THE BEVERLY HILLS DIET: RULES OF THE GAME-FIXING THE ODDS IN YOUR FAVOR
by admin Posted in Weight Loss
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by admin Posted in Weight Loss
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1. Develop and maintain good rapport and listening skills,
2. Clearly define the services you or your organisation offer, i.e. no ‘quick fixes’, magic formulae or ‘diets’.
3. When taking a client’s history, always ask about prior experiences of dieting, bulimia or anorexia. Identify present behaviours associated with eating, emotional triggers for overeating or bingeing, and whether bulimia is practised currently. The following questions may be useful:
• Have you ever suffered from an eating disorder?
• Has any member of your family had an eating disorder?
• Do you ever binge eat? Do you ever make yourself sick afterwards?
• If yes, what sort of things trigger you to do this? Always refer on someone about whom you have concerns for psychological/psychiatric assessment. Be prepared to work in a supportive role if therapy is necessary. Explore with a client their expectations of dieting and fat loss. Be particularly attentive to unrealistic expectations such as, the speed with which they imagine it will happen, and how they will feel if fat loss does not occur.
6. Your client is entitled to make an informed choice about his or her treatment; you need to explain the current low success rates for long term behavioural maintenance of fat loss (i.e. 5-25 per cent) and the difference between working on this as opposed to long term lifestyle changes, which may not reduce their fat significantly, but may improve well-being.
7. Do not encourage or focus on dieting. If a client is severely obese, he or she will probably need medical assistance to deal with the problem and referral to the appropriate service is called for. For most clients, however, the most important help you can give is to gently challenge their ‘diet’ mentality.
8. Be prepared to counter resistance with 6!
9. Before beginning any change or process have a client keep a record of what they are eating now. Focus on problem times and meals.
10. Institute changes one at a time.
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