These common practices create and perpetuate disordered eating. Now, I teach others how to avoid the very mistakes I have made.
I scanned the diet recall in front of me and felt the beginnings of panic rise in my chest. I had asked my client to describe everything she ate in the last 24 hours and it was a hot mess. She had no breakfast, she picked at things here and there throughout the day, then she overate at night. How was I going to help her lose weight?
Her eating pattern, I would later discover, is incredibly common. But 5 years of university study had taught me nothing of how to handle this situation. So I fell back to what I knew.
“Okay, so we can make some healthy food swaps. So, like, the milk in your coffee we could change to a lower calorie one. And then…”
I worked my way down the list of foods, making meaningless suggestions. I didn’t ask any follow up questions, I didn’t delve into the intention behind her food choices, I didn’t even ask why she wanted to lose weight…
When she left the consult room, I was relieved that it was over. I had bumbled my way through. But I had the uncomfortable gut instinct that I hadn’t helped her in any way. In fact, I got the icky feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had just made things worse…
10 years later, I approach my consults very differently. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my time. In that particular consult, I probably perpetuated the guilt and shame my client would have been feeling around her overeating.
But I firmly believe there is no failure, only lessons learned. And I’ve learnt an awful lot.
Mistake #1. Talking waaaaaaay too much
With that Masters degree freshly tucked under my belt, I was eager to show off all I knew. And I mistakenly thought that giving scientific explanations for all of my advice would send the powerful message to my clients that I knew what I was talking about.
Instead, it sent the powerful message that I was desperate for validation and needed to prove myself.
I was the ex-boyfriend of nutrition: talking down to my clients and acting like I was God’s gift to their health.
If only I had shut up and listened.
Because what my clients needed above all else was to be seen and heard. Their food issues were not surface-level and they didn’t need surface-level answers.
University had taught me to go through what someone eats in a day and suggest healthy food swaps for them… It had not prepared me for the emotional turmoil of my clients. They were not eating ice-cream and cookies late at night because they didn’t know what a healthier alternative was. They were trying to cope emotionally.
And often they were experiencing physical hunger from trying to eat perfectly during the day. Me suggesting healthy food swaps was just playing into their diet culture beliefs, and ultimately fueling the starve-binge cycle that was enslaving them.
Now I see my job as less of an expert giving advice, and more of a facilitator – I help my clients to uncover the root causes of their eating problems, I challenge beliefs that are not serving them, and I gently guide them as they forge a healthier relationship with food.
Mistake #2. Trying to be perfect
Alongside talking way too much, I tried to prove that I was worthy of giving nutrition advice by being a picture of perfect health. If I bought chocolate at the supermarket, I would hide it under my vegetables, lest someone recognize me. I was happy to be seen at the gym, but if I got takeaway pizza it was under the cover of darkness.
Not only did this perfect image make me less relatable to my clients and colleagues (no one wants to talk to a dietitian who only eats salads!), it wasn’t role modelling the one thing my clients needed more than anything: a healthy relationship with food.
These days, I actually make an effort to eat in front of new colleagues just so they know I’m a real person and not someone who is secretly judging everything they consume. I focus on including nutritious foods in my day, not excluding unhealthy stuff. And the gym is still great, but so is rest.
When I talk to other health professionals, I often pick up on red flags of disordered eating. And it makes me wonder if they’re putting the kind of pressure on themselves that I did back then. I want to tell them that it’s okay to be imperfect. In fact, it’s often what your clients and colleagues need to see the most.
Mistake #3. Not probing further into weight loss goals
When I started out, I took it as a given that clients who presented to me with the goal of losing weight actually wanted to lose weight.
Boy, was I wrong.
As I grew as a practitioner, I started to listen more to my clients. And I started to ask them why they wanted to lose weight. Their answers were both revealing and heartbreaking.
Most of my clients want to lose weight because their self-worth is very low. And the diet culture we’ve been brought up in tells us that if we’re skinny, we’ll be happy, confident and worthy of love.
I slowly uncovered this knowledge as I worked with more and more clients, and I equally slowly figured out ways to help them on their journey. Thought-provoking exercises we could do, Socratic questions I could ask, motivational interviewing techniques, practical tools we could use…
5 years of study didn’t even remotely prepare me for helping someone to heal from the inside out. Because when they heal on the inside, the way they treat their body changes, too. Now, all of my clients who need to lose weight do. But it happens slowly and only after they’ve healed their relationship with food and their body.
So I always, always, always ask why someone wants to lose weight.
Mistake #4. Pre-judging clients
As I’ve written about before, I got into this field to prevent eating disorders, after coming dangerously close to one myself. But in the early days, I was somewhat terrified of actually working with these clients. I thought I might be too ‘influenced’ by them, and go down that dark road again.
So I started out in different areas of nutrition, and I saw many young athletes who wanted sports nutrition advice.
And who very much needed to be asked about their relationship with food and their bodies, and screened for eating disorders… But I didn’t do this.
Especially if they were male.
I pre-judged the boys. Because I had only encountered girls and women with disordered eating tendencies, I assumed that these fellows all had a great relationship with food. They just needed some advice to better their sporting performance, right?
But the more of these young men who asked me about bulking up, and dropping body fat, and getting six-pack abs, the more I had to admit to myself that I had made a horrifying mistake in pre-judging them.
Their surface-level questions about sports nutrition were just a cover for much deeper issues. Not only did I have to face my own fear of working with disordered eating clients, I also had to front up to the fact that I had misjudged the boys. It’s a lesson I carry with me to this day.
No matter what someone looks like, or how they act, or the preconceptions I may have about them, I need to ask about them about their relationship with food.
Mistake #5. Making disordered eating worse, not better
The emphasis was all wrong in those first consults.
I tried to cut out junk food and takeaways, instead of including nutritious foods. I was trying to cut calories for weight loss, instead of finding a more positive goal. And I was completely overwhelmed with what my clients were eating, instead of looking at the bigger picture of how they were eating and the intention behind their choices.
Oh the irony of getting into the field to prevent eating disorders, only to be creating them!
10 years later, I can say that the icky feeling deep in my gut that I was making things worse was correct. And I’m glad I eventually leaned into it.
It took a lot of learning, and a boatload more mistakes, but now I confidently help my clients to heal their relationship with food. I’ve refined my system over a decade of hard trial and error. And I am so humbled to be able to teach that system to other nutrition coaches though my online course.
I could never have come this far if it weren’t for all of my mistakes.
Mistakes are a blessing. And I’m so glad that you’re in the privileged position of being able to learn from my mistakes! I hope they help you as you forge your path in the health and wellness industry.
Good luck, my friend!