What is Nutrition Therapy?

The benefit of working with a registered dietitian (RD) includes receiving medical nutrition therapy, which differs from working with just any nutritionist! If you are not familiar with the difference between an RD and a nutritionist, you can read more about what distinguishes the two here! (https://www.skimwellness.com/post/why-work-with-a-registered-dietitian.) But what does medical nutrition therapy mean, and why might you benefit from receiving this type of therapy?

According to The National Cancer Institute, nutrition therapy is a nutrition-based treatment plan to help manage or treat certain health conditions. Certain health conditions that RDs help manage through nutrition therapy are diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, digestive issues, obesity, malnutrition, cancer, and so much more! Dietitians are equipped with the knowledge and skills to assess nutrition status and evaluate how it relates to these medical conditions, identify dietary goals, develop a nutrition care plan, implement the plan, and monitor the outcomes. Dietitians evaluate current eating patterns to identify specific dietary recommendations based on your needs, provide information on how to implement these recommendations in a sustainable way, use nutrition to support treatment of both chronic conditions and personal goals, adjust the recommendations based on progress, and promote sustainable lifestyle changes. This four step nutrition care process of assess, diagnose/identify, intervene/implement, and monitor/evaluate encompasses what nutrition therapy is! Wow, so much more than just counting calories and weight loss, right!?

Let’s run through an example of how nutrition therapy differs from nutrition advice that you may have received in the past. When seeing a nutritionist, an influencer online, or maybe another health care professional, the advice is typically pretty general. “Eat less of this, and more of that”, “Cut back on the white breads and rice”, “Eat more fish and less red meat”, “Eat more vegetables”, “Avoid sweets and desserts”, “Eat high protein foods”. This is just a short list of things you may have heard in the past. They are blanket statements that could apply to anyone, and may or may not even address your concerns in the first place. Usually this advice is given from someone who has personal experience with improving their eating habits and thinks their success means it will work for others, or it comes from someone with little to no training in how to develop personalized nutrition care plans.

Nutrition therapy on the other hand requires digging deeper into who you are as a person, your specific diagnosis, your lifestyle, your habits, your past and current symptoms, your sleep, and your stress. This process allows us as dietitians to assess your nutrition status and identify areas for improvement. It allows us to generate a plan specific to you and your needs so we can implement it successfully. We get into the territory of nutrition therapy when those blanket statements go from general nutrition practices to something like: “I hear that your goal is weight loss, but I first want to start by addressing your high cholesterol which can be improved by adding in an adequate amount of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains high in fiber. These dietary shifts will help improve your cholesterol levels, and overall health, which may lead to weight loss. Let’s come up with a game plan on how we can increase your fiber intake to match your specific needs in a sustainable way”. Do you see the difference? 

Nutrition therapy may help you improve your aesthetic goals, but more importantly, it improves your health by addressing conditions and symptoms driving the problem. Nutrition therapy implements a plan tailored to your needs and comes with monitoring and adjustment of the plan by a professional. Nutrition therapy adjusts with your progress, because your health journey is not linear! Life changes, and so does your tailored nutrition therapy plan. No one size fits all here! Working with our dietitians at SkimWellness on a weekly basis allows for continuous monitoring and evaluation of the therapy plan we set together, so we are able to meet you where you are at. 

At SkimWellness, we take a holistic approach to providing nutrition therapy. We find there is rarely one thing that is preventing our clients from reaching their goals. Whether it is underlying autoimmune conditions, chronic constipation, stress management, or hormonal issues, we spend the necessary time to unpack all of these contributing factors and address them individually. This approach allows us to best serve our clients and ensure any progress we make is longer lasting than any short cut can provide. Receiving nutrition therapy from our team members means we are taking a look at the whole picture, connecting the dots, and coming up with a nutrition plan that encompasses you as a person, and not just a symptom or number on the scale. 

Scope of practice is important when it comes to nutrition therapy. As a team of registered dietitians, we are unable to formally diagnose a medical condition or treat the condition with medication. However, we are clinically trained and able to make the connections between your signs and symptoms to common medical diagnoses. We then suggest you follow up with your doctor to request specific testing, or we communicate directly with your provider, given your permission, of course. We work with other healthcare providers in your network to provide integrative care. So while your primary care physician might be able to treat it with medication, we simultaneously are treating the condition with diet and lifestyle modifications. Integrative care is critical to ensure we are providing the best care possible as all healthcare providers will be on the same page.

So, are you in need of nutrition therapy? Ask yourself what improving your health means to you. Is it just weight loss? Or is it body composition plus preventing chronic disease, improving energy, reducing inflammation, managing autoimmune disease, and so much more. We think the latter! What is the point of being in a smaller body if it is not a healthy one. Working with a dietitian helps ensure you can enjoy your improved aesthetics by tackling the root causes first and improving what really matters, your long term health! If you are ready to take control of your health by making sustainable lifestyle changes, head to our “1:1 Nutrition Therapy” tab on our website here and book a consultation with one of our wonderful dietitians! We cannot wait to work with you.  

Sources:

National Cancer Institute. (n.d.). NCI Dictionary of Cancer terms. Comprehensive Cancer Information - NCI. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/nutrition-therapy