Hello; What does a nutritionist do? A very interesting question. I’ve been a full-time nutritionist for 10 years now it’s been an amazing journey, one that I will take for the rest of my life because I just love what I do.
I want to tell you five things that I do as a nutritionist. I don’t know what all nutritionists do but I can tell you what I do as a nutritionist. I am Carol Amendola D’Anca, board certified nutritionist private practice and doing many many other things. I have an 18-minute video with pictures but if that’s too long for you I can tell you in just a few minutes here.
The first thing obviously that a nutritionist does is nutritional counseling so I do see clients I see them via zoom now I don’t know if I will ever really have a brick and mortar because the people that I see are all over the area and now all over the country I’ve even had some counseling appointments with people out of the country in the European union but as a board certified nutritionist I have a master’s degree in nutrition from a medical school and did a 1000 hour internship and then took national boards and passed the boards to be able to understand the biochemistry of the body and my approach to nutrition counseling is functional medicine traditional medicine is medicine that will many times treat uh symptoms of a disease and a functional medicine approach is we’re trying to trying to identify markers that can show how we can prevent or manage if it’s their disease without necessarily medications sometimes they’re needed sometimes they’re not
So number two is research that leads me when I’m seeing clients and patients and and I I’m come across something that I’m not knowledgeable about or not knowledgeable enough to be able to give good solid advice that brings me to research so I spend some time and many days are spent doing research and reading the latest medical journals and the latest good research with good findings good conclusions that will help me to be able to provide information that’s helpful for the patient or the client the other type of research that I do is field research so for example a couple of years ago it was November of 2019 I took a wonderful life-changing field research tour to the blue zone of Sardinia an interview interviewed people there and immersed myself into their lifestyle worked with a couple of the lead researchers and did my own research so when I come back and talk to my clients and speak in in public places that in presentations that I will be able to talk about exactly how people live that have long long purposeful lives what longevity really means to them. Then it is speaking so I started out in my practice just wanting to go everywhere and anywhere and talk to anyone that would listen to me and as a result I’ve probably done a thousand speaking engagements in the us and and now in Europe and public speaking is is really a fascinating way for a nutritionist to speak her message. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it helps you gain clients you certainly don’t get rich doing it but it’s an amazing way to not only reach the broader audience but to learn what their concerns are to learn from them, and I learned from all of the people that I speak with or speak to and so that’s number three – speaking.
Number four is classes for plant-based cooking, how it’s done, how to prepare, some good tips that will help so that when you take off on this journey that you will really understand the basics of good plant-based cooking so that is number four and as a result early on in my practice I started a cooking school the academy of plant-based nutrition and had people in our home twice a month Saturday on Saturday mornings in the spring and in the summer and worked in my indoor kitchen and the outdoor kitchen the classes the cooking classes that’s where I have learned so much by watching others try to learn by watching someone just pick up a pepper and know what to do with it or learn how to do it do it or knife skills and the classes have been really amazing lots of work very inspiring for me and inspiring for the people that enjoy the classes as well
The next one as a result of those classes came authorship so I had to develop recipes that were plant-based that my students could use and they were based on certain dietary needs they were based on certain dietary recommendations they were based on certain medical histories like something for heart disease diabetes kidney disease high blood pressure a broad base of recipes that people could use for certain for preventing or managing and sometimes even reversing their chronic illness so that brought me to authorship and the authorship of two books real food for healthy people and real food for healthy for infants and toddlers and the real food for infants and toddlers it was just published last year real food for healthy people was published about four years ago both are available on amazon but the real food for healthy people is really a compilation of the recipes that I developed over five years for my students.
The last one of the things that I do as a nutritionist and this might be off the beaten path for a lot of people that are nutritionists but I host an annual trip once a year either earlier in the spring or in the fall to the south of Italy to learn the secrets of longevity to immerse ourselves into what the lifestyle is of the longest living people now not everyone in in Italy or in any other country lives longer than everyone else in the world but the statistics are that it’s Spain and Italy that are constantly vying for the first place the longest living people and their purposeful lives unfortunately the united states is number 35. we’re not number one or two we’re number 35 so we have a long way to go and there are some lifestyle things that we can learn and adapt and one of the best ways to do that is to see it in practice so I take I take 20 people maximum this year I have a waiting list for the trip but I take 20 people and we go to small towns in Italy and we live the lifestyle. The group even get to visit my family and see how people in Italy live and enjoy their lives.
