If you have ever come to a dietitian expecting to walk out with a strict diet and a list of foods to avoid, you might be surprised by how we work. While we can write meal plans, they are realistic ones, built around your life rather than a set of rules you are expected to follow perfectly.
Diets are everywhere. There is always a new one promising to fix your energy, your gut, your blood glucose or your sleep, usually within a set number of weeks. Some are built on decent science. Most are built on rules, and rules are the part that tends to fall over first.
Most popular diets also work by cutting something out, and it is usually a whole food group. No carbohydrates, no dairy, no grains, nothing after a certain time of day. The trouble is that different foods do different jobs. Wholegrains, legumes, fruit and vegetables feed the bacteria in your gut, and that variety is part of what keeps your gut healthy. Dairy carries calcium, meat and legumes carry iron and zinc, and so on down the list. Remove an entire group and you are not just losing a food, you are losing the nutrients that came with it, often without realising until something else starts to slip.
Here is the other problem with a strict diet. It is written for an average person who does not exist. It does not know that you work night shift, that your kids will not touch anything green, that you are cooking for a household of five on one budget, or that the food you grew up with matters to you. The moment life gets in the way the plan breaks, and people are left feeling like they failed at something, when really the plan was never built for them in the first place.
There is a quieter cost too. When food gets sorted into good and bad, eating stops being something you enjoy and starts being something you get marked on.
So what do we do instead?
We start with what is already happening. We look at your habits, any medical conditions you are managing, how much cooking you are realistically able to do, and the foods you actually like. From there we work on practical solutions rather than rules. That might be meal ideas you can rotate without thinking, a plan for the days you have no energy, a shopping list that makes the week simpler, or small changes to timing and portions. Often it is about adding something in rather than taking anything away.
The aim is always a long term solution, not a short burst of effort you cannot keep up. Something that will still be working in six months.
If you have a medical condition, an allergy, a swallowing difficulty or a nutrient deficiency, there are things you genuinely need, and we will be clear about them. The difference is that the advice is built around you, rather than around a plan someone else wrote for someone else.
If you would like to talk to a dietitian who will work with your life rather than against it, get in touch.
Written by Courtney Kluge, APD
