Episode Summary
In this insightful episode, Erin is joined by Stephanie Notaras, a seasoned dietitian, Director of the Dietician Counselling Skills Practice, and host of The Nutrition Counselling Podcast. Together, they dive into the often-overlooked emotional and psychological layers of nutrition change—what really keeps people stuck, and how both clients and practitioners can move through resistance, shame, and overwhelm toward lasting behavior change.
Stephanie shares evidence-based strategies for building confidence, increasing tolerance for discomfort, and setting realistic expectations in a world that constantly markets “quick fixes.” Whether you’re a healthcare professional or someone navigating your own wellness journey, this conversation is packed with wisdom, empathy, and actionable tools.
Episode Highlights
- Why change feels harder than it “should”: Stephanie breaks down the gap between what people expect from nutrition changes and what actually happens—especially when it’s slow, nonlinear, and emotionally taxing.
- The myth of motivation: Motivation isn’t the whole story—Stephanie explains how confidence, not just motivation, is a crucial driver of sustainable change.
- Small wins are powerful: Rather than aiming for a full “food makeover,” she encourages building confidence through small, meaningful actions within your capacity.
- What to do when clients have tried everything: Stephanie validates the experiences of chronic dieters and offers a framework for rebuilding trust in their ability to succeed.
- How to support all-or-nothing thinkers: She shares techniques for helping clients shift from perfectionism to progress-based thinking, even when they feel discouraged.
- Why clients stop showing up—and how to prevent it: Learn how to explicitly invite clients to return even when they feel like they’ve failed.
- The importance of setting expectations early: Teaching clients what to expect—especially the struggle—can increase their tolerance for change and help them stick with the process.
- Practitioner mindset shift: Erin and Stephanie discuss how providers can move from “fixers” to supportive guides, and why clients don’t just need information—they need a therapeutic, individualized relationship.
- Google isn’t the enemy: Stephanie offers a refreshing take on how to validate clients who come in with self-researched (and sometimes confusing) information, and how to build from it instead of shutting it down.
Resources Mentioned
- Check out Stephanie’s offerings on her website: Click here
- Stephanie’s Podcast: The Nutrition Counselling Podcast – A must-listen for dietitians and nutrition professionals focused on mindset and counseling skills.
- Follow Stephanie on Instagram: @dietitiancounsellingskills (note: “counselling” is spelled with two Ls – she’s Australian!)
- Free Facebook Group for Professionals: Stephanie offers regular free trainings and education for dietitians and nutritionists inside her Facebook group. Join here
Connect with Us
- Visit our website for more episodes and information.
- Follow us on social media for updates and health tips.
- Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review!
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Subtitles:
Hi there and welcome back to the Empowered Nutrition Podcast. Erin Skinner here, and I can’t wait for you to hear this epi episode with Stephanie NATOs, who is a dietician in Australia, and she’s also the host of the Nutrition Counseling Corner podcast, a published author and the owner of the online Dietician Counseling Skills Practice. She has a master’s degree in counseling and helps dieticians around the world improve their counseling skills for better client outcomes and retention. Stephanie has developed, evaluated and published a counseling skills framework for dieticians to apply in their practice. I absolutely am fascinated by Stephanie. I followed her for a very long time, and this was a dream to interview her because the longer I work in nutrition, the more I realize that the work she does is where it’s at. And you don’t have to be working with a dietician in order to leverage all of the valuable insights that she shares in this podcast.
Insights about strategies for effectively changing eating behaviors and sustaining it strategies for what to do when you’ve tried a lot of things when it comes to your nutrition and you haven’t had results long term from any of them. And it causes you to sort of like lose faith and lose confidence, what you can do in that situation. And also how to just prepare for the process of change because it is harder than I think our society tells you it’s going to be. And so how to prepare for that so that you’re not thrown off by that. So she shares a ton of valuable insights. I hope you enjoy. And don’t forget to check out the show notes to see where you can learn more about Stephanie. I highly recommend her podcast and her course as well. Take care. Hi Stephanie. Welcome to the Empower Nutrition podcast. I can’t wait to chat with you. How are you?
I’m very well, thank you. How are you?
I’m great. My day was a little crazy, but I was looking forward to this all day. This is my highlight for me, Don, just being a little creepy fan right now, but I can’t wait to ask you some questions about what you do.
Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be on your podcast today.
Thanks. So maybe lemme start with this, you know, when we go to school to be a dietician, it’s all, it’s a science field, it’s a clinical field, it’s very technical. So tell me, but obviously you’re, you, you know, you have all those skills and you know all how to do all that. But I’m curious how you got into the work you do because you heavily focus on how we can communicate better with our patients to help them along the side of warm behavior change. It’s like the, the problem is like, we know what, maybe we have a an instruction on what we technically should do, but doing it is another thing. So tell me how you got into like that side of nutrition work.
Oh, yes. So I, I got into it actually probably in the first couple of years of working as a dietician. So like all of us, we went through our training, got our degrees, and then were just really excited to work with clients and in part our wisdom and our knowledge. But I noticed very early on that I would be having these fantastic conversations with clients, like really great initial assessments, but then they would find the change process a lot harder than I was expecting them to find it. It was really difficult for them to make the changes that we had agreed upon that they said, yes, that’s possible. They would be coming back from like for their reviews and they would be saying, look, it’s just been really hard. I haven’t had enough time to do X, Y, and Z and I really didn’t know where to go from there.
As we are very much trained to give information and educate, but not so well trained to coach and counsel people through the behavior change. And thankfully I had a couple of amazing mentors at the time where one of them said to me, oh, Stephanie, this is part of running a nutrition practice. There are going to people that going to be people that are ready to change and people that aren’t, there’s not much you can do about it. And then I had another mentor who had some advanced counseling skills training and really got me to think a little bit deeply about how I was feeling, what I felt was missing and how I would, if I ideally could show up for my nutrition clients the way I would like to, what would that involve? And they, that was probably the catalyst for me deciding to go and advance my counseling skills and go back to university and get my master’s in counseling because I really felt like I can help people with the what of behavior change and the why, but I wasn’t sure how to help people with the how. And that’s what people struggle the most with. So fast forward me getting into the degree, I was speaking to my manager and I asked them, can you please put me in an area where I will be talking to people and I will be able to really help them with behavior change, like in our organization, which clients struggle the most with change. And so Erin, that’s how I ended up in renal. In the renal.
Oh.
Because they’re like, you know, we’re really struggling with our, with the renal service. The no-show rate of all of our clinics are 50%. And there was like thousands of clients that needed to be seen and half of them wouldn’t show up when they had an appointment. And they’re like, what do you think about taking that on? And I said, challenge accepted. Because up until that point I was learning everything from my counseling degree and I was slowly putting together a new framework that I was trialing with all my clients. And it, I was getting very good like results and feedback from from it to, and so from fast forward a year from there that no-show rate went from 50% to 5%. Like it was such a sign. Significant. Yes. It was such a significant improvement. And these were not clients that just, you know, overnight decided I’m ready for change.
These were the, the same population with very similar problems, having a very difficult time accepting, not, sorry, not accepting their illness, adjusting to their illness because there’s so much to think about and really buying into the idea that perhaps I can make eating behavior changes and they could work with me and it doesn’t have to be so overwhelming. And from there, my practice just grew and grew and I’ve been a renal dietician or a kidney dietician for over 10 years now. And of course that caught the eye of a lot of managers around me. And I got invited to create a counseling skills framework and teach it to all the dieticians in that organization, Erin, which was that there was about 50 of us at the time. Wow. And yeah, so we got to, I, I asked if we could do it under research conditions so it could all be evaluated, it could get peer reviewed, we could actually see what difference having these skills are making on dieticians. And it was very, very positive. The results were significantly Wow. Like their skills had significantly improved. And they were the dieticians that kept saying to me, Stephanie, run this again, Stephanie, make this online. You know, don’t just limit it to our organization. And so now I I, I teach this as a, as a business to dieticians worldwide and heavily involved in research and trying to finish off my PhD. So we’ve got more data and more evidence around how dieticians can do better for their clients.
So Awesome. I mean, I so relate to this in my own practice. I mean I, you, I guess maybe one misconception is like you would think that just practicing nutrition outpatient would sort of like cause this to improve on its own, but I haven’t really found that to be the case. I I, I’ve been doing this now for 10 years as well and I still just don’t really, I still get the, a lot of patients where like they just don’t seem to be getting anywhere and I’m not really sure what to do about it. And I really see that, ’cause I own a group and I have a team of dieticians and I I, I see that in them as well. It’s like, if, if it’s almost like it, if thankfully because of you, I realize it can be learned. But if you didn’t know any better, you almost would think it some like innate thing. Like either they have it or they don’t like Yes, absolutely. Because there’s a stark stark difference between people that kind of have it and they don’t in terms of how well they retain their patients. And thus I think really help them to get the benefit and the help that they’re looking for.
Yes, absolutely. And I’ve had the same experience as well nurturing dieticians on their counseling and coaching skills. That experience alone is not enough to teach you something new. ’cause experience is helping you get better at what you’re already doing. Yeah. And the com and perhaps the complexity of what you are already doing, but counseling and coaching people who are struggling to change is a completely different skillset to education or information giving. And so the only way I’ve ever seen dieticians improve their coaching and counseling skills to a point where they have client retention rates of over 90% very positive reviews from clients, clients are very satisfied and getting really great results is when they are deliberate with what their trialing and what they’re trying to gain experience with. And we just, we just don’t get taught that in our, in our training. But it’s very essential that you train yourself in it once you are a dietician because that’s where you can learn and practice. And your learning curve is actually much more exponential because you’re not worried about, you know, being tested the way that you are or passing exams. Yeah. You are actually just wanting to make a difference in your practice. So I’m a big advocate for postgraduate counseling training for dieticians.
It’s so next level that you actually went to go get a master’s in that. But I wonder if, and I’m, I’m thankful that no longer is that like the only route? I wonder if it’s just that you didn’t really have another way at the time.
Yeah, there was, you are right. There was no other way At the time I had done all the short courses that I could have exhausted in Australia at the time and I really didn’t wanna become a psychologist. Like I wanted to stay as a dietician but with advanced skills. And that led me to the master’s in counseling. But at the same time you are still a dietary, I’m still a dietician, so I’m not practicing as a counselor. Yeah. So there were definitely things that improved my knowledge and my understanding, but I wouldn’t be counseling on that in my practice. You’ve gotta be very aware of your scope. And so Sure. I think that’s where my framework was born from. Like what can I take from this degree that would be applicable to the way we work as dieticians and that would help our clients get better, better outcomes for themselves. And so I, I do get asked the question like, would I have gone to do the masters if a program like what I have is available now? And like it’s, it’s a question mark because these are the skills that yeah, I really wanted to obtain and the skills that I use all the time. And so yeah, I’m glad that it’s available now for other dieticians. So the going back to study is not the only way to, to gain these skills.
Yeah, absolutely. So let me tell me a little bit of the secret sauce, like with nuts and bolts, like don’t tell me all your secrets, but like when a pa when someone, like even someone who’s maybe not working with a dietician, like they maybe just got a new medical diagnosis or they have an upcoming like life event or whatever it is, they feel inspired to work on their health and like modify their nutrition. I I it’s so hard for people to, to implement change. So what, what are some strategies that you would say that you help people with for like changing their eating behaviors?
So the first one is to really help your clients identify what’s in it for them. What is the real drive and motivation behind wanting to change your eating behaviors? And so if you’ve just got a new diagnosis right now, sometimes there can be fear associated with that. A lot of confusion, lots of overwhelm. There’s, you might be projecting into the future like that worry and anxiety because you’re not sure how this is gonna pan out yet because it’s all very new. And I think working with a dietician as early as you can is gonna be quite helpful. So if you can get access to a dietician, that would be amazing. And some of the background work that you can do is really thinking about how you would like your future to look differently with this diagnosis. Or if you already have a diagnosis and you’re very symptomatic with whatever you have, or not symptomatic, but it could become symptomatic in the future.
Really thinking about, you know, if I was to fast forward to two or three or five years from now, how would I like things to be different? Because that’s what you wanna be thinking about. You wanna be thinking about the future that you are working towards and that things have and have faith that things can actually get better and be managed. ’cause the start is always going to be quite overwhelming and and difficult. So I really talk about building the future vision that you want for yourself first and trying to go as deep as you can. So asking yourself a few questions such as, you know, where would I wanna see myself in a year or two from now? Why would this be important to me to achieve? And how would this impact my life and my relationships and the things that I really wanna be doing?
Because it’s gotta hit deep in order for you to commit to the process with longevity. What we see a lot in the, in the literature, but I see it a lot with my nutrition clients as well, is that when you feel like something’s been enforced on you, it ha you know, you’re not really sure how it’s gonna benefit your life. You can’t see a future vision. It requires too much self-control to main, to either make or maintain the changes. But when there is a very big reason from inside of you as to why you want things to be better, that’s always going to be the step in the right direction. It doesn’t mean change isn’t gonna be hard, but it is going to make it feel like you are pulled towards it because you want it just trying to push away an unwanted outcome.
Yeah.
So that would definitely be step number one. And step number two would be to really expect that change can be difficult. You’re not doing it wrong, it’s just eating behavior change is hard. It’s hard for almost everyone. The ones that I would see the clients I would see that, that seem like it’s a little bit less of a struggle. They’ve got the history of the struggle and they’re kind of on the tail end when they’ve come to see you. Yeah. And so just knowing you’re not alone in that struggle, it doesn’t mean that you are failing, but it is, it does mean though that you have to go through the struggle to get towards the other side. It’s not that easy. There’s a eating is very emotional and even if we don’t realize it, like we have a different relationship with food and our bodies and that affects our relationship with change as well.
So just when you expect the struggle you don’t, it’s, it’s not going to surprise you or shock you so much where you might wanna give up as quickly. And then the third thing that I would really advise is don’t do too much at once, Erin. Mm. So too many things is the enemy of change. You just get so easily overwhelmed and I understand why people want the results, you know, tomorrow. Yeah. Because you just wanna feel better. But it is a process. It does take time and one thing at a time actually gets you further along than trying to do lots of different things, but it doesn’t fit in with your capacity for change and then you stop. And so really believing that slow and steady actually gets you a little bit further along.
So interesting because the three things you said are so good and it’s like number one, really be connected to where you wanna be and why and how it affects your life. But that’s different than the way the, the like our culture motivates people. It’ll motivate them with more shallow things like pictures of looking good in the bathing suit or something like that. And then of not doing too much, what does it is listen it you ex
Expecting the struggle.
Yeah. Opposite of what the society tells you expect, they tell you it’s gonna be easy. And then, and then number three of not doing too much. They tell you to do everything at once. So it’s like, no wonder people are frustrated because it’s like they’re doing like the, the, they feel like they’re getting nutrition guidance all the time, but it’s actually all of it. It’s like the opposite of what you said.
Yes, absolutely. And I think there is a lot of shame and guilt based marketing that happens around health, which is very difficult for people will process it and might feel some of those emotions. And it is so difficult to actually change from a place of shame and guilt. People tend to change from a place of understanding themselves better and being more connected to who they wanna be rather than what society or everyone else is telling them they need to be. And finding that that balance inside them. And you are right, like things are marketed as, you know, do this and you, everything’s gonna get better in 28 days or 30 days or 45 days and it doesn’t even work like that, you know? But that is what’s marketed out there because none of this is regulated unfortunately. Yeah. And so when you actually try to make changes, you’re like, why aren’t I better in a month? Right. Like, what’s going on? And it can be very, very discouraging and very disappointing. So I think if you can take just one thing away from today’s podcast is expected to take a while and that does not mean that you are not on the right track.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s so good. I love how you bring up like the, the shame side of it. And I guess related to that, another thing I’ve heard you talk about is just kind of this phenomenon that I, I definitely see a lot where it’s like they almost, it’s not like they’ve never tried to diet. They’ve tried so many diets and it’s like they’ve kind of run out of the ability to go all in on anything because it’s, it’s failed every time. And so it’s almost like they’ve lost faith that they can, so they’ll, they’ll come and see a dietician and say they want an outcome, but then it’s, it’s kind of what I said where it’s like you can kind of tell that they’ve lost faith in their ability to, to get to be successful and it almost prevents them from even like really even really going all in on anything. So tell me a little bit about that of like, do you, do you think that’s a phenomenon that, like is that happens and like what’s the way you would say like people can work through that?
Yes. It’s definitely something that happens a lot. And that is, that’s actually part of the counseling framework that I teach as well. Spending time with your clients, finding out as much as you can about their past experiences because past experiences are gonna leave a lot of clues as to what your clients might be, what appeals to them to do, what outcomes they’re searching for. And that, and it actually also talks to the effort that people are putting in to trying to find a, like positive outcomes for their health, but they just haven’t gotten there yet. So I I, when I, when I see my nutrition clients, I do hear a lot of them saying, I’ve tried so many things and they’re almost saying it to me as if I might not believe them, but I do believe them because Yeah, of course. Just because you’ve tried but you haven’t gotten the result that you’ve wanted it.
Like that’s effortful. And so the first thing that I talk a lot about with clients and anyone listening like you are putting a lot of effort in, it just has not paid off the way that you wanted it to yet. And so the effort is there, it might be the approach that needs to be refined and the speed of change and also your tolerance to change. And so let’s say if you’ve tried to change your eating behaviors five times and it just didn’t work out for you, you ended up like going back to not being able to sustain it and going back to the way things used to be. Every time you start a new journey, you are starting with a little bit less confidence. Yeah. And confidence is actually a very important aspect of making change and keep and and maintaining the change to get your outcome.
So one thing to expect is that your confidence may not be, may be a bit lower because confidence is always based on your prior experience. So if you don’t have experience of the change being easy, being able to maintain the changes, getting the health outcomes you want in keeping them long term, then it’s not going to feel like it is so possible straight away because it’s based on your prior experiences. So when you’re going into any new relationship with a dietician or any, you’re trying to change your eating behaviors by yourself, whichever way you’re doing it, know that any lack of con or any lower confidence that you have is expected and it’s common. And the only way that you can push through that is from making some changes that are not so overwhelming. Mm. Seeing that you can do it. And that’s where the slow and steady actually really helps you build your confidence because you just keep adding and adding and and adding to it.
I see a lot of the time, you know, motivation will get blamed, I’m just not that motivated. But what I see a lot in practice is that your motivation could be really high, but if your confidence is lower, then that’s also going to make the change feel a little bit harder. Bit harder. And so instead of trying to like beating yourself up about the fact that you don’t feel so motivated, like working on your confidence, like your belief in your ability that you can make this happen. And of course there are going to be things around you that are gonna make change justifiably harder and hopefully your practitioner will take that into account and work with your capacity for change. So let’s say you live a very busy lifestyle, you’ve got caring responsibilities, you feel like your stress is a lot higher these days. Maybe taking on five things is actually gonna exacerbate all of that. Yeah. But taking on one or two things is gonna allow it to be doable. And then you build on that and and really believing that that’s the way forward. You don’t need to be doing more to be better, you just need to be doing what is within your capacity and moving forward.
So good. I almost think that, yeah, it’s like you try to build in some like what are some true wins that you can get and, and start to get some wins under your belt. And in order to do that, don’t pay attention to what the world is telling you to do. It’s, you know, ideally, like you said, work with a practitioner, even if you’re by yourself, it’s like what’s a really small change you can make? And it, it probably won’t feel life changing in terms of your health overnight, but you’re building your confidence back that you can implement something and stick with it.
Absolutely. And nutrition is one of those areas of health where you don’t always see the change or the result that you’re hoping for straight away, but it is happening and then you might see it in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days. But usually in my experience, if people can get through the first 90 days of trying to make changes without evaluating whether this is working or not, like just let the outcomes go for 90 days so you can learn what you need to do, build the right systems around you, the right e the the eating habits that are gonna help you meet your goals. I always see that things tend to change around that 95th day mark or that three month mark because if you are trying to improve gut related symptoms, if you’re trying to improve, you know, blood test results, those things tend to need time that the changes need time to work in your body before they manifest in you being able to physically see the change or seeing it on a blood test. And so if you can give yourself the time without wishing it was going, like you can still wish that you, you wish it happened tomorrow. Yeah. But if you can wait that period out, most people tend to see, see positive results going into the direction that they want to.
Okay. And, and since, since you’re kind of doing one small thing at a time, I’m sure it depends on the person, but I’m assuming that over that 90 days there’s more than one small change. It’s like you’re slowly adding these small changes on maybe like one a month or one every two weeks or something like that. Yes,
Yes. Absolutely. So I would generally recommend that you try and do no more than one to three things at a time. If you have the capacity to do so, that’s okay, go for it. You can do a little bit more. But then if, if, if the days or the weeks do get busier or more stressful than expected, have your top one to two priorities out of that, those group of things that you’re doing that you can fall back on. Mm. So it doesn’t become I’m either doing everything or I’m doing nothing. You want it to be, I’m either doing it all or I’m still doing something because that’s something is going to propel me forward. And that’s a very big shift in people’s thinking because all or nothing thinking tendencies are very common. Yeah. They stem usually from our childhoods. They’re ingrained in us. You know, you’re not just gonna be like, I’m gonna stop thinking this way and acting this way tomorrow. Yeah. It’s, it’s a process. And so by working with hopefully a, a dietician that can help you prioritize what to start with, finds out what your capacity is and work works towards that, you’ll just build on that over the, over the first 90 days.
Sounds so simple what you’re saying, but when I, when I think about sitting across from someone with all or nothing thinking and they want a full like food makeover, it’s, it’s kind of scary to think about giving them one small thing because you feel worried that they’re gonna be frustrated with that.
Absolutely. That is, that is a fee that almost every dietician I work with will say to me. And I think that the most important part of this working is you communicating with your clients as to what is your capacity for change between now and our next session. Because you can absolutely show them how you’re going to help them over the time that you are working together. And you wanna see that from your practitioner. You wanna know how are they going to help you get from where you are now to where you wanna be over the time that you’re going to work together. But it is unrealistic to think that you can make all the changes at once. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not as common. Maybe for some people it’s going to, they will be able to do that. But the way, the way that I would practice that concept is telling people how I’m going to help them, what types of changes I think should be prioritized in their life to help them get the results that they’re really looking for. And then I would check with them, what is your capacity to for change? How many things can you take on between now and the next session? And the answer that I always get, Erin, without a doubt, is it depends what you’re going to say, what you’re gonna tell me to do, Stephanie. Sure. Yeah. I’m like, alright, well I’ll give them a list of things and then they choose.
Yeah. So what
You’re doing there is that you are not just saying, I’m only gonna leave you with one thing, but someone’s got capacity to do three things or four things. You ask them about their capacity and let’s say someone says to you, oh, I can do five or six things over the next two weeks. Sure. Give them, give them the recommendations that they are yearning for, but always have a backup plan. Yeah. If things get unexpectedly stressful and time gets taken away from you,
You pair it down.
Yeah. Pair it down
Like these, this are vitamin that’s passing score one thing and then the rest of this is extra credit. You’re, you’re welcome to do the extra credit, but if you don’t it’s okay. You still pass.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you just brought up a really good point that sometimes people think they need to be making changes to come back to see their dietician. I mean I’ve had so many people say to me, yeah, I almost didn’t show up today
Because I didn’t do it. Like that’s why you should come actually.
For sure. And so I tell my like, that’s one thing that I would recommend you say to your nutrition clients, no matter what happens over the next two weeks, you never have to qualify for an appointment with me. Please come back. Because when you are struggling, it’s actually one of the most important times for us to have a conversation around that. And that’s, that’s a, a retention strategy in itself. It builds a lot of a very strong relationship with your clients. ’cause people wanna know they’re not gonna feel judged if they’re struggling. That’s very important.
That’s so good because I don’t think I do explicitly say that. ’cause to me it’s just like, of course, you know, if you’re struggling, that’s the most important time to meet. But I think actually that’s not obvious and and they No it’s not. Yeah. The opposite that they might be judged like you said, or it could be embarrassing or they might, I might be disappointed or you know, if you just openly say that, then that I sure is very comforting to them. Yeah. So good. Absolutely. Okay. Well tell me about this. I’ve heard he is talking about increasing tolerance for the change process. And I’ll admit I don’t know much about that. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about that.
Yes, sure. So one of the concepts I talk about is helping people increase their window of tolerance to change. Because our tolerance is not always very, like our window’s not always very wide. Everyone’s going to have quite a different relationship with change. They’re going to have a different relationship with themselves in terms of like how they feel in terms of the speed of progression. And not everyone is comfortable with struggling. And a lot of when these emotions come up for you, it can be very difficult to process them. So then you kind of might shut it down and not wanna do it anymore. And so one thing that I talk a lot about with my nutrition clients, and I recommend it to every dietician, is start conversations around what the process of change is expected to look like for your clients. Like what is normal?
What is expected? What is common? Like what are your most successful clients do differently? So you can share what I like to term insider knowledge. And this was from one of my published studies back in 2018 where I was interviewing nutrition clients around their experience with eating behavior change and their experiences with working with dieticians. And one of them said to me, it’d be really good if you could just like tell us, you know, how hard it’s gonna be at the beginning, but that we’re gonna get there. And I was like, that is such a good point. We know it’s going to be hard, we don’t expect it to be easy for you. But if you are expecting it to be easy and then you struggle, the first thing that’s gonna come up for you is disappointment. It’s the fear of failure. Oh no, this is not working.
Another thing that’s not working. And so the idea of giving up becomes so attractive because you are, you are genuinely worried that this is not gonna get, get you to where you wanna be. And so when you can openly tell clients what they can expect from the process and that all your clients, like even your, your most successful clients go through the struggle. But what is often the difference between people that keep going and that don’t keep going is what meaning they’ve assigned to the struggle is the meaning is this part of it and I need to just keep working on it. I need to talk this out with my dietician, I’m going to get through this. Or is it, oh, this is a sign, something’s not working, I must stop. And so when you give people that insider knowledge that even my most successful clients, they struggle but they come back, they come back and they’re trying their best to move through the emotions, the uncomfortable emotions of things not changing and continually making the effort when they’re not seeing results just yet. That is, that is what’s going, like, it’s part of helping people increase their tolerance to change. Because knowing what to expect that predictability can reduce the overwhelm that comes from those first 90 days of doing something very different.
Wow, that’s so interesting because again, it’s another thing that from the dietician’s end, you almost think goes without saying how hard it’s gonna be, but you’re totally right. I think they don’t really expect it. And then you’re, and then like what you said is so true of like when it is hard and it, it always is, they’re in a difficult position. It’s like, well I’m disappointed now and and the easiest thing is to just cancel my appointment. So, but if you previously told them to expect that it’s part of the process and I’ve seen people that would push through like, do you get results? Like that would be such an encouragement.
Yeah. I I, in my experience, it is a very big encouragement and it’s a very effective counseling strategy to help people not like to be able to manage the overwhelm that comes with the struggles and also to get them comfortable to keep coming back to you as well because it’s part of the process. And hopefully when your clients come back to you, you do have the coaching and counseling skills to talk through it in a way that’s going to be very helpful for them so they can understand the situation better and also move forward from it.
Yeah. So good. It’s fascinating. I mean, again, it’s just so counter-cultural, all of it, but it reminds me of like a question I got one time from an interviewer. They said, you know, how do you even get any patients coming to your clinic? You know, they can, they can just go online and get as much free nutrition information as they want. Why would they ever come to you? It’s like, well it’s not that, it’s not that that’s a com competition thing for a dietician. I think it’s almost like that’s why, that’s part of why they come is they’re seeing all that information. They’re trying things, they’re not getting anywhere. They’re frustrated and what’s missing is, that’s all just information. But everything you’re talking about is, is different. It’s about mindset and expectations and the process and that’s really where it’s at.
Yes. And that, that’s a very interesting question that you got from a Yeah. You being interviewed. Correct. But do you know what the, the other thing too is that that is such a big misconception that the, and that that’s actually the traditional health model that is built on. So the problem is a knowledge deficit. The solution is giving the knowledge and then the outcome is at the behavior is is changed. But that’s not be, behavior change is so much more emotional than that. And I would also argue that having too much information is also very confusing and overwhelming. And when it’s not regulated, you don’t know what to believe and where, where the value comes from getting support with your eating behavior change journey is that you wanna find out which out of all this information is contextual to me. Yeah. Like what matters to me, that’s number one.
Because not all of it is going to be applicable. Not all of it is even going to be helpful. Some of it’s gonna be harmful. And so you need that trained eye work out, you know, with what you’ve got going on right now, whether it’s a diagnosis or general, you know, health promoting activities that you might wanna be, wanna take part of it really has to match the person’s individual circumstances and their, and their histories. Yeah. The other thing is that change really requires support and accountability and scaffolding. Like what do you do first? What’s the biggest priority? Yeah. How do you help people with the change process the mindset, but with the strategies that are also going to give them the biggest return on investment. So I I think that that’s, that’s a great question for us as dieticians to really think about what value we bring beyond what is already available for people. So they’re very clear on the process that we take them through. Otherwise no one would have health issues if all of the nutrition advice was number one doable.
Yeah, exactly. That’s what it says. It actually helps us, it gets everybody overwhelmed and wanting Yeah. To just get something to help them because yeah, in Instagram reels aren’t getting them anywhere. And what you said is so good, it’s like a dietician. One of the, well the thing that we, we can do is like, I got a picture of like, almost like a, like a, a grid in my mind when you were talking of like, okay, there’s the things that are hard to do and the things that are easier to do and then there’s the things that are gonna change your health faster and the things that are gonna change your health slower or not at all. And we can kind of in our mind look at somebody’s medical history and their story, hear their story and we can, we can know what’s in that top right quadrant of that grid of like relatively easy to do, relatively powerful. And then like, do everything that you’ve been sharing with us around like layering and the even more important thing of, you know, that telling them that one thing is like five minutes of the appointment, the rest of the appointment really is just everything else you described of like helping them with their, their mindset laying out the roadmap and supporting them with their expectations is also valuable.
Yep. Absolutely. And I think especially if we think about the clients that you see Erin too, like they’ve got complex medical Yeah. Conditions as well. And so some of that nutrition information’s gonna be, might be really helpful for people that are looking for general healthier eating advice. But when you have medical conditions that you’re really trying to either manage, treat, reverse, this is where you, you need that deeper understanding of putting a roadmap together that is going to meet the person’s personal needs, medical needs Yeah. And everything else that is going on for them. And I’m about to publish a study after I’ve interviewed a another lot of clients who have been trying to change their eating behaviors. And the number one thing that they really struggle with is when things are not customized for them. Mm. Yeah. And it makes change so much harder. And that customization really comes from having a relation, like a professional therapeutic relationship with someone who isn’t an expert in the area that you are trying to improve in. So if it’s eating behavior change, you go to your dietician. If it’s something else, you go to another health professional. But that customization actually keeps people going and makes them think it’s gonna work for them.
That’s so good. Because if they go online and they get generic, a generic plan, it’s gonna probably be highly complex and very restrictive, especially for chronic illness. Like, I got this full autoimmune diet, or I got this full like you therapeutic diet that’s very complicated and has all these phases and it’s very overwhelming, but it, it’s still not individualized for them. Whereas if they meet with someone and work through like that, again, that grid I’m picturing of like, what’s that, that initial, like you said, you ask them like here’s a, here’s a, how many things do you think you can implement? Give them a few options from that top right quadrant and they’ve selected it. It’s like that’s, that’s as custom as it gets. And they’ll probably get more mileage out of that than if they fully implemented the whole tried if they tried to do the whole like super complicated restrictive diet. ’cause they just have a hard time long term sticking to it. Especially since it might not even be the right thing for them.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that having access to all that information has its advantages. Yeah. You know, we can just get so much access now compared to ever before, but just also being mindful that it may not be what, like, it, it might not be suitable for them either. So still coupling that with, you know, the, the advice from, you know, their dietician. And so when when clients come to me and they’re like, oh, I’ve googled this and you know, I’ve read this about kidney disease, I’m really confused. There’s so much to do. I’m always saying, I’m, I’m so glad you’ve done like, thank you for sharing that with me. It sounds like you’re putting in a lot of effort to try and find the right answer. Talk to me about what have, what have you read? What are you trying to achieve? What’s confusing you?
What do you need more certainty about? ’cause I know that sometimes other practitioners are like, oh no, why did you go and and Google all of this? You’ve just got a new self confused. Or I’m like, no. Like this is someone who’s seriously trying to find an answer to their issue. Yeah. And I’m gonna help you find that answer. But I wanna know what you already know, the what, where we are starting from and where I might also as, as your dietician, need to help you reduce your overwhelm or your confusion. ’cause I do not want you leaving a session feeling overwhelmed or confused because that is the recipe for not changing. You need to leave the session with certainty. Very, very clear recommendations that you feel, you know, how you’re going to be able to action them when you go home. So you’ve got that plan as well. ’cause whenever there’s any ambiguity, Erin, it makes, and, and people get confused and it becomes harder to make decisions in the moment. They often will revert to not making the decision.
Absolutely. Yeah. We said was so validating because I think they always fear that, you know, they, they’re between a rock and a hard place as they want. They wanna address their pressing health concern. The the thing that they have access to is the internet. So they try to solve it, but I think there is a fear that they’re gonna be kind of shamed for that or that they’re gonna be dismissed or told that what they’re doing is foolish. And so I love that of like how you just honor that and tell, and then like, you know, tell, tell them how good it is that they’re inspired and just try to like roll with that momentum is amazing.
Yep. Yeah. I I think you’re right. They do find it more validating. Probably earlier in my career, before I had these skills, perhaps I would’ve tried to correct what was wrong with the information that they’ve read a little bit too soon. But now I go through, obviously my thinking is different, my understanding is different. I’m 14 years in now, so I’m a little bit wiser than what I was when I first started. And so you see things differently. So definitely rolling with it. And then once you, you know, someone feels like you are, you’re really respecting what they’ve done up until this, that point and genuinely respecting it. Like this has to come from a genuine Yeah. Place. This is where they become so much more open to hearing what you’ve got to say because they’re feeling comfortable.
Yeah. So good. I feel like I could ask you questions all day, but I know you need to get back to your important things you do. So maybe do you mind just letting people know where they, where can they learn more about you and what are some of the things that they can, maybe for someone who’s a general in public or if someone’s actually a dietician, what are some resources that they might look for from you?
So I have my podcast, which is the Nutrition Counseling Connor podcast. And that’s on Apple and Spotify. It is a, it is more of a professional podcast that is targeted towards dieticians and nutrition professionals. But if you are just curious to find out like all the mindset and counseling strategies that might help you along your journey, feel free to to, to listen on. And then you can also find me on Instagram. My handle is at dietician counseling skills and counseling has a double L, it’s not spelt wrong, it’s just that I’m from Australia. Yeah. So everything has a double L instead of one L. Yeah. And they’re the main places that you can find me. And for any dieticians or nutrition professionals I’m listening on, I do have a free Facebook group where I do regular like continuing education trainings Wow. In there. And I run programs and things. So I can send you the link, Erin, if you’d like to Yes. To share it and, and anyone who’s listening that’s a dietician or nutrition professional may join.
Absolutely. We’ll put everything in the show notes. And your podcast is amazing, by the way. It’s so good.
Oh, thanks so much for the feedback.
I mean it and I appreciate it. I’m planning on sending some people in my group to your course as well, so to be continued.
Oh, thank you. Yep. I’d love that. We can talk about that.
Awesome. Well thank you so much Stephanie. We’ll put everything in the show notes and appreciate your time so much to come on the podcast today.
Thank you. Likewise. So happy to be here.
Take care.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the Empower Nutrition podcast. We love offering insight to help you optimize your wellness. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to leave us a rating on whichever platform you’ve stream from and consider subscribing. Also, you can learn more about our practice@www.empowernutrition.health and that link is also in your show notes. Take care and talk to you soon.