Result: it’s unlikely that your client is binge eating
Your client doesn’t engage in many dieting behaviours or participate in diet culture in general. They don’t believe that what they eat (or what they don’t eat) makes them a good or bad person, and they appear to have a healthy relationship with food and their body.
Safeguard them
While your client is in the perfect place right now, you have to be vigilant to keep them there. Diet culture can easily seep into their lives, and even your own work!
Small comments, such as the amount of calories in something, or talking about foods as healthy and unhealthy, may seem helpful, but actually they have the exact opposite effect what is intended. Dieting behaviours such as restricting food intake in order to manipulate body shape or size doesn’t work for 97% of people, and in fact makes it more likely they will end up heavier than when they started.
Tips:
- Avoid grouping foods into healthy and unhealthy categories. Research shows that people who eat intuitively (as your client appears to be doing) naturally choose mostly nutritious food, have good body image, and tend to be a healthy weight.
- Focus on including nutritious foods in their day but not excluding any unhealthy foods. These foods have their own place – they are fun to eat and taste good.
- Never specify how much your client should eat. Instead, allow them to learn their body and follow their natural hunger and fullness cues.
Remember: keep your client’s goals positive!
Focus on adding things into their life to increase health and wellness and fun, not taking things away to alter their body
Who’s behind this quiz?
I’m Lucy Carey, a registered dietitian and lifestyle medicine professional with a decade of experience helping clients heal their relationship with food.
My passion lies not only in guiding my own clients from disordered eating to food freedom, but teaching other health professionals how to do the same with their clients. I like to think my work in this area allows me to have a wider reach than if I just stuck to one-on-one work. If diet culture dies with each of us, it will surely slowly die out completely – that’s my dream.
My wish for you
I have refined my methods over the last 10 years through hard-won trial and error, and if there’s one thing you take from this quiz, please let it be this: I strongly believe that you need to ditch diet culture personally before you can guide your clients professionally to do the same.
P.S. This is just the beginning
If you’ve taken this quiz because you’re a dedicated nutrition coach who wants to help your clients achieve food freedom, I am here for it!
I’ll pop into your inbox regularly with fresh blog posts and other support for you, so you can confidently handle anything your client throws at you.
And remember, I’m just an email away!
All my best,
Lucy
