This is Simone...
Simone is a personal trainer employed by Elev8 Fitness Club and advises clients on how to change nutritional and lifestyle habits as needed. This is usually done during the orientation phase when developing goals, and should cover all aspects of a healthy lifestyle including; fitness, health, nutrition and body composition. Some of Simone's responsibilities is to provide healthy eating information, support healthy attitudes towards food and body composition, and prepare referrals for clients who have health requirements or concerns or need greater support regarding nutrition and positive attitudes to eating. Simone is also studying to become a nutritionist and her interests are general and sports nutrition, researching the effect of nutrients on the body and educating people on nutrition.
What is the Eat for Health Program?
It is a Federal Government initiative to encourage Australian's to achieve positive dietary patterns that promote health and wellbeing and reduce the risk of chronic disease. It provides various resources to help achieve this including the Australian Dietary Guidelines, various calculators, an Educator Guide and healthy recipes.
What are the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
The Australian dietary guidelines are a resource for relevant and legitimate information on eating healthy. Based on factual research, it is practical knowledge broken down to four simple, easy to follow, guidelines. Guideline 1 - To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, be physically active and choose amounts of nutritious food and drinks to meet your energy needs. Guideline 2 - Enjoy a wide variety of nutritious foods from the five food groups every day. Guideline 3 - Limit intake of foods containing saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol. Guideline 4 - Encourage, support and promote breastfeeding. Guideline 5 - Care for your food; prepare and store it safely.
How do you explain the relationship between healthy eating and physical and mental health?
It's no surprise that eating well affects your body in positive ways. The aim is to iterate the importance of healthy eating, understand how healthy eating influences bodily chemical processes and shed light on the effect (positive and negative) healthy eating has on both physical and mental health.
Body composition and physical and mental health are all dependent on one thing – nutrition. Nutrition is typically the process of providing your body with the essential nutrients, it needs, to maintain good health and function properly. When the body is deprived of its essential nutrients body composition gets compromised. That means your body will have either acquired too much unusable fat or severely lack mass. Consequently, your physical health gets jeopardised as the body becomes susceptible to harmful diseases and will either not function normally or not at all. This can create a heavy mental burden on any individual and cause them to lose all confidence, and in extreme cases, faith in themselves and in living.
When providing 'healthy eating' information to clients, what are some of the limits to your role as a personal trainer?
It is important to understand this information is solely for educational purposes. It is not intended to be used for providing anyone with individualised dietary analysis, advice, or any information specific to diets. It is not to be used to provide advice for the care of infants and toddlers, elderly people or anyone with medical conditions. For those such cases, clients should be referred to an accredited practising Dietician, accredited Sports Dietician, or General Practitioner.
As a personal trainer, I must not attempt to treat diseases or perform any kind of diagnosis for clients. I must not recommend any specific diet or design a program that specifically targets a disorder that they say they have. I can not prescribe medications or provide any medical advice. All this has to be left to the health care professional that the client is seeing or is referred to.
What is the difference between a nutritionist and a dietician?
Nutritionists specialise in the study of nutrition, which includes preventive nutrition, diseases related to nutrient deficiencies, and the science of nutrition but they do not treat illness or prescribe medication.
Dieticians and nutritionists are both professionals who specialise in food and nutrition. But accredited dieticians are legally considered experts in nutrition. Dieticians help promote healthy eating habits to prevent and treat illness through supervision of food preparation and service, dietary modifications, and public education. They analyse the nutritional content of food and as medical experts in their field, they educate other healthcare professionals about the effect of food and nutrition on the human body.