Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet

I first wrote this post for the Passion For Health blog. Recently Mike & James have closed down that site, to focus on Habit Guide – so I’m re-posting it here.

I have now been a practising nutritionist and herbalist for five years. As you’d expect I’ve learnt a lot over this time and have grown and developed as a practitioner.

While I still have the same fundamental philosophy about health, my approach to patients and their health has changed considerably . . .

Most naturopaths start out with a gung-ho approach to health, only for this to be watered down as they come into contact with the realities of peoples’ lives. However, I was the opposite and started with an overly timid approach to health. While some practitioners could be accused of demanding too radical a change from their clients, I didn’t ask enough.

I’ve always been aware that patients have busy lives. Changing your diet, lifestyle and health, in the context of today’s world, can be a big ask. In the western world our diets are getting worse and worse, and while our lives just seem to get busier, we’re moving less.

Being overly conscious of peoples’ schedules, I’d ask clients to make small, incremental changes. Stuff that would be easy for them to manage in the context of their lives. Sounds reasonable? However, I’d find clients would get frustrated. While I was worried about over-loading them, clients didn’t feel they were getting anywhere and sometimes gave up.

I’m still conscious of the limitations to change that are imposed by people’s lives, but I’m now a much more pushy practitioner. I’ve found you can guide people through quite big changes to their health, as long as you give them simple and practical solutions for doing so.

I’ve learnt from clients, which has led me to alter my strategies for change and here’s what I’ve found out:

1. Set out blocks of time to focus on your health: it’s hard to constantly be thinking about your diet and exercise regime, so make a commitment to a block of time. This is your time to work on improving your health. I’ve found six – eight weeks a good timeframe. It’s not too daunting, but you can still achieve measurable change.
2. Set some goals for what you want to achieve: have a think about how you feel now and how you want to feel. Be clear about what you want to achieve and be realistic. If you’re not doing any exercise, then in a few weeks you’re not going to be running marathons, however you might be able to walk to the shops without getting out of breath – an excellent achievement.
3. Concentrate on one aspect of your health for the first two weeks: it’s hard to do everything at once, so pick one particular aspect of your health you want to improve and work on that. I frequently set clients one small nutritional goal in the first two weeks, but place my focus on getting people moving and starting to build a regular exercise habit. It’s the quickest way to start feeling better.
4. Don’t give up: nobodies diet is perfect. We all have good days and bad days. You’re going to get some things right, but at times you’re also going to stuff up. If things don’t go to plan, you haven’t blown it, so don’t give up. Just take a few moments to re-focus and get back on track.
5. Keep your changes targeted and practical: instead of setting a goal of “eating healthily”, work out two or three things you could do which would improve your diet. It might be eating breakfast every day, aiming for three different vegetables in the evening, having a healthy snack in the afternoon, or limiting your soft drinks to the weekend only. Define your changes and make them do-able.
6. Plan, plan, plan: I can’t emphasise the importance of this. Many a good intention has been let down by a lack of planning. Schedule your exercise in your diary. Make a shopping list and buy your groceries on the weekend, to ensure you have the good food you need easily available.
7. Improving your health is one of the most important things you can do in your life. Don’t put it off until the future when you have more money, more time or work gets easier. Act now and you’ll have more energy, vitality and also the satisfaction of knowing you’ve improved your health.

What have you learnt about changing your health?

Photograph by Sanja Gjenero.

10 September, 2008