Alpena Senior Citizens Center Offering 2 New Programs to Encourage Healthy Eating Habits
The Alpena Senior Citizens Center is about to start offering two new free back–to–back six-week educational programs from Michigan State University Cooperative Extension.
Starting April 4th Nutrition Instructor, Amy Page will be speaking to seniors in a class called ‘Eat Smart, Live Strong.’
“It’s a one week class, it’s an hour long each week, and what it is, is a class that teaches seniors how to adopt new healthy lifestyle behaviors, and how to increase their vegetable consummation on a daily basis, how to incorporate simple physical activities that they can do at home. When they participate in the class, we do simple chair exercises, nothing too hard, again showing them things that they can do at home,” Page said.
March is National Nutrition Month; Page said both programs would help seniors with chronic illnesses.
“As a society we have an obesity epidemic. We have a lot of heart disease, and a lot of high cholesterol issues…diabetes…those are all major conditions that people do face on a daily basis and even though most of the seniors who will be participating in these classes may already have these conditions, tips that I can give to them will help manage those chronic health conditions,” she explained.
Eating healthy plays a major role in everyone’s daily life.
“Just developing a health lifestyle in general will help the mindset, it will help how your sleep patterns how you feel, such as depression, and how your emotions are, and things like that. So it’s important for an overall well–being,” she added.
The second program, ‘Eat Healthy, Be Active’ begins June 6th and will allow seniors to receive $10 for every class to go out and buy fruits and veggies at farmer markets and local grocery stores.
Each program will be held at Alpena Public Safety Building at 501 West Chisholm Street. If you would like to attend one or both classes, contact the Senior Citizens Center at 989–356–3585. You can also contact Amy Page at 989–354–9870.
