"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." - Hippocrates

Many people think of ‘weight loss’ when they hear the word ‘diet’.  However, by definition, ‘diet’ refers to whatever a person eats or drinks during the course of a day.

There are many different reasons for following a certain diet and there are many different diets to follow.  Many fad diets come and go and useful diets also have their trends.  There have been ‘grains only’, ‘vegetables only’, ‘meat only’, ‘fruit only’, ‘raw only’ and even ‘Breatharian’.

Naturopaths are trained in nutrition and recognize that diet plays a vital part in the individual’s and society’s health.  It’s not just what we’re eating, but often, what we’re not eating that is important.  Most people are familiar with Vegetarians.  Vegetarianism can be done properly, but it takes some effort and research to be able to make up the protein one usually obtains easily from animal sources.  Proteins are made up of amino acids and many of these are essential to our needs.  Animal products are what is called a ‘complete protein’, that is, they contain all the essential amino acids, whereas vegetable sources do not.  This can be remedied by careful combinations of vegetables, legumes and grains.  So, there is a vast difference in the health of a vegetarian who knowingly combines foods to obtain the complete protein that they need, versus the vegetarian who just “doesn’t eat meat.”

As well as having a lot of diet information for weight loss (or rather, fat loss), your Naturopath will also have dietary advice to compliment the rest of your treatment if we are dealing with heart conditions, constipation, rheumatoid arthritis, gall stones, acne, fatigue, pregnancy … the list could go on.