Being a dietitian is my second career path. After I graduated from college with a degree in communications/public relations, I worked in legal marketing for a few years. As I got to know my adult self more, I realized that was not the path I wanted to be on. When I decided to pursue a second degree in dietetics, I knew that I wanted to open a private practice and counsel clients 1:1. I remember saying to myself if I could just show people how good it feels to eat healthfully and take care of themselves vs. always struggling through wellness, I would be set. I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, though.
When I was going through school, it was clear that weight was always part of the conversation in our education. Whether we were talking about clinical, community health, or food service (our three main focus areas in our dietetic programs and internships). Weight was always a topic. We were doing calorie counts for patients in the hospital before we even went to see them or were told that they needed one. We were doing calorie considerations for menus. We were doing weight-loss programs for community health. Even if the topic wasn’t weight-related, it was. I always came up.
It was so rare to talk about health, nutrition and food apart from weight. It led me to believe that would be my specialty. I could tell people how to lose weight. Easy enough, right? I kind of gave in and thought, well if that’s what we are learning about then it must be the way to go.
Wrong.
Once I realized that I could do more I kind of did feel betrayed and sort of like I had been miseld. I was meant to believe that teaching people how to lose weight was my only skill, even while knowing that’s not why I even wanted to be a dietitian in the first place!
Over the last couple of years living my dream and seeing clients 1:1, the idea that it’s not about weight loss has been reinforced over and over again. Many people still come to me with a weight loss goal. But what I make sure to do now is dig deeper into why this is a goal for them. I like asking this question:
“What in your life will change if you lose weight?”
Most of the time, what they want has nothing to do with weight and we can get there another way. It’s complicated and not always black and white, but I make sure to set people up for success by saying, hey, maybe weight loss is going to do more harm than good.
That’s not to say I never help anyone with weight loss. Sure I do. But I always have the tough conversations first and enjoy talking to my clients about so much more than the number on the scale.