Urban Myth - If you see a Dietitian they will give you a meal plan and all your nutrition worries will be forever solved.
Even though the idea of a Nutrition Professional telling you exactly what to eat sounds awesome, there are a tonne of reasons why in reality, it’s doesn’t work and wasn’t the right approach in the first place. Being told to do something doesn’t result in behaviour change….STOP SMOKING!
Prescriptive Meal Plans have a huge failure rate, and falling off the wagon is common place. Cue New Year Resolutions, like telling yourself you’re going to go the gym 4 times a week. Everything is going swimmingly until the 3rd week of January, and then the s**t hits the fan and you stop going; it’s too hard, you don’t have the time and, you’ve realised that doing the same workout is boring. STOP SMOKING!
Meal Plans are pretty much the same.
There’s a bit more (a lot more actually) to seeing a Dietitian or Registered Nutritionist than just getting a meal plan. We’re in the business of people, and helping improve health habits through behaviour change. You know yourself waaay better than we ever will, so even if you could tell us exactly what you like to eat and we use our ace knowledge and skills to construct said “Meal plan”, the chances of it actually helping are pretty tiny. HAVE YOU STOPPED SMOKING YET?
A MEAL PLAN IMPLIES THERE IS A PERFECT WAY TO EAT
Spoliert alter, there isn’t.
Here’s a few more thoughts of meal plans:
A single day of a Meal plan could contain over 10 different To-Do’s or suggestions, e.g. Eat at these times, Eat this for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and these snacks, Don’t add salt, Drink X litres of water….the list goes on. Even as nutrition professionals, we couldn’t do this ourselves, how could we expect other people to?! We need a manageable number of behaviour changes.
We’re not robots and our appetite changes day to day, especially with different kinds of training, and for females, around the menstrual cycle. We need flexibility.
Meal plans are designed solely for macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate and fat), cue chicken, rice and broccoli! We eat food, not macro’s. To be healthy and on top of training, we need variety.
Meal Plans become too hard to follow because they were too prescriptive in the first place and make us feel guilty if we “didn't follow the plan”, so we might as well just give up, right? We need to feel in control of our own dietary changes.
Whilst a daily meal plan may manage to hit all your macro’s, what about all the other stuff in food like fibre, calcium, omega 3, probiotics, prebiotics, selenium etc., We need to look at the big picture.
And what about fun stuff, like dessert or chocolate or a cool freshing beer?!
WHAT WE DO INSTEAD:
We personalise every piece of nutrition advice to work with you; your health, your lifestyle, your sport or training. Of course, we talk through food; ideas, recipes, portion sizes or whatever it is that you need assistance with and that is relevant to you. But, we’re also keen to talk through the why and how of food and factors that have, and are currently influencing your food habits. This stuff is gold!
We are nutrition educators
Not Nutrition Dictators
We work together with you
We want you to succeed and flourish without our help in the long term, rather than being dependent on us or reliant on having a meal plan to tell you what to eat and getting stuck when it doesn’t work or life changes.
Empowerment, not Entrapment.
If our approach sounds good to you, or if you’re keen to try a different way from the norm with making dietary changes, we’d love to hear from you.