7 Golden Questions Your Nutritionist Should Ask before Making your Customised Plan.

Seven Golden Questions Your Nutritionist Should Ask You before Making a Customised Plan

In today’s world all that is written on Nutrition is from a consumer’s perspective. Consumers ask questions and experts answer them. With rising concerns for Nutritional and Life-style diseases more and more individuals are turning to Nutritionists to customise their diets.

Most of these interactions can be broadly categorized into

a) a person already suffering from a diet related disease like diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, arthritis etc.

b) a person not in his correct weight category and therefore at high risk to the above mentioned diseases

c) a healthy person wanting to take preventive action based on all the awareness in society today.

All three sets of people will turn ultimately to a Nutritionist for the planning and management of Food or Diet or Nutrition! 

So if you are one of those people in the above categories, you will be turning to a nutritionist to guide you. Here are the questions they should be asking you? These seven golden questions will also help you determine if you nutritionist is truly customizing your diet plan or just working on a cut copy paste template from a manual, hospital chart or from a previous case. If they are not asking these questions, then maybe its time to get a better nutritionist. (You Can be sure the Nutritionists at this Site deliver the best Customised plans in the world)

1. What is Age, height, waist and Hip measurements?

These measurements are important to determine your Health. A qualified and dedicated Nutritionist will ensure calculation of your BMI or Body Mass Index. This Index is a measures weight in relation to height and the ensuring result will give you a figure. This number predicts or indicates an increased risk of developing High blood pressure, Heart disease, High blood cholesterol, Diabetes, Stroke, Certain types of cancer, Arthritis, Breathing problems, etc. Now since no one can change your height, a Nutritionist will aim to change the Weight you are at. If very thin and having a reading on the BMI scale that says underweight, to a reading saying Obese, the function of a nutritionist is to change the way you eat to reach a Calorie goal that will change your BODY MASS. Your Hip to Waist Ratio is a measurement that is equally an indicator of most of the diseases above. These tools will help a nutritionist start the nutritional strategy based on current scenario of an individual and what would be his or her Goals. The goals can be suggested by a Nutritionist in the Diet planning Sessions. If no measurements are asked or taken in your session its time to leave that room and seek a new nutritionist.

2. What is your culture?

India is country with over a billion people, 26 states, a few thousand languages and hundreds of cultures. It is this cultural and regional diversity that determines your palate. If you’re a North Indian you will rise to the smell of parathas and your south Indian counterpart will rise to the smell of Dosa. Imagine you’re a north Indian from Punjab and your nutritionist prescribes Idli Sāmbhar for breakfast.

If your Nutritionist does not ask you this question and is not well versed with the dishes in your culture, its time for you to look elsewhere. A nutritionist key role is to change the meal type, meal distribution, timing of meal during the day and most of all suggest nutritional and healthy choices within that culture. In today’s world of Life style diseases like Diabetes and hypertension, Patients are lead to believe that their cultural palate is wrong. Actually what is wrong are the choices in that person’s life of foods that he or she chooses to eat. A good nutritionist will determine this at the very start and ensure that your diet plan is mapped out based on your culture.

3. What is your activity and Work Output during the day?

The key function of the human body is to perform tasks to enable you to live your life. This burns Calories from energy that is acquired from Foods. So the more food you eat the more calories you give to your body. A good Nutritionist will ask you questions about your day and the type of work you do. How often do you exercise, and for how long? Whether your job is sedentary or you’re a housewife? Whether Standing long hours or sitting at a computer is your pace? All these questions will allow a nutritionist to plan how many calories you would require. This information is key to designing your customised program as if you need to loose weight then the calories need to be deficient in the diet or to gain weight the calories from food have to be more. After ascertaining this aspect, your nutritionist needs to take time, calculating your TEE or Total Energy expenditure. You may have heard this term or is reference when people say “I need 2300 calories per day”.

4. Have you done a Blood test recently? Can I see that report? Or can you please do the Blood test as indicated by me?

As most people are aware, the diseases prevalent today, are all lifestyle diseases related to the food we eat. Even food has Disease Causing Effect (sugar and Diabetes) as well as a Curative Effect (Garlic has cholesterol lowering properties). In asking for a clients blood test reports, a trained Nutritionists will be able to read your report card and see if you have passed most tests or have failed. Think of a nutritionist as a Tuition teacher that gives you extra help for you to pass your exams (in this case; life!!!). Some of us wait till we fail an exam (become hypertensive or diabetic), we meet these nutritionists at a hospital and they are called Dietitians. Some of us want to prepare in advance and hence we get help before we even attempt any exams. We call this thinking “Preventive Practice or Healthy Eating”. In using foods to alter your choices and lessen the disease risk factor, you will be able to drastically alter your life. A blood test really helps you along this direction and your nutritionist, if smart, will ensure the foods that you eat will give you those boosting capacities or disease busting effects in their diet plan.

5. Do you Exercise? What type of exercises are you doing?

Nutrition for daily activities should well balanced so that the customers achieves their desired goal (looking and feeling fit). In today’s fast paced world, most people are aware of the benefits of exercise and therefore will take up a physical activity. Activities like yoga or walking do not require any specific nutrition. However modern day fitness activities like strength training, aerobics, Pilates, Sports training at gyms or sports complex, exert far greater nutritional requirements on the body. Most people are already unfit and have been prescribed by doctors to exercise. Their body needs special pre workout and post workout nutritional help. A qualified Nutritionist knows that fitness nutrition will have to complement the foundation nutrition. The choices by the nutritionist can be all natural (butter milk after a workout) or Supplementation (Whey Protein or amino acids). In geriatric (post 50 age) persons, the absorption of nutrition via foods is lowered. In pursuit of fitness activities such individuals are a higher risk to injuries from physical structure activities due to slower nutrition delivery and hence slower absorption and recovery by the body. In such cases Nutritionists will be smart enough to get your current list of medications, supplements if any and then link them to your exercise program and then go about designing your plan.

6. Are you currently on any medication?

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food" Hippocrates 460 - 359 BC. This saying has profound effect on the diet planning process in the Modern era. Currently our food habits are all wrong. Natural foods are replaced by processed foods. We are working less and eating more. Medicine has become the new food. Most people will sink in a false sense of security with Medication being available to control my disease; I can do what I please with my food. As a result, every one of us will be on medication by the time we are 50. A nutritionist needs to know your medicines….Certain foods produce interactions with drugs that are used today. A simple example : High-fat meals may increase the amount of Theophylline (used in asthma cases) in the body, while high-carbohydrate meals may decrease it or avoid taking Tetracycline( antibiotic) with dairy products, antacids, and vitamin supplements containing iron because they can interfere with the medication’s effectiveness. See how clear your nutritionist is in asking for this information.

7. What time do you eat?

Now this is a broad spectrum question, but most nutritionist will not spend too much time on this front. Its important that a nutritionists spends at least half an hour understand the way you eat. What’s important is to understand when you eat your meals, and in what quantities. This dietary recall will help the nutritionist when doing your diet planning, as the current habits and assessments will give a fair bit of an idea as is to which STRATEGIES of Nutritional therapy are needed.

In all these seven rules should be asked by your Nutritionist. In fact when you decide to get your nutrition plan done, call up the nutritionist and ask her to explain to you what is her requirement. Most likely she will ask most of these questions in the first ten minutes of a conversation. If you do not get this question, then ask them. See if its indicated that these will be assessed. Above all remember you are the paying customer, and a nutritionist is the service provider of health. So make a wise decision. Find below a Diabetic who asked all the right questions before availing of a nutritional service.

Blood Profile of a 60 year old Diabetic ( 20 years of diabetes) after following a Nutritionist with QUA using the above questions. A 200% drop in Triglyceride levels, Fast sugar dropped below 100 for the first time in 2 decades and HDL Cholesterol( the good one) boosted by over 50%. Medications dropped immediately.

At QUA NUTRITION our dietitians walk you through all seven questions before formulating a customized plan. We deliver diet plans across the world via SKYPE. Email me ryan@quanutrition.com or call +919743430000 to know more about how a Dietitian can change the way you eat.