What Dietitians Wish You Knew About Them

Your dietitian is watching what you eat, all the time.

So goes one of the numerous dietitian misconceptions we have heard from patients over the years.

Here at Catalyst Nutrition and Training, we understand that seeing a dietitian can be gut-wrenching sometimes. Your appointment is a time when we discuss sensitive subjects like your diet, lifestyle, and weight. This can be even harder if it’s your first time or you don’t have the best relationship with food.

It can be easy to assume that consulting with us comes with a side of judgment, but please understand: nothing could be further from the truth.

We’ve gathered here some of the concerns our patients have brought up to show you what we want you to know about us.

Some of the following items may surprise you! But if you’ve been on the fence about scheduling an appointment with us, we hope some of these put those fears away.

Here are four things our dietitians wish you knew about us.

1. We Don’t Watch You Eat

One worry we’ve heard from patients over the years is that we somehow work to find out what you’ve been eating between appointments.

Let’s be clear about this: we are not watching what you eat, either at your everyday meals, when you go out, or when you’re at family parties or other social gatherings.

In your consultations with us, we help you to work out what food strategies can fit into your lifestyle based on your health goals.

Following the plans we make together is always the objective, of course. But your life is still your life. If you’re at a party and want to indulge a little, we say go for it! And don’t feel guilty about enjoying yourself.

Even if we were to see what you’ve been up to food-wise– say, if we’re social media friends–we absolutely do not in any way pass judgment. If anything, we’re just happy you’re out there enjoying yourself!

2. We Sometimes Make Suboptimal Food Choices

We just mentioned the word “guilty” in the previous item, so now is the right time to bring this up: we’re a food-positive practice, not just for our patients, but also for ourselves.

That leads us to this: sometimes, we make suboptimal food choices, too.

Yes, that’s true.

Some patients believe that, because we’re dietitians, we follow a perfect diet with perfect discipline, all the time, and also that it’s easy for us.

But what’s important to understand, as simple as it sounds, is that we’re humans before we’re dietitians.

Being human means accepting that perfection is a kind of cultural idea that doesn’t actually exist. We know quite well what we need to do to reach our personal health goals, but will you find us adhering to those guidelines all the time?

The answer is a definite “no.”

Catch Brooke with her nachos or breakfast potatoes sometime! Or look at our dietitian Kelsey, who loves to bake sweet treats for her loved ones (and share in the joy!).

We have treats. We veer off from our healthy diets. And we know that’s okay.

It’s okay for you, too! We don’t play the “guilt” game at Catalyst. You’re not “bad” for deviating from a healthy lifestyle here and there, and neither is the food you eat “bad.”

What we want to do for every patient is to show you that each food you eat affects your body differently. If you come to us with health goals in mind, we’ll help you understand the foods that can help you get there and the foods that might make that more difficult.

But we can work with foods this way without labeling them or ourselves as “good” or “bad” or feeling shameful about our choices.

How do we know? Because we’re not perfect, either.

3. We LOVE Food

Here’s one thing we are, though: we are absolutely, 100% in LOVE with food!

We love it, or we wouldn’t have spent five years studying it in school, and then for the rest of our lives. You could say food is our driving force.

Our philosophy of food and nutrition for ourselves is the same philosophy we project to the public: food is fuel, food is comfort, and food is fun!

Food is everything to us as people. It’s there for energy, for building muscle, and for socializing. It’s there when we’re happy and sad. Food is part of our family traditions, our religions, and our cultural heritages.

Your life circumstances may change over time. Friends might come and go. But food, in some form, will be with you every day for the rest of your life. It’s going to be one of your longest-term relationships.

So, we say you might as well make that relationship a healthy one.

We love food, and we want you to, as well!

4. We Don’t Tell You What You Can’t Eat

The last thing we want you to know about your Catalyst dietitians is that we don’t tell you what you can’t eat on your way to meeting your health goals.

We understand there’s a lot of conflicting nutrition information out there. You may have encountered “miracle” diets online that tell you to cut out certain food groups completely; for example, to avoid all grains if you want to lose weight.

Those types of fad diets tend not to be sustainable, effective, or even safe for you.

We said before that we’re a food-positive practice. We don’t spend any time telling you to remove certain foods from your diet completely.

Our approach is actually to turn things around to make food positive rather than negative. We prefer to educate you in the foods we want you to eat MORE of to get healthy.

So, no matter what you like to eat, it can all fit into a healthy lifestyle! We just need to figure out where and how.

Partner with a Catalyst Dietitian in Northeastern Pennsylvania Today

These are four things our dietitians would love for you to know about us.

We take the time to explain them here because we want you to be able to work with us without reservations or fear.

At the same time, we know anxiety can always be a reality when seeing a dietitian. Weight, restrictive diets, and past bad experiences with food can all easily discourage a person from seeking the nutrition help they need.

But please know our dietitians are humans, too. We’re here to educate and help, not judge.

Contact us with any questions at all.