Nutrition Counselling - A step closer to a healthy lifestyle

In this modernized generation, the majority of the population is streaming towards the trend of unhealthy eating habits which is engendering an increase in health conditions. Decline in clean eating habits and poor nutritional content of food is leading to an exponential percentage rise in heart diseases and chronic diseases. Many people have self realized the need to endure a healthy  lifestyle with a better quality of life and a tremendous life expectancy. Consuming a flourishing well balanced diet with appropriate nutritional content is the first step towards an improved lifestyle altogether. A Nutritionist or a Nutrition Counsellor is a health expert who will qualitatively aid you towards  the imperative disciplining of your daily food habits and thereby supporting you achieve your therapeutic goal, fitness goal thereby contributing to your overall physical and mental well being. 

Nutrition counselling is not limited to weight management. It spreads out its horizons to the field of medicine, working alongside doctors to prioritize and manage the nutritional welfare of the patients. The first step towards nutritional counselling is nutritional education. The nutritionist attempts to educate their client with generic information regarding the foundations of health and our body's fundamental requirement for nutrition.

According to Yuki Sugishima from Shigakkan University, our body's functioning works akin to the mechanical functioning of a car. To sustain the life of a car, all its components such as the engine, wiring, wheels, brakes should work in unanimity. Similarly with respect to human life, it is essential for all functional organs to work in harmony. Energy is required by all organs to perform day to day activities. This required energy is provided by the means of food. Food consists of a variety of Nutrients - these are essential elements for  human beings to execute the everyday bodily functions. In totality, there are 5 major nutrients namely - Carbohydrates, Fats, Proteins, Vitamins and Minerals. 

Therefore, the goal of a Nutrition Counsellor is to give rise to step-by-step nutritional changes in our diet. This can only be achieved by working as a team which involves a 2-way interaction between the client and  the Counsellor. They both work together in order to overcome the upcoming challenges. The counsellor begins with an entire background check with respect to the medical health of the client as well as the eating habits of the client and his/her surroundings. Once the counsellor is familiar with the background of the client, it is now time to identify the loopholes in the lifestyle of the client that needs to be overcome in order to begin their life altering journey towards a healthy lifestyle. 

So many aspects have to be straightened out, a variety of realistic, short term goals need to be set, the client will require support from his/her surroundings in order to succeed, and several follow ups are mandatory to record the progress of the client. Truthfulness and communication are the key factors behind fruitful nutritional counselling. The clients are expected to be completely transparent with his/her progress in order to move closer to their respective goal. A minor setback in the planned objective can throw away weeks of efforts and regularity. Ambiguous, deceptive following of the plan will be unfulfilling and worthless. The client may not receive the expected results. Therefore, discipline can also be counted as an important factor. 

It has also been discovered by recent studies that Nutrition counselling greatly influences the psychological health of an individual as well as fostering a constructive mental well being. This enables the individual to live a long healthy life with maximised levels of productivity!