What is a Holistic Nutritionist?

When looking for help at making healthier food and lifestyle choices the amount of options you have can be overwhelming.

While scrolling through all the nutritionists, dieticians and naturopaths you can help but asking - whats the difference?

In this post I’m explaining what holistic nutritionists do and what's the difference with with other nutrition experts.

Holistic Nutrition

Simply put, holistic nutrition uses nutrition as healing for a person's emotional, physical, mental and spiritual health.

Holistic nutritionists acknowledge that there’s no one-size fits all diet and looks at every person as individual instead of applying generic guidelines for everyone.

Holistic nutrition is more than a diet—it’s a lifestyle. Therefore it doesn't work as an overnight fix for many years of unhealthy food habits. It's more about slowly adopting a sustainable lifestyle that promotes natural healthy whole foods that are unprocessed.

Holistic Nutritionists are kind of like “whole food personal trainers”.

Holistic Nutrition Service Examples

The services that holistic nutritionist offer can vary slightly, but here are some common examples:

• Diet and lifestyle evaluation & counseling

• Healthy eating advice

• Shopping tours

• Meal planning

• Goal setting

• Weight management

• Lifestyle & stress management

• Help with dietary changes & food allergies

Holistic Nutrition Benefits

So what’s in it for you?

Holistic nutrition can support and improve your wellbeing in various different ways. Depending of your individual needs, these are some of the many potential benefits you can get from Holistic Nutrition.

What Holistic Nutrition Is Not

If a holistic nutritionist is trying to give you any medical diagnose or tells you to stop taking your medications, make sure you run and run fast.

Even though many Holistic Nutritionists have a good understanding of the common diseases and their causes and symptoms, they don’t have any medical training and therefore are unqualified to do such recommendations.

However, holistic nutritionists might suspect a health issue and then refer the client to a MD or work together with a doctor in order to support the client with changes in the diet when trying to lower blood pressure or cholesterol medication for example.

Holistic Nutritionist should never:

• Practice medical nutrition

• Diagnose and treat disease

• Change clients medications

• Make unproven health claims

• Use unproven devices, assessments or therapies

Difference Between Holistic Nutritionist and Dietician

Dietician is someone who has a Bachelors Degree in food and nutrition and therefore has a longer and more comprehensive formal training than nutritionists.

Unlike natural nutrition programs that delve into the connection between the body mind and spirit, dieticians often have less emphasis on the holistic perspective and natural unprocessed choices.

Dieticians all have the same university level training and its strictly regulated whereas holistic nutritionist certifications can vary and have less regulation. It's kind of a similar difference such as between personal trainers and physiotherapists.

Holistic Nutritionist vs Naturopath

Naturopathic medicine uses natural remedies to help the body heal itself. It embraces many alternative therapies, including herbs, massage, acupuncture, exercise, and nutritional counseling.

There are traditional naturopaths and licensed naturopathic doctors who both aim to help the body heal through natural substances such as food, herbs, and alternative therapies. However, their education is very different. Licensed naturopathic doctor is a MD who is trained to diagnose and prescribe, while a traditional naturopath isn't able to do so.

Traditional naturopath and holistic nutritionist can have very similar practises, however, holistic nutritionist often emphasizes healing with whole foods whereas naturopath might focus more on the healing power of herbs or some other natural lifestyle approaches.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it.

If you’re looking for medical advice, a magic weight loss pill or other quick fix, holistic nutritionist won't be the best solution for you.

However, if you're looking to make make changes in your lifestyle in order to increase your mood and energy levels, improve your wellbeing and lose weight - holistic nutrition might be just the right thing for you.