Visiting a dietitian.

Hyperbullet

Hey everyone.

Just a quick query. Need to get my diet in order and I'm considering visiting a dietitian to do out meal plans etc. I know what I should be eating, have read the stickies and I have cut bread/rice/ majority of junk food out of my diet. However I'm just confused as to when to eat different things, due to training I've started in the gym, and maybe some professional help would be worth it?

I'm wondering if anyone has experience of visiting one and if there was any benefits? Or would I be better getting into something like the primal blueprint? In my mind I don't want the change I make to be temporary, I want to be eating healthier for life.

Any information/opinions would be great. Thanks!

Adelie

Personally I think that the key to eating healthy for life is to educate yourself about nutrition and be able to cook. So visiting a dietician and getting a meal plan doesn't really help so much because you would just be following a plan, and once you need to deviate from that you'll be stuck (e.g. when you get bored/don't have time to prepare the meals/have to eat out).

Also a mainstream dietitician is very likely to tell you to reintroduce the bread and rice. I talked to one about my gluten intolerance, and her attitude was that is was very important to try and heal this problem so that I could get back to eating plenty of wholegrain bread.

So I'd say you should just keep reading, and learn to cook if you can't already. If you can cook a range of quick tasty meals from natural ingredients then you'll have a very good start. Also you don't really need to overthink it, you don't need an awesome perfect plan, cutting out the junk is a good start so just slowly keep learning more and improving gradually. For stuff about what to eat before/after the gym, I think you can find a lot on these forums about it, or ask.

Hyperbullet

Adelie wrote: »

Personally I think that the key to eating healthy for life is to educate yourself about nutrition and be able to cook. So visiting a dietician and getting a meal plan doesn't really help so much because you would just be following a plan, and once you need to deviate from that you'll be stuck (e.g. when you get bored/don't have time to prepare the meals/have to eat out).

Also a mainstream dietitician is very likely to tell you to reintroduce the bread and rice. I talked to one about my gluten intolerance, and her attitude was that is was very important to try and heal this problem so that I could get back to eating plenty of wholegrain bread.

So I'd say you should just keep reading, and learn to cook if you can't already. If you can cook a range of quick tasty meals from natural ingredients then you'll have a very good start. Also you don't really need to overthink it, you don't need an awesome perfect plan, cutting out the junk is a good start so just slowly keep learning more and improving gradually. For stuff about what to eat before/after the gym, I think you can find a lot on these forums about it, or ask.

Thanks for that fantastic response. I can cook a lot of nice food from scratch, just need to educate myself further to see what I should be eating. Hence I figured a dietitian could point me in the right direction.

Adelie

Hyperbullet wrote: »

Thanks for that fantastic response. I can cook a lot of nice food from scratch, just need to educate myself further to see what I should be eating. Hence I figured a dietitian could point me in the right direction.

Yeah I see what you mean. Well, I think it will depend a lot on dietician you see. Many of them are still following theories that now have a lot of evidence against them - like that you should eat low fat, but mostly plant oils, lots of grains, etc. So yeah - a dietician might point you in a direction, but it's not guaranteed whether it's the right one (no one knows what's the right one!). Like I'm sure they'll have good advice such as avoiding processed food but beyond that you have to make up your own mind... anyway if you do go, best of luck!

I'd also be interested in hearing others experiences with dieticians and what they were recommended.