Obese nutritionists

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In my experience being a healthy weight and knowledge of nutrition aren't necessarily connected. Being overweight can have a lot of causes - yes of course eating too much and not exercising enough are obvious causes, but ... what causes those? There can be physical and psychological things going on that an outsider knows nothing about. It doesn't bother me as much that a nutritionist might be overweight as it bothers me that someone else would judge them for it. You don't know them, and ... what business is it of anyone else's if all they're going to do is judge?

If my answer seems strong or harsh, let me say this. I grew up with an older sister who had chronic weight issues. She was always overweight, while I was a skinny kid. She was always careful about what she ate. I ate more unhealthy foods than she did and exercised about the same amount and yet she always had weight issues. I was thin until well into my 30s when I was under a lot of stress, took anti-depressants, had PCOS, and gained weight.

If you don't know a person, just glibly making judgments about their weight is, IMO, as bigoted as judging by the color of their skin. Maybe the OP doesn't know any better, but that's how I see it. No one is perfect. Look to your own faults before judging someone else that you don't even know.

Depends are we talking obese people or people you personally don't find skinny enough? That said maybe an obese person wants to start improving their health through better nutrition I see no real harm in that. Damn its not good enough if they accept they are obese and its not good enough if they take steps to improve their health, because an obese person cannot possibly care about their health... what are they to do?

I would not be able to trust an obese nutritionist, unless there were a valid explanation (chronic illness causing it, etc). Otherwise, I'd consider it the same as hiring a mechanic who shows up in an abused truck with bald tires, awful engine noises and smoking tail pipe.

Charles

What if the nutritionist conducted research into finding ways to be obese and healthy, if there are such ways? An obese person might be advantaged going to such a nutritionist. A thin person wanting to gain weight might want to go too.

What if the mechanic just bought the truck so he/she could restore it? The thing is we never know another person's whole story. When we make snap judgments, we may very well be dead wrong.

Normally I'd consider it a judgement error on their part, to think it's good business to present that way in the first place. I'd ahve more respect for the mechanic if he/she showed up in a rental truck or even on the bus with a backpack, than in a run-down truck. Then he/she should explain that on the spot, and I'd consider it. But as with the nutritionist, I'd have to know that some clients are happy and have good results. The obese nutritionist with the hormone imbalance should present the facts in his/her resume' or in whatever means they come referred by. That way, it would be acceptable and understood up front. They could say something like "I cannot put myself in the physique I would choose, due to (______________). But may I put my experience to work for your success?"

Charles

You really can't always judge a book by its cover. There was a time when I was very into bodybuilding, and became very muscular. At the time, I wasn't doing it to be healthy-I was doing it as a release and for anger management. Despite the fact that I looked like I was in really good shape-not to mention far more muscular than your average woman at the gym, I was also smoking, drinking, and doing drugs. This is kind of the opposite scenario-so what do you do with that? At the time I worked in several gyms and as a personal trainer.

Strenuous exercise could be a risk factor for heart arrhythmia. It puts stress on the heart muscle. Historically, people who spent their lives doing hard, physical, labor didn't live the longest. Hard physical labor could be considered a form of strenuous exercise.

Hmmmmm....interesting concept.

So maybe when I finish school and am applying for a job as a speech therapist I should include "I did not get the nervous system I would have chosen, due to autism. But may I put my experience to work for your success?"

I can see why you think it's important from a public relations and business perspective. Still, it just feeds into the whole cultural "you are what you look like" nonsense - fed by celebrity worship - and the idea that someone's heath issues are anyone else's business. I'd rather see what grades they got in school, if we're going to invade their privacy.

I've thought things over, and can now offer a more complete explanation of what I meant. In general, dismissing a statement said by someone because of who he is is a logical fallacy that should be avoided, if for example a smoker told me smoking is bad and I had to stop, what he said would be valid despite his status as a smoker.

Still, I don't think he'd have the moral authority to insist too much on that point. In the case of an obese, as of severly overweight nutritionists, they may have a lot of knowledge on the issue even if he's chooses not to use it on themselves, but... if at one point he insisted too much about having a healthy diet I'd call him an hypocrite. If his reasons of why following a diet is important are good enough, then why doesn't he do it? I'm aware that some people are like that because of hormonal issues, but the majority of obese people are likely that way because of lifestyle choices. Idon't actually have an statistic for that though :/

In the example of the car mechanic in a run-down car, sure, he might have bought that car in hopes of restoring it later, but that's a very specific explanation, and in most of the cases I wouldn't find it a good idea to trust my car to such a mechanic.

In general, I think that the cover of a book can give us a small idea of what can be found inside. In a psychology class last year I learned about it when we came to the topic of stereotyping, we humans have developed it as an heuristic (rule of thumb, sort of) to make a quick judgement of things around us, that is not as accurate as carefully observing someone to see how he is, but it's way, way faster. And it's right more often than not. In the modern world where we interact with a lot of people every day, we can't afford to get to know all of them.

Under the previous argument I can give another reason to not choose an overweight nutritionist. It's a case where I'm just looking to do business with him, so I'll go with a snap judgement instead of looking for a deep understanding on him. And why choose an overweight nutritionist when I can hire a non-overweight nutritionist?

It is a conundrum. On the one hand, a nutritionist ought to have the tools to have their own healthy diet so if they are obese, how can I believe they actually have the tools? On the other hand, a thin nutritionist could also be wrong but be even more convinced of their rightness because they are thin.

You know who I would trust? The nutritionist who used to be unhealthy (with or without an unhealthy weight) and studied nutrition as part of their own path back to health. They might be in the middle of that journey and still overweight but armed with considerable accurate knowledge acquired on that journey (another poster gave this example).

There is another thread in this subforum that fits right in with this subject. It is the thread about the personal trainer who gained and then lost 70 pounds so that he would have personal knowledge of the challenges somebody faces when doing that, instead of just talking out of a textbook. Before he did that, he was like the nutritionist who has always been thin and healthy. By his own admission, he was judgemental and gave generic "eat less, exercise more" advice and assumed that anybody who remained obese/out of shape with this advice was just a terribly lazy person. Once he had experienced it himself, he had a deeper understanding and I think that he would be able to give more nuanced advice.

The nutritionist who has always been thin and healthy might be like that personal trainer before he gained and lost 70 pounds- giving advice that wasn't helpful. Somebody who has been unhealthy may have looked into things more closely as part of their journey back to health.

So I would trust the formerly obese (or unhealthy in other ways) nutritionist. And how would I know this? I would ask. If somebody is merely armed with textbook knowledge, that's something I can get on my own with a textbook. But "been there, done that" advice is invaluable.

I was talkimg about obese mainly because that's the topic of this thread. But it's indeed more accurate to talk about healthy instead, I wouldn't trust a way toothin nutritionist either.


And the secomd part, I agree with you, completely. The ones most capanle of giving advice are those who have been in the same situation, and can speak from experience. This is the sort of people I look for, and that's actually one of the reasons I'm around here, I value a lot the wisdom of people who deal with the same issues as me, and have found ways to get them under control. This kind of people have... deeper understanding and the ability to give more nuanced advice, you said it yourself.

Still in that case, and in the context of the topicoverweight would still be fine, if they were previously obese and I know they went through a journey to reach their current weight. This is yet another argument against obese, as in their case it would be clear to me that they do not speak from experience.

I once heard that cardiologists went out to eat cheeseburgers after a cardiology convention. Also I have heard that nurses make the worst patients.

This is just what I was thinking.

This is even more proof that to make this country healthier, we must admit that this is not because people don't know what to eat, but because of deeper psychological reasons.

I recall this cardiologist's write up on seeing many over weight dietitians where he works.

"Flat tummy . . . or, Why your dietitian is fat"

http://blog.trackyourplaque.com/2008/12 ... s-fat.html