Dietetics

WhY see a dietitian?

Whilst there are now numerous people who offer nutritional support privately, very few of these are qualified or sufficiently experienced to work with eating disorders.  Eating disorder dietetics is a very different field to general nutritional guidance, and specialist dietitians are often vital to the successful recovery of an eating disorder. 

Within the London Centre, dietetic therapy can be offered as a one off assessment and guidance session, as a stand alone therapy, or as on-going supportive therapy alongside or following psychological therapy.  When clients are involved in on-going dietetic therapy, this is usually offered anywhere between weekly to 6 weekly depending on need.

DIETETIC ASSESSMENT

A thorough dietetic assessment aims to understand a client’s current clinical status, weight history, dietary intake, eating pattern and beliefs about food. It is vital that each person with an eating disorder or disordered eating is considered as an individual.  Each client will have multiple factors leading to their current difficulties, will have unique nutritional needs, and will need unique guidance on how to normalise their relationship with food.  In addition, people with anorexia nervosa are at high risk of re-feeding syndrome. Dietitians are specially trained to identify those at risk of re-feeding syndrome and to work with clients to adjust nutritional intake in a safe way. A detailed and thorough assessment is therefore always recommended before any nutritional guidance is provided.

Within an assessment session, clear treatment goals and aims will be identified and a treatment plan devised according to these goals. Some people will feel happy to take dietetic guidance away and work on this by themselves or with the support of their psychologist; others feel they require regular input from a dietitian to help them achieve these goals. When a client has already had a full psychological assessment, a lot of information about a client’s needs will already be known, and the team will always work together to ensure regular and clear handovers between all clinicians involved in your treatment.

DIETETIC THERAPY

The aim of dietetic therapy is to provide education, guidance, support and specialist advice on any area of nutritional intake in order to promote physical and emotional health and to improve overall well-being. 

Our specialist dietitians will support and guide you towards a healthy diet plan that will help you to maintain physical, emotional and psychological health. Your meal plan will be personalised, structured, healthy and balanced, ensuring that you are meeting your body’s nutritional needs, as well as keeping your energy levels constant so that dips in mood and urges to overeat are reduced.

Appropriate goals for dietetic work might be to restore healthy weight, to reduce physiological urges to binge, to better understand what nutrition your body needs, to tackle feared or avoided food types, to develop a healthier relationship with exercise and to understand how this will impact on your nutritional needs, to reduce laxative or diuretic use in a healthy way or to challenge and reduce misconceptions about food, nutrition or your body.

For individuals wanting to reduce their weight, either following treatment for binge-eating or alongside psychological treatment for emotional health concerns, your dietitian will assess your dietary needs and construct a personalised plan that will enable you to achieve your weight goals in a healthy way. This does not involve fad diets or unrealistic food choices, but a healthy structured plan that you will be able to maintain over time.