Dalia Maori Registered Dietitian At The Therapy Room Cambridge Video Introduction

Transcript

I’m Dalia Maori, I’m a registered dietician and I’ve worked at The Therapy Room for 5 years. I specialise in adult and child overweight chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, skin conditions, inflammatory bowel diseases and also disordered eating, such as bulimia, anorexia and orthorexia. So every patient that comes to me in their initial consultation I will look at recent blood tests, I will go into their dietary history and their medical history and any pertinent medical conditions beyond those they’re coming to treatment for. 

Usually most conditions will improve with improved nutrition, exercise and lifestyle changes. Any consultations moving on from there depend on the condition of the patient. Some people may just need to be seen a few times, some people need to be seen for quite a long period of time, depending on their condition.

It overlaps with the argument that ‘oh, healthy eating is too expensive’, well no it’s not, at all, if you know what you’re doing. If you go and buy a cabbage, a beetroot and a sack of oats, it doesn’t cost the earth at all. If you know how to cook legumes as well, you can use a bag that will feed your family for a number of meals you just need to know what you’re doing. Which is another thing why home economics needs to come back into schools, big time. It’s really, really, important people need to know how to make soups and things, and stews. But 100% it’s better for the environment, it’s far better for you to be eating local foods. And if you’ve got those vibrant colours there, the purples, the reds, the oranges, the greens, that’s the nourishment right there, those are the antioxidants, you don’t have to be having Goji berries.

I’ll never hand out a generic plan, I’ll discover the person, what do you like, what do you not like. I’ll always as them to eat, I’ll start with things that they do like. What we do see over the process is that their palette changes and so they’re willing to embrace different foods. So people who thought that they could only have a sweet breakfast start actually understanding they really enjoy savoury breakfasts. I move people generally at the speed that they’re able to do, some people are faster than others at making behavioural changes and it’s all totally ok.

The Therapy Room is a really warm and welcoming environment for clients and practitioners and it would be wonderful for more practitioners to join the team and expand the wonderful things we can do for the people coming in here looking for help and improving their health.