I’ve written about nutrition and nutritionists before. I’d even say it’s one of my favorite topics. In previous articles I’ve asked whether nutrition is broken, what the future of nutrition holds, why you need a nutritionist, how to choose a good one, and nutritionists that aren’t.
Few people know what a nutritionist actually does, in other words, how they can help you. Apart from creating meal plans, diets, or nutrition programs. Everyone knows that a nutritionist does that. That’s a real shame, both for the client and for the profession, because a nutritionist can offer much more. Here I won’t be writing about how a nutritionist can help businesses, but will focus on one-on-one collaboration with individual clients.
Almost no one knows what the process of working with a nutritionist looks like. So it’s not surprising that one of the most common questions I get is: “How does working with a nutritionist actually work?” That’s why I’m writing this article, to present the ways a nutritionist can help you achieve your dietary goals and solve nutrition-related problems, and what you can expect from them. In short: I’m answering the question, What a nutritionist does?
Why do you need a nutritionist?
Visits to a nutritionist are anecdotal. People don’t know they exist, they think they don’t need one, or they make up reasons not to see one. Regardless of your weight or your belief in the quality of your own diet, I firmly believe that everyone would benefit from talking to a nutritionist, or at least having their diet quality analyzed. And no, you don’t need to be afraid. A nutritionist isn’t a bogeyman who’s going to take away all your enjoyment of food by forcing you to eat salad and boiled chicken. In fact, their help will connect pleasure with health and remove the feeling of guilt.
A good nutritionist will save you time, money, and nerves. Time, because they’ll spare you from getting lost in a jungle of information. Money, because they’ll keep you from wasting it on unnecessary supplements and make you healthier in the process. Nerves, because they’ll shield you from a flood of excessive and contradictory advice. A more comprehensive answer to the question from the subtitle read in this article.
Who needs a nutritionist?
When you have a toothache, you go to the dentist. When you need legal advice, you go to a lawyer. When you have problems with your diet, you go to… a personal trainer.
I’m not joking. Most people actually do that, even though they shouldn’t.
A nutritionist is the professional who helps you solve your dietary problems, whether they’re related to excess weight, health issues, muscle mass, sports performance, or even stress around eating. A nutritionist will help you organize your diet and improve its quality, thereby reducing your risk of chronic disease. They’ll also help you develop a healthy relationship with food, making you more relaxed around eating.
Nutritionists can help people with health problems. Let me remind you, food is not medicine, so don’t expect diet alone to cure your illness, and don’t believe charlatans who promise you it will. However, the better your diet, the better prepared your body will be to fight disease. Many conditions and illnesses require specific dietary interventions, which are best implemented with professional guidance.
Nutritionists help both recreational and professional athletes raise their performance to the next level, to reduce the risk of injury, and to extend their careers. The diet quality of even top-level athletes is often surprisingly poor. Diet won’t turn an average athlete into an Olympic champion, but it can turn an Olympic champion into an average athlete.
How does a nutritionist work?
Collaboration with a nutritionist can take various forms. It can be limited to a single consultation or develop into a long-term partnership. Everything in between is also possible. There is no one ideal way, just as there is no single dietary problem or human personality type.
In any case, the beginning of cooperation involves an introduction to the problem. It is essential to determine the client’s goals, problems, expectations, and motivation. It is equally important to correct those goals and expectations if they are unrealistic. Otherwise, we are setting the client up for failure. Unrealistic expectations are a consequence of exposure to low-quality nutrition information and inflation of sensational transformation stories.
After assessing the situation, a good nutritionist decides whether they can help the client. Sometimes, the best thing a nutritionist can do is to refer the client to another colleague or even a non-nutrition expert (often a psychologist). This is not an easy decision because it involves giving up income. However, it is morally right, and your nerves and emotions will be grateful in the long run.
If the nutritionist determines that they can help, the next step is to create an action plan and offer a collaboration proposal.
Below I will present the tools (note I don’t use the word “services”) that a nutritionist uses in working with clients. Their use depends on the nutritionist’s assessment.
Diet quality analysis
Quantity and quality of diet are two separate concepts. Quantity, or caloric value of the diet (its relation to consumption), is responsible for your body weight. Quality is much less obvious and is responsible for your health. Unhealthy eating habits will catch up with you in 20 or 30 years. Healthy eating is an investment in the future. I will emphasize countless times: healthy body weight and absence of health problems now are not guarantees of a healthy diet.
“Is my diet healthy?” is a question everyone should periodically ask themselves. Just like you periodically have a health checkup with your doctor (or at least you should), you should also periodically assess the quality of your diet with a nutritionist. Everyone should perform a dietary status assessment periodically.
Many people live in the belief that their diet is healthy when it is far from it. Unlike the quantity of diet, diet quality cannot be simply measured on a scale. Also, if we don’t know the definition of a healthy diet, we won’t know what to aim for. Having information about nutrition is not a guarantee of healthy eating. Caring about your diet is not a guarantee of healthy eating. Healthy body weight or even ideal physical appearance is not a guarantee of healthy eating.
Therefore, the first step to improving your health is to check if your diet is truly high-quality. This does not necessarily require consulting a nutritionist; it is enough to complete a diet quality questionnaire.
Consultation
If your diet analysis shows that your diet is inadequate or there is some other dietary problem you want to solve, the next step is to contact a nutritionist. Many nutritionists, including myself, offer an initial consultation free of charge, so I warmly recommend you take advantage of it.
During the consultation, the nutritionist will get to know your eating habits through conversation and identify your problems. They will help you set realistic goals and expectations. Depending on the complexity of the problem, they will provide advice for solving it or assist you in the process.
Nutrition Program (Meal Plan)
While every nutritionist prepares a meal plan or nutrition program in some form, this is only a part of the collaboration. Nutritional care you receive through working with a nutritionist is not a one-time service but an educational process through which you adopt optimal eating habits and develop the ability to independently create a proper diet. The meal plan may be central, but it is not sufficient on its own. Without regular follow-up, it is unlikely to lead to lasting changes in eating habits or dietary independence. The goal of the meal plan is not to create a list you’ll blindly follow. It should be a guide for learning and practicing proper nutrition.
A meal plan can come in two basic forms. It can be strict, where foods, their quantities, and meal times are precisely defined. Or it can be flexible, where food groups and quantities are set, and the client independently chooses specific foods according to agreed guidelines. Of course, there are many variants between these two extremes. The nutritionist recommends the approach that best suits the client and is most likely to bring results and long-term habit changes.
Before preparing the meal plan, initial consultations are held to collect data on health status, lifestyle habits, diet quality and quantity, relationship to food, illnesses, allergies, intolerances, preferences, etc. Some nutritionists do this via questionnaires, but I personally prefer phone or in-person conversations.
It is important to listen to indirect answers, which can suggest unspoken problems. The goal is to get to know the client well to accurately identify their problem and create a personalized solution.
It is essential that the meal plan is realistic and doable, not requiring unnecessary effort from the client. It is important to note that even strict plans allow a non negligible degree of flexibility. Both for exceptional occasions like birthdays, gatherings, or outings, and for temporary unavailability of certain foods. The client must understand which parts of the plan are more flexible and which less. If your nutritionist forbids any flexibility, look for another one.
Monitoring Progress
Without monitoring and support, few meal plans produce lasting results. Without feedback on progress, it’s easy to get lost in the process. Without the educational aspect, the client remains without knowledge to maintain healthy nutrition. Regardless of your main goal, the nutritionist’s duty is to instill healthy habits and attitudes towards food. It’s in your interest to let them help you. This may sound obvious, but my experience says otherwise.
Monitoring progress includes not only comparing current status with planned goals and adjusting the plan if necessary. Good follow-up involves more than that.It also involves assessing emotional state, subjective impressions, motivation level, and then adjusting the process accordingly. Feelings of satiety, energy, taste satisfaction, burden, adherence, and overall satisfaction are as important to track as physical measures.
The goal of working with a nutritionist is not just to help you reach a short-term goal. It is to give you the knowledge and tools to maintain that result. To make the nutritionist unnecessary after the cooperation ends. Allow the nutritionist to offer you more than just reaching your optimal weight.
Getting to know the client never ends in any part of the collaboration. Maintaining healthy and regular communication is essential for maximum success. From the nutritionists’ side it’s important to listen to indirect answers, which can suggest the existence of an unspoken issues.
A term sometimes used instead of follow-up, mostly in recreational bodybuilding, is guidance through transformation. Besides sounding awful (is it just me?), it implies two undesirable things. First, that the client is led by the hand, which is counterproductive. For optimal and lasting results, the client must become independent. Second, that only a complete transformation is an acceptable result and anything else is failure. This “all-or-nothing” approach will leave you miserable. I’m not saying you shouldn’t strive for the best, but any progress is still progress, and you should congratulate yourself on it.
Food Diary
A food diary is one of the tools used to monitor clients. It serves to gather information about their diet and to raise client awareness of eating habits. It involves recording or photographing all meals consumed over a certain time period. The nutritionist can then assess their quality and identify room for improvement.
Although it can help a lot in some cases, it should never be a permanent solution. Keeping a diary creates effort and often stress for the client, increasing time spent thinking about food. That time should ideally be minimized. Remember: we don’t live to eat; we eat to live.
Shopping List
The shopping list is a somewhat minor but helpful part of collaboration, easing adherence to your plan. And making life easier. This is not strictly a nutritionist’s core expertise, but a shopping list is part of a good nutrition program.
How many times have you found yourself in a supermarket or market buying whatever catches your eye instead of what you really need? If you’re a normal human being, too many times. The solution is planned shopping, creating a shopping list and sticking to it.
Choosing a Good Nutritionist
Although each of the above tools can be offered as a separate nutrition service, I prefer and recommend comprehensive cooperation including consultations, individualized meal plan creation, regular progress monitoring via anthropometric measures, subjective impressions, food diary, blood tests, photos, and even creating a shopping list. I believe this is the best way to help a client achieve their goals. However, it’s crucial to emphasize that collaboration protocols, like every part of them, are not set in stone but adapted to the individual’s needs. A nutritionist can offer the best service as a consultant. So, when you work on your diet, think about cooperating with a nutritionist, not just ordering a specific nutritional service.
In any cooperation, in any process, in anything in life, it is important to have healthy, realistic expectations. When it comes to expectations from a nutritionist, it’s worth stressing that the nutritionist will not eat for you. Surprised? The nutritionist’s role is advisory; the responsibility for success is mostly yours. The nutritionist should not hold your hand like a small child. They should help you become nutritionally independent. Sometimes they need to let you fall and scrape your knee, then help you get up, put on a bandage, and send you back to the playground.