Nutritional Therapy for Weight Loss

By  ,  Onlymyhealth editorial team
Dec 07, 2011

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Woman eating saladNutrition therapy involves treating a medical condition and its related symptoms by specially tailored diet under the supervision of a dietician or healthcare provider. Your diet would be recommended and monitored by the nutritionist based on your medical history, diet history and physical examination.


For weight loss, nutritional therapy involves modifying the diet so that harmful fats and sugars are avoided while foods rich in fibre and nutrients are consumed more.
The aim of nutritional therapy is to burn more calories than consumed, but your physiological and psychological conditions would determine the optimum diet for this purpose. The body composition, such as body fat content, weight and rate of metabolism; all play a role in recommending a weight loss diet.

A typical nutritional therapy for weight loss would include recommendations to:

  • Include low fat, low sugar and low calorie foods in the diet but they should also be rich in nutrients and fibre.
  • Foods rich in protein as they help to build up muscles instead of fat and also trigger the signal to the brain of being full. Nuts, soy milk, tofu, low fat milk, low fat cheese and low fat yoghurt are good sources of protein.
  • Include rich sources of complex carbohydrates which also contain fibre for easy digestion. These include mashed rice, whole wheat bread, red rice, cereal such as oats and vegetables. The advantage of such carbs is that they do not lead to an increase in sugar content of the blood.
  • Include healthy oils in cooking such as canola oil, olive oil, sesame oil and sunflower seed oil.
  • Avoid smoking, alcohol consumption, fried foods, white bread, sodas and any foodstuff that contains unhealthy sugar or fat. Cooking food items that are baked should be preferred.

Recommendations for exercise are an integral part of nutritional therapy for weight loss. This is particularly important for removing fat from some body parts, such as arms and thighs, which take longer to shed weight than other parts. The success of this therapy is different from drug-based treatment as it depends on how committed you are to follow the healthy lifestyle patterns to lose weight.

Apart from food intake and condition of health, the practitioners of nutritional therapy for weight loss takes into account the culture, lifestyle and economic situation of the patient when recommending diet modifications and regular exercise schedule. This helps the overweight or obese patients set goals and make necessary changes in their life with convenience.


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