5 Food Mistakes I Stopped Making After Becoming a Dietitian

Before nutritionists were experts, they were average people with less knowledge about food and diets. Shana Spence, MS, RDN, CDN (@thenutritiontea) is a non-diet focused nutritionist and social media influencer who shares realistic tips and tricks to help people become the healthiest versions of themselves. In a new viral video, she opens up about some of the mistakes she made before getting credentialed.

“Five things I would never do after becoming a dietician,” she says at the start of the clip. From putting labels on certain types of foods to making assumptions about people that aren’t true, here are the mistakes she made so you don’t have to – and we also asked The Diet Diva, Tara Collingwood, MS, RDN, CSSD, LD/N, ACSM-CPT, a Board Certified Sports Dietitian, to add her own commentary to the discussion.

Categorize Foods as “Good and Bad”

First up, Spence would never “categorize foods as good and bad,” she says. “Not every food is meant to provide nutrients, and not every food is going to be providing the same nutrient. That's why we eat a variety of foods. And yes, some foods are providing us with joy and comfort. That's okay.” Collingwood completely agrees.

“I try not to classify foods as good and bad but rather need vs want,” she explains. “Foods that we need have nutritional value, while want foods have fewer nutrients. Eating a healthy diet is a balance of getting the nutrients we need for good health but also enjoying some of the others.”

Assuming Someone Is Unhealthy Based on Their Body

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The second is making the assumption “someone is unhealthy based on their body,” she explains. “Bodies are not business cards. If we're talking about health based on lab values or whether someone is eating nutrient dense foods or getting in more movement, a lot of folks in larger bodies are doing those things and have great lab values. And on the opposite spectrum, a lot of folks in thinner bodies don't have great lab values and don't eat nutrient foods or get in a lot of movement,” she points out.

“You cannot just look at someone and know much about their overall health,” agrees Collingwood. “Some of the fittest people are in larger bodies with really good health measures. And just because someone is thin doesn’t mean they are automatically healthy. They could have very little muscle mass and have high blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels.”

Related: Courteney Fisher Shows Off Washboard Abs and Reveals 5 Ways to Get to Blast Belly Fat

Healthify Foods

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She also regrets trying to “healthify foods,” she says. “The time and Energy I spent making black bean brownies or ice cream when I could have just enjoyed ice cream and brownies. If you want to swap out something or if you're interested in trying out a new recipe, that's fine, but feeling the need to do something based on what you read on the interwebs is something different.”

Collingwood thinks making recipes healthier is a good thing, “but definitely not all the time,” she says. :If you really want some full fat ice cream, chocolate or a warm chocolate chip cookie, do it!”

Telling People to Stop Eating Their Cultural Foods

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“Number four, telling folks to swap out white rice for brown rice in their cultural foods,” she continues. “My ancestors were probably rolling in their graves when I did this. Not to mention this is based on the whole idea that certain cultures and ethnicities are unhealthy.”

Some food swaps “can make a huge difference in calories or nutritional quality and some don’t really matter much,” says Collingwood. “When it comes to rice, there isn’t a big difference between white and brown, but for people who love their white rice it can ruin it for them. There are plenty of other places in the diet where you can make changes without needing to change everything, especially the cultural favorites.”

Related: 4 Easy Tips to Lose Weight, According to Dietitian

Only Shopping the Perimeter of the Store

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“And last but not least, number five, telling people to shop the perimeter of the store,” she says. “Never. Again. This is based on the concept that fresh is best and clean. Eating, no such thing. There are plenty of nutrients found in canned foods, packaged foods, and frozen food. If you like the taste of fresh, that's fine, but telling someone that how they're eating is wrong because they choose foods from a can or package is elitist.”

Collingwood “never did like this advice either,” she says. “Sure, the perimeter has some fresh stuff, but the middle of the store has whole grains, beans, canned veggies, etc. In today’s world it’s not realistic that people won’t be using convenience foods and there isn’t anything wrong with it!”

💪🔥Body Booster: When it comes to everything surrounding diet and nutrition, it isn’t all black and white and you don’t have to go to extremes. Shop the middle of the store, eat the cookie or the rice, and don’t categorize things as good or bad. And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

Are you struggling to lose weight and keep it off? Nagina Abdullah is a weight loss and metabolism boosting coach for midlife women with a degree in molecular and cell biology from UC Berkeley who has helped over 1,500 women lose weight “and live in their dream body naturally and keep it off for years,” she says in a viral video. “Today, I'm going to share five surprising things that I stopped doing to lose 40 pounds,” she says, “having lost the weight and having kept it off for over 14 years.” In the clip, she explains that she had tried “every single diet out there,” including Atkins, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and South Beach, but would always lose weight and gain it back — until she started doing these things.

1. She Stopped Eating Fast Burning Carbs

“The first thing I started doing was to stop eating fast-burning carbs. I didn't try to eat smaller portions of carbs. I just started learning about what carbs were better for me and would burn more slowly. And instead of eating fast-burning carbs, I focused on slow-burning carbs,” she says in her post.

She Eats These Slow Burning Carbs Instead

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She explains that fast-burning carbs are “things like bread, pasta, rice, anything that gives you a quick burst of energy,” usually processed foods. “What's happening when you're eating fast-burning carbs? I realized that I was getting a quick rush of energy, but then my body was storing it as fat because I wasn't able to burn it off right away, and that's how fast burning carbs work. They spike our blood sugar, and they are stored as fat,” she says. So, she started eating slow-burning carbs instead. So, instead, I started understanding I could eat carbs instead, like beans and lentils. “Beans and lentils both have more fiber, so they burn more slowly. They don't create that massive spike in blood sugar, and they don't create that fat storage,” she says. She also eats Ezekiel bread, sweet potatoes, and alternative versions of rice like quinoa millet or buckwheat.

2. She Stopped Eating and Drinking Dairy

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“Number two, the second thing I did to lose this 40 pounds and now keep it off was that I also stopped eating dairy or drinking dairy,” she says. “I never had felt that I was lactose intolerant. I never had any intolerance. I never felt bad when I was drinking milk or eating cheese or anything like that. But I found that once I took it out, I realized my weight just started slipping off, like melting off,” she says.

The Lactose in Dairy Is Added Sugar

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“What I realized is that what was happening was that there was added sugar in different kinds of milk or sometimes natural sugars in milk in the form of what's called lactose. So, lactose is a sugar that creates blood sugar elevation. So that's one of the reasons it's bad. It's another way of having sugar,” she says. And almost everyone is “somewhat lactose intolerant, some of us are more than others, and so even if you have a little bit of lactose intolerant like almost all of us do, your body can't process the food or the drinks efficiently,” she says. “It wasn't hard. I just decided not to drink milk as much. I used replacements like almond milk or cashew milk. I did eat cheese if I had pizza, but I wasn't making nachos for a snack regularly like I had been before.”

RELATED: 5 High-Protein Meals That Can Boost Your Metabolism Instantly

3. She Stopped Putting Her Focus on Exercise

The third thing she did? “I stopped thinking that I needed to exercise more to lose weight because I had really thought that I needed to get to the gym. I needed to run, I needed to sweat, I needed to burn calories, and that was the only way that I was going to lose weight.”

She Started Focusing More On Diet

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She explains that there is “so much research and so many scientific studies that show that what you eat is 80% of losing weight,” she says. “If you try to outrun a bad diet or outwork out a bad diet, it will never happen. You're going to be working out and running and exercising so much until you have your nutrition dialed in,” she continues. “So I really started focusing on eating in the right way, on making sure I was taking out those foods that I mentioned and adding in the foods that would replace them. As a result, my weight just started melting away, and then I started adding in exercise so that I could be stronger and I could increase my metabolism by having more tone and muscle in my body, but not as a form to lose weight because it wasn't working for that, and it had never worked for me.”

RELATED: 5 High-Protein Breakfasts Hollywood Trainer Magnus Lygdback Swears By

4. She Stopped Restricting Herself and “Eating Boring”

“The fourth thing that I stopped doing that has helped me lose 40 pounds is that I stopped restricting myself and eating boring, bland foods in small portions. I had done this for decades. I followed Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem as a way of tracking my calories. And I just kept trying to eat smaller portions of foods that I later found out were actually unhealthy. And I also made them boring and bland because that was all the advice that I saw out there. It was like barely putting salt and pepper onto my foods, and that just didn't hit me because I love food. I would consider myself a foodie. I love going out to eat. I love cooking really delicious food. I love enjoying delicious food. And so every time I would restrict myself, the moment I would hit that 10 pounds or around that amount, I would just start eating all of the foods because I was hungry, and I didn't want to keep living in living a life of hunger. I also realized that I just craved foods that tasted good.

Now She Uses More Spices

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“Now, instead of eating boring foods like plain broccoli and fish with just salt and pepper on it, just really making everything so boring and bland, I started using spices. I started adding metabolism-boosting spices like cumin and coriander,” she says. “Cumin helps decrease belly fat, coriander decreases water retention and bloating. I also started adding in some cayenne pepper, which increases metabolism. I also added cinnamon to my coffee to make it taste good without having the dairy that I had been having before. And cinnamon actually lowers our blood sugar and helps us store less fat. So I started looking at what I was eating in a more delicious way, and I started loving what I was eating, and I stopped restricting myself. And this was the key way that it became sustainable for me once I lost weight to keep losing more weight and get to the body of my dreams.”

5. She Stopped Thinking About Losing Weight

“The fifth thing that I stopped doing to lose 40 pounds was that I stopped thinking only about the goal of losing weight,” she says. “I stopped only focusing on that and making that the reason that I was making every decision.”

RELATED:8 Tips to Make Losing Weight Feel Effortless, From Proven Experts

She Put Her Focus on How Good She Was Feeling

“I started focusing on how good I was feeling, how much energy I was feeling, and how much I loved what I was eating. And I started making every day that I was losing weight fun and enjoyable,” she says. “I started experimenting with my healthy foods to make them taste better and to feel full and satisfied. And because I was able to love what I was eating and love what I was doing every single day, I was able to keep doing it all the way to losing 40 pounds. And then I was able to stay there.” And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.