Page 153 - Nutrition Counseling and Education Skills: A Guide for Professionals

I. Provide Incentives to Aid Patients in Maintaining Commitment
A. Determine ways to focus attention on successful experiences. A positive comment by the
counselor is helpful, and you can always find something positive to say.
B. Encourage people to tell others about dietary goals. This public commitment often will aid in
maintaining a course of action.
C. Have the person anticipate problems that might come up and consider possible solutions before a
problem arises. Having a plan ready will make focusing on the goal easier.
D. Concentrate on allowed foods and portions rather than the disallowed. Be positive.
E. Keep reminding the person that dietary change is a gradual process. Dietary habits were not
developed in a brief period of time and probably will not be significantly changed in a short time.
Set realistic goals for immediate and long-term change. Encourage successive approximations to
the desired behavior.

II. Learn Eating Habits and Exercise Habits by Record-Keeping
A person cannot change a habit until he or she knows what it is. Self-monitoring with accurate

records of the foods consumed is necessary for behavioral control of eating. This record-keeping
exercise can identify the person’s patterns of food intake and those cues that are associated with food
consumption as well as the emotional outcome of eating. The person will become more aware of the
environmental stimuli that are associated with eating behavior. Information to consider recording
would be
A. What food was eaten
B. Quantity of each food
C. What the person was doing just before eating to help identify cues
D. Place of eating cue providing
E. With whom eating occurs, or alone cue providing
F. How the person felt cue providing
G. Time of eating cue providing
III. Control the Stimuli Cues and Restructure the Environment
A. Physical environment

1. Based on the records kept, have the person identify physical stimuli in the environment that
are associated with, and therefore are cues to, inappropriate eating behaviors. Different stimuli
become associated with the act of eating and can become signals for appropriate or
inappropriate food consumption.

2. Ask the person to identify physical stimuli that could remind him or her to eat properly.
Examples of these would be charts or graphs, cartoons, signs, and the like. The presence of
appropriate foods in the home is probably the best cue to appropriate eating, supplemented by
the elimination of inappropriate foods.

3. Have the person specify a special place where food should be consumed, such as at the dining
table and not in front of the television set or kitchen sink.

4. Make those foods that are acceptable in the nutrition plan as attractive as possible. Use good

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