Your Meal Plan A word about how I will help you change your eating patterns; I am a big believer in trying something new. Most people who have come to me have been on every diet from Atkins to Zone and every one in between. I believe that diets only fuel the food police talk in our heads and that diets can and will be harmful in the long run. Yes, you have lost weight on certain diets, and yes you were happy for a while. But what happened when you got sick and tired of following that plan? You rebelled. You started eating the food you had been denying yourself thus leading to weight gain. How about all those rules you have in your head about what to eat and when to eat it? We will be working together to rid your mind of that clutter and to start focusing you on letting food be food. So, coming to see me will be different. Unless there is a medical reason for you to follow a specific dietary plan you will likely not be given one. We will be working together to re-learn hunger and fullness cues, getting in touch with emotional eating issues* and learn your patterns of eating. We will touch on healthy eating topics in the beginning and if there is any glaring absence of a particular food group, or too much of another, I will let you know. But in the beginning, I am more concerned about HOW you eat. All the nutrition information in the world will be pointless unless you know WHY you are over eating. For example: if you ‘know’ you are to eat lean meat, vegetable, fruit and carbohydrate at meals and you eat that way but you eat to the point of being so full you can hardly stand it…you are going to gain weight. We would need to work on learning how to stop eating before getting to the over-stuffed feeling. Food records: I find this can be a form of a diet for some people. Clients can be overly concerned about what appears on paper that they will only eat what they ‘should’ versus what their body is asking for. There may be times when I ask to see a day or two food records for the week but most often you will know if you have ‘over done’ it. On the flip side, it has happened that clients forget what they are eating from day to day and find a food record is helpful. So, if food records are helpful, and is not causing you obsessive thinking about your food, I will support it. *If there are issues that arise that would be more suited to be discussed with a therapist I will let you know.
Now don't get me wrong, we will be talking about nutrition and why carbohydrates, fat and protein are important. I whole heartedly believe you need all three types of food in your "diet" in order to function at your best.
