What can I expect from my nutritionist regarding my weight?

The nutritionist, along with the rest of your treatment team, works with you to help you in all practical areas of your relationship with food, eating and weight. He or she weighs you and helps determine weight goals and how to reach those goals. Although not all nutritionists agree, many believe that treatment is most successful when clients are weighed with their backs to the scale and the weight or need to know a number is removed. I agree with this philosophy and have practiced it with great success for 30 years. Scale weight is unreliable and people with eating disorders are overly sensitive to numbers.

The nutritionist and/or therapist can keep track of the numbers and communicate with you about your progress. Weighing yourself interferes with treatment. For example, people who have bulimia or binge eating disorder can have a good week without engaging in binge eating or other disordered eating behaviors, but then step on the scale and see weight gain or no weight loss, feeling defeated. and then they binge. People with anorexia who find they have gained a pound freak out and usually do everything they can to lose it. Letting a nutritionist (or whoever fills this role on your treatment team) take over the weigh-in and weight area is a central part of recovery. The goal is to resume normal, healthy eating habits and get rid of the destructive ones. A number on a scale is secondary. Of course, if you have anorexia you can’t recover unless you gain weight, you’ll probably have to eat more food than you think and more than a regular diet to do so. A nutritionist can help you in this difficult task.