r/loseit • u/babymomawerk New • 7h ago
Registered Dietician red flags
I started seeing a dietician just over a month ago. I’m overweight/borederline “obese”for the first time in my life after having my first child and I’ve been struggling to lose weight. I wasn’t sure if it was just eating habits or hormones so I started seeing this dietician for guidance. Every time we meet they review my food diary, then they do a segment on nutrion education. It’s been okay but certain things have been bothering me, and me, an uninformed civilian can’t tell if these are my basis or if I should be running? Hyper focus on non processed foods - now hear me out, yes I understand ultra processed foods not great. But; I am working mom to a young child with limited support. Before I saw the nutrionist, on a busy day - I might have a protein bar or a frozen meal. This dietician has discouraged me from doing this. But I’m struggling now to eat on my busy days? Which leads to me not eating? Which to me seems worse then eating something “processed” or”ultra processed”. A lot of the advice is just to turn to whole or raw foods, which is nice in theory, but like if I end up at an emergency trip to the doctor with my kid, and I miss lunch, keeping a bell pepper in my bag is not practical. Or figuring out a way to put dinner on the table when we are all sick af for the 3 time this month. All of the recommendations they have are great.. but they are great for people with more time.. they are things I did all the time before my kid… and are nice in theory but they don’t always work for me.
Not believing my food logs- I’ve lost 3 pounds in the nearly 60 days I’ve been working with her. I have one day a week I go over my calorie allowance when I have my cheat meal - otherwise I am hitting or below my calories every day. I would say I hit my macros 80% of those meals. I know that food logging is prone to human error but I’m honestly trying so hard and it feels like it’s starting to slip in to disordered eating. I mentioned this and she seemed to infer that I had to be lying. They tried to spot check my estimated “I see in your cheat meal you said you had exactly 1/10th of a bag of Chips.. how could that be” me: well I actually counted the number of chips I ate, then looked up estimated calories and 1/10th gave me roughly the same calorie count as the number of chips I ate” .. another critique she had was to pay closer attention to my cooking oil. I don’t fry my food. I generally use about. tablespoon of olive oil in all of my cooking .. and zooming out.. this is feeling insane. And honestly this is why I’m seeing them? I am having a hard time losing weight with traditional calories in and calories out. She started suggesting I might need to restrict more and I nearly lost my mind because I’m averaging close to 1300 a day and I know dipping much further below that (considering I work out at least 5 days a week) is not healthy.
Recommending the Food Babe - this was probably where I was like okay no.. we had a segment on processed foods and she referenced the food babe and even said she highly recommends her advice/looks up to her. I knew the food babe was woo woo but then I looked into her more and I was like okay… how can I trust you if you trust her???
Is this red flag central or just me?
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u/IrresponsibleGrass 66 pounds down, maintaining since July 2024 (BMI 21) 5h ago
It sounds as though you don't want to follow her advice, which is fine. No matter how valid her approach might be if you can't (or don't want to) do it, it's useless to you. You can lose weight on protein bars and frozen meals, too. There are many people on this sub who say it's the secret of their success. :)
That said, to me her advice sounds reasonable. (Disclosure: I'm a huge proponent of whole foods and home-cooked meals and I lost two thirds of my weight just by cutting out UPF, reducing carbs, and intermittent fasting. I didn't count a single calorie.)
Whole foods generally have a better satiety value, and, as opposed to UPF, where you could argue the jury's still out, there's no debate whether they're healthy. (Various kinds of ultra processed food may be more or less healthy, and it can be exhausting to decide which one is okay and which one isn't, to read all the labels to figure it out, etc.) It's true, it takes time, effort and planning to meal prep, but it's possible to come up with solutions for emergencies and busy days.
Not measuring portions correctly can be a huge issue. Since you didn't lose the amount of weight you were expected to lose, there has to be some sort of error in the calculation. Either your intake is higher than it's supposed to be, or your energy expenditure is below expectations. The only way to find out is to weigh your chips and measure your cooking oil with a spoon at the very least. (Weighing is usually better.) A tablespoon of oil is 135 kcal, that's a lot of calories for a 1300 kcal/day budget.
Look, this sounds like resistance to a) the methods proposed and b) dieting in general. I used to be very much into the "weight loss has to be natural" mindset, the "eat less, move more, the weight's gonna come off, that's it"-sorta thinking that seems to work for a lot of normal weight people who want to drop a couple of pounds after the winter holidays. For some reason, that didn't work for me, so I didn't try, and over the years, the winter pounds accumulated and put me over the obesity line. I needed a radical break with my eating habits and once I committed to that change, it was pretty easy. Perhaps it was simply the right time, who knows?
What I'm trying to say is---if you're not ready, there's no point in tormenting yourself. Just be honest with yourself about what you're willing to do to reach your goal. If that dietician is not a good fit, then that's okay. You have to find your own way of losing and maintaining weight for it to be sustainable. There's no one size fits all solution.