Nutrition Isn’t Dieting: Understand the Difference

Americans have a love-hate relationship with food. There are many food blogs and competitive cooking and baking television shows, and we seem to obsess with posting the newest dish at our favorite restaurant.

 You’d think with all this attention on food, we’d also be the most knowledgeable about what we’re eating or how we’re fueling our bodies. Well, not so much. The obesity rate for American adults has tipped at 42.4%.

 In this blog, High Quality Home Therapy’s certified functional nutritionist Cathy Osipow and HQHT’s exercise physiologist, Dylan Viscardi, share their  insights on the difference between dieting and nutrition and how healthy nutrition can nourish your body and mind.

Nutrition versus dieting

A great place to begin this discussion is to address the elephant in the room – dieting and nutrition are two distinctly unique concepts with two very different goals. Typically, diets focus on weight loss. If you are among the more than 160 million Americans who are dieting at any given time, you know that diets don’t always work.

 Not only that, but more than 80% of people who are successful and lose a significant amount of weight end up regaining it the following year. So what’s going on? The answer lies in the inherent differences between dieting and nutrition.
Generally, dieting is a short-term, quick fix, often with the sole goal of losing weight. Dieting programs tend to assume that everyone is the same, or more specifically, everyone sheds weight at the same rate. Unfortunately, the latest trendy diet doesn’t factor in a person’s unique metabolism or if they have a medical issue like diabetes that can make losing weight challenging.

 Instead, dieting takes a one-size-fits-all approach to eating that tends to be restrictive and temporary, with no long-term commitment or focus on overall health. In short, eating well and dieting are often at odds.    
Nutrition focuses on quality, not quantity

In contrast, nutrition starts from the premise that eating healthy is more positive and personal than dieting and reaps enhanced health benefits in the long run. Essentially, nutrition is about making what you eat a factor of the nourishment your body needs.

 But that’s not all. The best part is when eating healthier, you typically have an easier time losing weight and keeping it off. But the story doesn’t end there.

When you factor in a holistic approach to nutrition, called functional nutrition, you leverage a whole other layer of benefits. Functional nutrition is a combination of nutritional counseling and functional medicine. A functional nutritionist looks at the interrelated systems of your body, connects them to your unique health issues and your lifestyle, and makes nutrition recommendations based on all the data.

Building a healthy relationship with food
So, for instance, if you have issues with high blood pressure or cardiovascular disease in your family, your functional nutritionist can dial in your nutrition plan to include foods that contain nutrients that can help mitigate those issues. Face it, we know that people who eat healthier tend to live longer, but somewhere along the line, we let our busy schedules and the availability of processed and fast foods change how and what we eat.

At High Quality Home Therapy, we treat the whole person and approach our services as a commitment to our patients’ overall health. With our nutrition services, we won’t lead you on a calorie-counting journey but instead, help you build a healthy relationship with food because all foods are not created equal. We will help you build nutrition into your lifestyle, adopting healthy habits that can result in a healthier you.

There are no quick fixes to fueling our minds and bodies. Our nutrition plans emphasize wholesome ingredients that our bodies deserve and help you discover foods you can embrace for a lifetime of well-being and happiness. Food is medicine and we can help you learn which foods work best for your body’s needs.

 High Quality Home Therapy offers convenient telehealth options, in-office care at our spa-like medical facility and personalized therapy in the comfort of your home or office throughout Connecticut and New York.

If you’re ready to start your journey to a lifelong commitment to healthier eating, call High Quality Home Therapy in Stamford, Connecticut, today or use our online tool to schedule an appointment.