Edited by Doctor Dora Intagliata
In clinical practice it has been found that most of those who wish to lose weight are lost along the way (between one diet and another), due to a lack of information from the dietician. 
To this we must also add that most of the subjects who set foot in a private dietician study, especially those pushed by the family doctor to go to the dietician due to the complexity of the pathologies currently presented, do so with a particular emotional state: on the one hand the desire to reach the ideal weight (the "desired" weight) creates in the subject the desire and anxiety in implementing diet therapy as soon as possible, on the other hand there is also fear and fear of any negative result of the diet. It is for these reasons that the dietician must follow his clients step by step and not stop only at the prescription of a personalized diet, but go further, enter the intimate psychology of the patient in front of him in order to obtain better results than those hoped for. . Furthermore, there are not a few patients who, for fear of the response of their dietician, do not ask essential and simple questions about the doubts that haunt them. Due to the complexity of all these topics, it would be useful to provide patients who are starting a dietetic path with a series of useful advice able to satisfy their curiosity and underline the importance of the figure of the dietician doctor and his work. Below is a short list of productive advice to give to your clients during a diet therapy of any kind.
Learn to be your own psychologist
- During a weight loss diet it is good to learn to evaluate any situation that could put your self-control at risk (for example, go shopping on an empty stomach!). In order not to make such mistakes, it is good to plan useful behavioral strategies in time in the various spurious situations. The most practical strategy is to keep a food diary in which to write down both what you eat, both the emotions felt, and the situations and places where you ate. From an accurate analysis of one's writings, one generally discovers what situations are at risk and how to manage them correctly. In doing so, the diet will be a tool to get in touch with one's deepest "I", as well as a useful tool for well-being!
Don't expect too much of yourself by turning dieting into an obsession.
- Very often novice patients, who start a diet under the professional figure of the dietician, come across the meticulousness of following to the letter everything that is written on the pages given by their dietician; this meticulousness creates in the patient feelings of guilt at the slightest "sgarro". These are patients who meticulously count the calories of the meals to be ingested, the centimeters lost, the slightest movement of the scale hand. All these obsessive attentions soon lead to the boredom of the diet which obviously will be closed in the drawer after a few weeks. In these cases it is good to remind your clients that the DIET is a new lifestyle, where going overboard is normal! On the other hand, the effectiveness of a diet is not compromised by small occasional deficiencies. So what to do after a cheat? Surely we must not give rise to the feelings of guilt that come out; it is useful to continue as if nothing had happened and above all not to try to compensate for the mistake by fasting or reducing the caloric intake of the following day.
Talk to your dietician about your food tastes
- The first visit to the dietician is of extraordinary importance in terms of achieving final positive results. The dietician, in fact, will draw up the personalized diet based on personal tastes, avoiding drastic reductions and excessive deprivation. In fact, removing everything you like from a diet is counterproductive to the final result of the diet itself. If the diet is too rigid, our body and soul completely lose control of the situation, increasing compensatory behaviors ("binges"). Therefore it is useful to discuss your food tastes with your dietician, so that the dietician himself is able to include your favorite foods in the diet. This will serve as an additional lesson for clients who will learn to consume their beloved foods as well, but in moderation!
Learn to listen to your body
- Our body sends hundreds of signals every day to let us know what it needs at that moment. For example, the desire to eat salty or sweet foods is frequent, according to the seasons. Being able to pick up and understand these signals is the bet that each person should make with himself in order to start a balanced and healthy lifestyle.
From this short list of tips, it can be seen that the professional figure of the dietician is not limited only to the prescription of diet therapy, but goes further! The dietician must be the healthy carrier of the food principles that allow WELL-BEING. The dietician has the arduous task of teaching his clients to self-manage in front of different situations. As I have already mentioned before, the diet must not be a simple swag of written pages full of dietary tricks and useful advice, but it must be the starting point of a new lifestyle that any subject should approach in order to LIVE BETTER.
The diet therefore provides the opportunity to test your body and mind and to learn a new dimension of EAT.
