Nutrition counseling is foundational to good health. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation about nutrition on social media and news sources. Fad diets become popular even when they are not based on good scientific research. In order to get the most out of your nutritional choices, it’s important to discuss your options with a nutrition expert. The friendly staff at Enhanced Wellness Living can help folks in Ridgeland, Mississippi and Jackson, Mississippi unlock the code for a good nutritional program that will yield a number of surprising health benefits.
What Is Nutrition Counseling?
We don’t often think of food as a medicine, but a considerable amount of research has demonstrated that a healthy diet can have tremendous benefits to your energy levels, longevity, and overall sense of well-being. Most of us have had the experience of trying a new food only to discover that it leads to indigestion or a sense of discomfort.
Our inclination is to dismiss the new food, but that is the wrong approach. The discomfort you feel is an indication of your body’s ability to adapt to different things. There’s nothing wrong with the new food: it’s just that your body is not used to it yet.
Human beings are highly adaptable. After a long, hot summer, the first freezing days of autumn can feel unbearable. However, after several winter months of sub-freezing conditions, you perceive a day of the same temperature as a heat wave. Your body has adapted, although the process takes a long time and can be confusing at times.
Nutrition counseling can help you navigate the process of adapting your body to accept a healthier diet. Knowledgeable health experts can inform you of what to expect so you don’t make the wrong dietary choices and fall back into unhealthy eating habits.
Your Unique Nutritional Needs
Everyone is different with varying goals and objectives. The nutritional needs of a professional athlete are different than the nutritional needs of an educator. There is variation even among athletes, as some sports require muscle mass for strength while others need a lean body for endurance.
In addition to differing objectives, people also have differing body chemistry. The diet that may work for one person with a specific set of goals may not achieve those same results for a different individual.
Nutrition counseling uses a scientific process to navigate the various nutritional theories and sculpt them so that every individual gets the greatest possible benefit. You need a nutritional plan that is catered directly to you and which monitors the effect of your dietary choices. A professional counselor can help you identify problem areas and create alternative solutions so you achieve success at a much faster rate than you could alone.
Healthy Foods
Good nutrition is usually comprised of unprocessed foods, whole foods, and organic foods. Getting counseling on nutritional issues can help you find new and interesting flavors and textures that keep your menu varied and interesting.
It is inaccurate to believe that a good diet is a bland diet. Your counselor can suggest a variety of foods and ways to prepare them which will give you the greatest chance to stay committed to your diet. It is even possible to find ways to integrate your favorite foods into your diet in moderate amounts in a way that encourages you to stay the course.
Correct Portions
Many American restaurants over-serve their customers, and people have been trained that it is discourteous to leave food on their plates. This line of thinking is outdated and detrimental to your health. One of the quickest ways to adopt a healthy diet is to learn to moderate your portions.
Through counseling on nutrition, you will learn to measure your cellular health, inflammation levels, and overall body composition to provide an intracellular analysis of micronutrients. With professional guidance, you will learn the best portion sizes to keep you fit and maintain alertness while eliminating hunger pangs.
When to Eat
People who participate in fad diets often find themselves making poor dietary choices. They may get up in the middle of the night for a refrigerator raid, which interrupts both their metabolism and their sleep cycle. Learning when to eat helps you regulate your blood levels and prevents you from experiencing crashes throughout the day.
Whether you need energy for concentration or you need fuel for running a marathon, nutrition counseling will provide you with a more effective plan than you ever believed was possible.
The Health Benefits of Nutrition Counseling
You should think of your nutritional plan as a supplement to any medications you are already taking to combat your health issues. It can take a few months to feel the full benefits of a healthier diet, but if you commit yourself to the path of your nutritional counselor, you will settle into your diet and see dramatic improvements.
Many health issues are directly related to your diet, and many patients find it astounding how much better they feel when making a commitment to a healthier lifestyle. Here are some areas where nutrition counseling can be a benefit:
Obesity
Everybody has been there. You try to lose a few pounds for a reunion or other significant event, and maybe you even succeed in getting the pounds off for a short amount of time. But soon enough, despite all your work and efforts to the contrary, the weight seems to always return. Or, in some cases, you might feel powerless and frustrated to lose weight at all. Nutritional counseling can help you come up with a functional and sustainable plan.
When you attempt to construct your own weight loss plan, you do so without the benefit of scientific knowledge or measurement. It’s only through follow-up visits that you can track the dietary changes that are effective. You shouldn’t feel you have to go through weight loss alone. Achieving a healthy weight brings about many health benefits.
Diabetes
Diabetes is a very common health ailment that can lead to many long-term issues. Today, sugar is hidden in just about anything you see on a shelf at a grocery store. A good dietary plan will allow you to find healthy substitutes for the unhealthy choices all around us and even supply you with healthy ways to satisfy the cravings of a sweet tooth.
Heart Disease
A healthy heart leads to a healthy life. It is difficult to think about the long-term consequences of a poor diet, so you need to put it in the form of a goal you can understand. Don’t you want to be there to walk your child down the aisle on her wedding day? Nutrition counseling can help you learn to avoid the foods that can greatly increase your chances of heart disease.
Allergies
Believe it or not, you can eat food that allows you to breathe better. Many foods can cause inflammation in the chest and lungs, which can block airways and limit the volume of air you receive. A healthy diet helps you breathe better which relieves stress on your heart and the rest of your body.
Cancer
The right diet can help reduce your risk of cancer and contribute to the treatment of any cancer you already have. If you give your body the best possible weapons to fight with, you stand a far better chance of defeating any ailments that beset you.
Other Benefits of Nutritional Counseling
There are both primary and secondary benefits to improving your diet. The primary benefits are those that directly contribute to improvements of your immediate health. The secondary benefits are ways your improved health helps you interact with the world.
What you eat does more than eliminate hunger pangs and provide you with energy to achieve your daily tasks. Your diet can also have a measurable effect your ability to think, focus, and react to the world around you. Here are some more surprising benefits of nutritional counseling:
Better Sleep Cycle
Remember that food is medicine, and if you take the wrong medicine, it can keep you up all night. There is nothing worse than facing a stressful day at work only to find that you are unable to get to sleep at night. You toss and you turn and suffer when the alarm goes off in the morning.
This is a terrible feeling, and with the right counseling, you can greatly reduce the frequency of sleepless nights. You wouldn’t drink a pot of coffee immediately before going to bed, and there are certain food choices that are just as effective at keeping you wide awake.
Better Focus
Have you ever returned to work after lunch and felt groggy and unable to perform? Sometimes you find you have an inability to concentrate or focus. Energy surges and crashes can be a result of poor dietary choices. With a good nutritional plan you can achieve a better focus which allows you to concentrate, remember things, and perform at your highest overall potential.
Fewer Mood Swings
Human beings are highly complex chemical systems, and introducing the wrong element into that system can have very negative effects. We all know people who become angry or aggressive if they drink too much alcohol, and that represents just one instance where a dietary choice can change your mood.
Although the mood swings that are provoked by food are less noticeable than those created by alcohol, it is very useful to know and understand the dietary choices that disrupt your mood so you can feel more in control of your life.
Combats Depression
Having a commitment to the right diet can help you feel better about yourself and give you the self-confidence that you are making positive steps to improve your life. Both the chemical component of a good diet and the psychological benefit can help to stave off depression and allow you to feel better than you have in years.
Longevity
To put it simply, nutrition counseling can help you live longer. Whether you are combating a current illness or you are taking steps to ward off future health concerns, a good diet is a fundamental component of a healthy life.
A healthy life, in turn, leads to greater satisfaction and a sense of empowerment that you have control over how you feel. Nutrition counseling helps you live longer and ensures that you can extract the most satisfaction possible out of every moment.
A Choice for Today and Tomorrow
Sometimes the largest life changes come from the smallest choices. Individuals who have struggled with dieting all their lives are sometimes reluctant to ask for help. They are convinced that they’ve tried everything and that nothing will work for them. However, nutritional counseling combines medical knowledge with technological diagnostics to ensure you will achieve better results than you ever thought possible. Contact Enhanced Wellness Living in Ridgeland, Mississippi and Jackson, Mississippi to find out how nutrition counseling can help you today!
