My journey

Back in 2010, I was an enthusiastic graduate dietitian eager to educate people on the benefits of medical nutrition therapy to help them improve their health, medical conditions and lives.

Very quickly I realised imparting nutrition knowledge alone was not enough but this is what my dietetic training prepared me for – to provide nutrition education, not to counsel around issues related to nutrition. Even though clients seemed motivated initially, then would come back to our sessions not having implemented many or sometimes any of the changes we had discussed. I was left not knowing how to proceed and just re-educated them again or made the goals smaller. After-all this is what my dietetic training prepared me for. Over time, these clients stopped coming back.

I was left feeling frustrated and ineffective. This is not what I expected of my career and I frequently spoke about this with my peers. The most common words of advice I heard were “these clients are not ready to change and there’s not much you can do about it”.

But deep down I knew I could. I knew I needed a skillset that would allow me to be able to explore peoples’ barriers to change and help draw out their motivation and commitment to a lifestyle that would help them meet their goals.

Thankfully, I had one amazing mentor that encouraged me to pursue further training in counselling. Improving my counselling skills has had a transformational impact on my practice – the relationships I create with clients, their engagement in our sessions, their openness to discuss barriers, to overcome them to get results and keep working together.

Now I also help dietitians and nutritionists like you, learn these evidence-based, imperative skills and apply them to their practice to feel more confident in the service they provide, more fulfilled and effective.