What to Expect in Session with an Anti-Diet Registered Dietitian

What is an Anti-Diet RD?

To understand what it means to work with an anti-diet dietitian, let’s first distinguish what a registered dietitian is, versus a nutritionist. A registered dietitian (RD) is this protected title of a food and nutrition professional who has completed an accredited undergraduate program, 1000 minimum practical hours in an ACEND dietetic internship, and passed a national registration exam. To maintain this title, an RD must complete continuing education and maintain licensure in the states they practice in.

Where some RDs may also use the title of nutritionist, “nutritionist” is not a protected title, and there are no governing bodies to standardize education and ensure ethical conduct from someone practicing under this title.

An anti-diet dietitian is a registered dietitian who works from a framework of helping clients work towards a goal of peace with food and body. Having peace with your body and food can help reduce stress, weight cycling, and disordered eating/eating disorder symptoms. The anti-diet dietitian tends to take a more holistic approach, considering physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing in regards to food choices. The framework aims to eliminate judgment and shame that diet culture puts around food, in order to empower individuals to make shame-free food choices. Working with an anti-diet dietitian often focuses on sustainable changes that help honor your individualized nutrition needs, in a way that also honors your food preferences and lifestyle. When working with a RD that does not take an anti-diet approach, you may find more rigidity, and food rules placed upon your nutrition interventions. This can be unsustainable or even dangerous for those who have struggled with an eating disorder, or have a complicated relationship with food.

What would our approach be?

Approach #1: Setting realistic and sustainable goals to support behavior change.

Setting sustainable goals can mean subtle changes, and that can feel frustrating at times. However, in our experience with clients, working on small changes can lead to a long-lasting impact. Focusing on sustainable small changes can stop the roller coaster of “health” journeys that stop just as quickly as they start.

Approach #2: Empower clients to make food choices rather than RD dictating what they should eat.

It is often that we find people come to a session wondering if we will give them an overhaul on their lifestyle. Most initial assessments include some statement along the lines of “just tell me what to eat”. In reality, we’re looking to learn about your lifestyle, food choices, and food preferences. With that background information, we can offer education and individualized interventions that will empower you to be confident in making your own food choices. Our goal with our clients is similar to that of Hinge’s dating app. Just like the dating app “made to be deleted”, our goal is to be a dietitian you don’t have to always come back to!

How we combine medical and mental health

As mentioned before, an anti-diet dietitian is going to take a holistic approach where we consider the whole person. This means there is often an overlap between our dietary interventions and your mental/emotional needs. The best way we can describe this is during a dietary session, our topics may range as wide as your poop all the way to your shame- and sometimes we might talk about your shame about your poop! Our relationship with food is very complex, and intertwines with more aspects of our lives than we may realize. Working with an anti-diet dietitian means you have someone who is emotionally attuned to these complexities. They can help untangle the relationship to food and body from other aspects of life (with the support of a well rounded treatment team of course).

Anti-diet dietitians are more process oriented, than we are prescriptive. It means that we’re going to process your thoughts/beliefs about food more than we are going to tell you what/when/how to eat the food.

Another important overlap between mental health and working with a dietitian is the ways your values impact your food choices. Who you are as a human being, and how you view the world affects your relationship with your body and food choices. An anti-diet dietitian is well equipped to help you connect those dots and understand how your values can empower nutrition changes.

Topics you wouldn’t anticipate to talk about, but are helpful

Time management with responsibilities- What does your work/school day look like? How much time/energy do you have for grocery shopping or meal prep? Discussing time management may feel off topic in a dietary session, but it can actually be very insightful for how feasible certain interventions can be.

Dietary preferences rather than diet parameters- It is important for us to understand what foods you enjoy and which ones you can’t stand. Enjoyment and preference are important aspects of engaging with food, and those matter so that we are not providing “cookie cutter” recommendations that you’ll never implement because your RD stopped to ask if it is a food you’re willing to eat or not.

Life skills surrounding food: budgeting, food preparation, and grocery shopping- Understanding your comfortability in the kitchen or grocery store can go a long way in helping paint a picture for RD as to what life outside of sessions look like for you. This is useful in knowing what areas we can do education/skill building, and what type of interventions make the most sense for you.

Challenging your relationship with food- Our focus in session won’t be so much on the “should” and “should not”s of food, and more on the “why” of your food choices. An anti-diet dietitian can help sort through the “why”, and help you identify patterns. Then shifts or alternative coping strategies can be used when the “why” is ultimately harmful to your well being (i.e food restriction, anxiety about food, avoidance of specific nutrients, etc.)

If you are looking to change your relationship with food or build your support system to work through disordered eating/an eating disorder, reach out to us! We’re here to support your journey to more peace and acceptance.