Clients and weight loss. How is the HAES strategy appropriate for social work? I was going to reply to some comments left on the last article, however the reply became so long, I thought a whole post would be appropriate. Here’s the scenario: Litigant will come in and wants to lose excess weight.
Except for the fact that the client wants your assist in slimming down. The client’s goal is to lose weight and is seeking to you for support. How do you give that in the event that you don’t have confidence in diets and you fundamentally believe the client would be placing themselves in harm’s way by going on a diet? I needed to get this to post to be able to brainstorm up approaches for dealing with this example. Here’s a few situations. Please, comment on your own ideas, or if you have objections/improvements to what I am publishing here. Please, only comment suggestions if you believe in medical at Every Size (HAES) philosophy.
- 3 bunches Baby Bok Choy
- ITreadmill Pedometer Ultra with PocketStep
- Daily plots, weekly and monthly reports
- Post-Surgery Diet
- Get in form for the Eroica California next springtime
- He will conserve energy by reduced perspiration
- Dong ding
- How should i connect my MyFitnessPal account to another Facebook accounts
1: Support them completely on the diet quest. I think this must happen whatever strategy one decides to consider. How come this person wants to lose weight? The facts that they expect to happen if the weight-reduction goal is achieved? Many people who are trying to lose weight are actually attempting to improve other areas of their life, such as passionate love, friendships, relatives, work, or overall satisfaction in life.
It is important that your client have realistic goals in what would lead to weight reduction. Weight reduction is not a magic wand. De Jong and Miller wrote within an article about the solution-focused strategy that best practice is you start with small, concrete goals. Instead of listing the weight loss as a goal or focusing on that, begin with a smaller goal such as learning how to cook healthy food or finding an enjoyable, affordable workout routine.
I think this can help reinforce healthy habits or help your client find pleasure in facilitating health to their lives. Is it unethical to tell the client that diets typically don’t work? Would it be promoting one’s own plan a great deal to say, “Look, I am more than willing to support you on your weight-reduction goal. But first, let’s speak about how exactly weight loss actually works.” Granted, we are not nutritionists. I’ll post some recommendations in the next post).
I don’t think the purpose here ought to be to discourage the client at all! I think it should be giving your client the same information we have so that they can make an informed decision therefore that people are providing the best tools to allow them to enact their self-determination.
This won’t be easy in most places. HAES professionals aren’t easy to come by always. ASDAH can help, but if you don’t live in NYC like me but instead somewhere like Iowa, you might not have as many referrals. I recommend though that we now have HAES professionals out there that don’t even understand these are HAES professionals. Let’s pick up our cell phones and directly talk to nutritionists and therapists who specialize in working with food issues.
I think we’d be amazed how many specialists would a take a HAES approach with a client without even phoning it that. Discussing a nutritionist and a therapist (if you aren’t one yourself) who has specialized in these principles is supporting your client in his/her goals. I think this is placing them in better hands than a referral to Weight Watchers would be.