to eating that's freed me from the 6pm 'what's for dinner' dilemma! I'm leaner, stronger, healthier, happier & am living my best life! 💪🏻😊

Nothing like a brush with death last October at age 49 from a highly acute, incredibly painful, and very freak health scare that resulted in emergency abdominal surgery to really scare me straight. I wrote about it here.

After spending the rest of the fall and holiday season recovering physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and putting aside the questions of how and why did this happen to me, I embarked on 2026 with all kinds of New Years “resolutions”, although I didn’t call them that and at the time, they weren’t well crystalized. I just knew I wanted to become the healthiest version of myself that I could be.

Coupled with the fact that my 50th birthday was just in June (5 weeks ago), it was the milestone birthday motivation that I needed to really dig down deep and that’s what I’ve spent 2026 doing.

The proof is in the pudding. I’ve dropped the midlife weight I didn’t love about myself and didn’t want to ‘just accept’ was part of midlife. And every single metric from my blood pressure to my sleep quality (read the Oura ring section if you’re into sleep talk) to my hormone levels are better than they were a year ago.

The irony is that I wasn’t living an unhealthy lifestyle before but I knew I could do better and be better. I have always eaten a balanced diet and have been a lifelong avid runner, walker, yogi, and into fitness and health.

But somewhere in the mix of perimenopause, getting married in my late 40s and getting comfortable, sending my only daughter off to college last fall, not having any work-life balance, I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I wanted to change things about myself, my diet, my fitness and that’s what I did.

With my daughter, my BFF, in Paris earlier in July. Post coming about our trip!

Left: Opening day at the race track on Friday; Right gym picture is me ON the day my 50th birthday last month.

I’m sharing what has worked for me. A one-size approach never fits with diet and exercise so your situation, circumstances, and body will be different than me and mine.

However, I am sharing my perspective as a 50 year old woman rather than a 20something influencer fit girl. It’s easy to be fit in your 20s but it requires precision, dedication, discipline, and intentionality in your 40s, 50s, and beyond and I wanted to share a more ‘mature’ perspective because I feel it’s sorely lacking.

Side note: I’ve never looked or felt better than in the last 6 months when I’ve given up my hard core running and cardio and swapped it out for heavy lifting in the gym 3 times per week and walking 15k+ steps a day (not running) in addition to my dietary changes.

Abs are built in the kitchen with protein and in the gym with progressive overload resistance training. There's no secret and no shortcuts. Get your diet under control, get lean, and get in the gym and lift heavy..

Take what you want and delete what doesn’t work for you. This is what has worked for me. Don’t be mean, don’t make excuses, don’t shoot the messenger. Thank you in advance.

Thank you for reading, being here, and what I love about this platform is that after 17 years of creating 3000 free recipes online and sharing them freely, I can actually write and share about other things that are tangential to recipes and share about my journey because I’m proud of it.

Eat more protein.

I’ve written about this before but quite simply put, eating between 0.7 and 1.0 grams of protein per pound (not kilo), of body weight is non-negotiable. For me, my bare minimum target is 100g daily but I feel better when I’m in the 110-130g range.

In your 20s and 30s, maybe even into your 40s, I believe the human body can compensate and get away with less (or more). A less than ideal diet, less sleep, less structure to meals, less intentional workouts, less skincare routine, more alcohol, more late nights, more vices, and you just kind of get by.

When I think back to one of my first apartment and what I “had on hand”, it’s comical and actually anxiety-provoking now. A tub of peanut butter and a box of Triscuits in my “pantry” and some grapes and Gatorade in my fridge and I didn’t bat an eye. I didn’t keep alcohol on hand because that would have involved planning for one, or more to the point actually buying it myself, but I was broke. However, aging is the great equalizer and you can’t pull the same stunts in any aspect of life - including with protein.

Protein helps me feel satisfied not snacky, it’s essential to preserve or build muscle, it helps me sleep better at night and function at a higher level during my waking hours in both my work and my workouts. My 30 High Protein Recipes ebook is clutch for easy meals with at least 30 grams protein per serving.

Just me grilling chicken and veggies which is my other job. 😉

Eat More Volume (aka Fiber)

In order to stay full, keep your digestion moving, feel more satisfied, and actually have to chew your food so you don’t just inhale a 500 calorie plate of pasta in 5 minutes, build meals that have lots of veggies or leafy greens in them.

There are so many Instagram reels out there comparing what 100 calories of veggies looks like vs. 100 calories of everything else. Madelaine Rascan is the queen of volume eating and inspires me. Watch, think, learn, change.

Volume baby. Fiber, crunch, freshness. You any veggies you want, prepared any way - raw, roasted, grilled, from a bag in the freezer, just eat them.

Planning meals.

In order to consume 100g+ protein daily, one must consume protein at every meal. You can’t subsist on carbs alone until 5pm and then slam 100g protein for dinner. It doesn’t work that way, shy of if you’re an NFL athlete with regard to the 100g protein at a sitting.

You have to plan our your meals and have a mental map of where you’re going for each meal and they all should include 30+ grams of protein or you’re not going to be successful.

I’ve got a roundup post with these 15 High Protein + High Fiber Recipes with a Mexican Flair.

And there’s this 15 recipe High Protein + High Fiber Recipes with Beans roundup.

I figured out a framework for how to eat.

When I think about what I’m going to eat any particular meal, I always start with my protein source and then build everything around that. I cover this more below.

Protein first, then all the vegetables I want and crave. Sometimes fruit for breakfast or snacks, especially when it’s warm.

I avoid processed carbs including bread, pasta, rice. They’re heavy, they don’t serve my body (they may serve yours, only you know); I’m gluten sensitive, they mess with my digestion, and if I am going to eat processed carbs, I’ll just go for cake, not bread. So that plan makes my meals really simple. It’s not that I never eat them, but I don’t plan them into my meals.

For that carby feeling, roasted sweet potatoes or kabocha squash are my favorites because they’re nutrient dense.

Not Eating What My Spouse or Child is Eating Just Because They’re Eating It

Your body, nutritional needs, goals, and everything else is unique to you. Not sure why we ever thought that we should all be eating the same. We probably shouldn’t.

Eating as much and the same types of food (tacos, carbs, repeat) that my spouse enjoys took me into a 20 pound weight surplus that crept in slowly over the last 6 years. It works for him, it was not working for me.

He’s a grown man and can make his own food if he doesn’t want to eat what I’m eating. He can go out, order takeout, go on a water fast, enter a pizza eating contest, I really don’t care. It took 6 years for me to come to this place that I don’t have to be responsible for him, he’ll be fine. Same for my 19 year old daughter, although she’s on my plan overall and is easy to cook for when she’s home from college.

But I’m not going to eat what my husband eats, just because he’s eating it, because it doesn’t serve my body, my needs, or my goals properly. It actually over-serves me on fat, calories, and carbs; and underserves me on protein, fiber and real nourishment that I need. As women, we need to let go of this mentality that we’re the same and eating the same is perfectly fine. Or I did at least because in my case it wasn’t working.

Are you cooking separate meals? Hell no you’re not. He and your kids can eat what you eat! Your grown spouse can make his own food, or if you really want to be “nice” about it, you can ‘adapt’ some of the things you’re going making to still suit what he likes without going too out of your way. Watch Madalaine’s video for inspiration.

Eating the same (sometimes boring) meals over and over.

Eliminate the guesswork, eliminate the ‘what am I going to make for dinner tonight’ question because I already know. I’ve got a half dozen recipes I make but again, when the bulk of my plate is grilled chicken and veggies, there isn’t tons of need for all these “recipes”. The irony of being a food blogger and having created 3000+ original recipes and now I am here in my health and life journey isn’t lost on me.

When I listen to interviews, view reels, or read articles written by those who are very fit, very health conscious, and have physiques that I want to emulate, and have mental toughness, and an approach to life that creates success and that’s contagious in the best possible way, one common theme is eating things on repeat.

If this isn’t for you because you want “variety”, that’s great. You do you.

I’ve done that whole it’s Wednesday night at 6pm and I’m starving, nothing prepped, no idea what I’m making because I thought I wanted “more variety this week” and didn’t plan properly.

But the truth is I’m grumpy, my spouse and/or child are even grumpier, and the temptation to eat out (expensive, unhealthy, and I’ll never hit my protein goal anyway) creeps in. ←— I’d rather have meals on repeat than that.

I’m not saying that I am eating the exact same thing day in, day out. However, there’s a pattern to my recipes for my meals.

The rest of this post is for paid subscribers only. I cover my protein source go-to’s, my framework for creating recipes, favorite recipes I eat on repeat, how I measure and track my food exactly, and lots of behind-the-scenes photos and videos.