What is Nutritional Counseling?
Nutritional counseling is a type of assessment made which analyzes various health needs in regard to diet and exercise. A nutritional counselor helps people to set achievable health goals and teaches various ways of maintaining these goals throughout their lifetime.
Nutrition is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Without proper nutrition, one does not have enough energy to make it through the day. Also, health declines without proper nutrition, making one more susceptible to illness and disease. Nutritional counseling is sometimes offered at eating disorder treatment clinics for patients in need of anorexia treatment, bulimia help or binge eating assistance.
Such an assessment is beneficial to a wide variety of people and can help those with numerous disorders. During this assessment, the counselor provides information based on a person’s current status, helping to improve overall health.
Many nutritional counselors recommend fitness programs and nutritional supplements. By seeing a nutritional counselor instead of looking and testing out various products, time is saved. Through nutritional counseling, basic health needs are met and specialized information is given to fit each person’s everyday lifestyle.
Who Can Benefit From Nutritional Counseling?
A variety of people benefit from nutritional counseling. This type of counseling assists all ages, ranging from pregnant women, to vegetarians, to the elderly and people with different medical complications. Those who may benefit include those with:
- Diabetes
- Osteoporosis
- Poor nutrition and eating patterns
- Eating disorders (some of which may require eating disorder treatment)
- Digestive complications
- HIV
- Cancer
- Hypertension
- Nausea
- Nutritional questions
- Allergies
- Organ problems
- Obesity
- Hypoglycemia
- Menopause
- Fitness goals
- Heart diseases
For many people with eating disorders, this type of advice is very beneficial. In fact, many California eating disorder centers as well as other eating disorder residential programs across the country offer nutritional counseling.
Benefits of Nutritional Counseling
Various benefits of nutritional counseling include:
- Increase in energy
- Healthier lifestyle and food choices
- Better quality sleep
- Reduced symptoms of disease
- Less drastic range of emotions
- Happiness
- Possible increase in longevity
- Strengthened immune system
- Lesser chance of disorders and disease appearing
- Better ability to concentrate