A student came up to me today and told me the heart-wrenching story of her obese sister. Even though she is quite close to her, the sister refuses to fill out any forms and serve as a case study for her nutrition-student sister.

As the story unfolded, her sister had apparently come out of the womb wanting to eat more than her other two siblings, according to the mother. She had been overweight as a child and had grown into an adult diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. She is a closet eater and as far as she is concerned, she was just born that way. According to her, her slim sister could never understand because she was born craving cottage cheese and fruit and not the high calorie sugary things that had plagued her. As the student was talking, I was ticking off in my head all the areas we would look at as holistic nutritionists with a client like this; liver, weight loss, adrenals, blood sugar, candidiasis, hidden allergies, emotional issues, stress management.  I even started to think about what the mother’s nutritional status might have been when she was pregnant and how much we can help pregnant women deliver babies into the best circumstances. We could help her so much.

The sister, now a mother of two, had already lost 100 pounds once and gained it backed plus more.  Again, I understood instantly, that she had just lost the weight and not looked at any of the underlying issues and not corrected any she may have had. Instead she had cut calories, and created an even more nutrient deficient person so that her body would signal her with even stronger cravings  in a wrong attempt to get her to give her body more nutrients. I asked how she accomplished this weight loss and the student told me she had seen a nutritionist. "One of us?" I asked. "No".

And there lies the problem, a holistic nutritionist would have looked at all of the issues and provided a program that would have corrected them, including directing her to people who could help with issues we don’t address; like the emotional ones. This would have taken her off this cycle of losing and gaining. But because there are other types of nutritionists out there, the sister, having already had the experience of one and had it not solve her issues, is now loathed to go through the process again; especially with a relative. We all know how readily our family members embrace our advice in the best of circumstances.  

So, it is important for us to define what we do clearly and all the issues we can help. We need to distinguish what the word “holistic” means, especially when added to the words “nutrition” or “nutritionist”. And the sooner the public understands this distinction, the sooner they will truly understand where the help they need is available.