Psychonutrition is the science that studies the relationship between mental life and food. This work requires at least two different professionals: the nutritionist and the psychologist. In psychonutrition, the relationship with food is not the only one that is take into account; It also studies the emotional patterns rooted in the choice of food consumed.
From this approach, different behaviors are studied, such as the use of food as a bargaining chip for the relief of emotional suffering, the objective of psychonutrition is to achieve long-term changes in eating habits to achieve a better quality of life.
- The team that can act in psychonutrition goes beyond the nutritionist and psychologist.
- Having other professionals will improve the results.
- Improving the performance of the intervention on each front.
- The professionals that can be incorporated are personal trainers.
- Psychiatrists.
- Speech therapists.
- Educators.
- Etc.
Therefore, the characteristics of psychonutrition intervention would be:
Psychonutrition is a team effort that requires the collaboration of different specialists. It is important to emphasize this, because there are no training or specialists “Psychonutricionists”. As mentioned above, you need at least one professional psychologist and one nutrition professional.
The term psychonutrition is not limited to the study of the consumption of certain foods based on mood, which does not mean that it cannot be performed when the evaluation detects a common coping strategy and leads to long-term adverse outcomes.
Therefore, one of the challenges that psychonutrition would face would be to expand the person’s toolkit to increase their repertoire of coping strategies.
The results in this area are gradual; we are talking about habits and therefore interventions that take time to reorient, change or implement them. On the other hand, we are talking about results that go beyond weight loss; it’s about changing the relationship with food.
As we have seen, the psychologist’s performance in these types of consultations not only covers eating disorders, other disorders, such as anxiety arising from different mental circumstances, such as rejection of personal image, would also be discussed.
Assessing the use of restrictive diets as compensatory strategies is only part of the psychologist’s work during a psychonutrition consultation, some of the professional’s tasks can be summarized as follows:
Emotional processes are especially important in a psychonutrition consultation, as are the skills available to include certain healthy habits.
In turn, it is important to demystify certain entrenched beliefs in today’s food society.