One of the things that surprises people when they come to see me for the first time is how little we sometimes talk about food during the early part of a consultation.
Most people understandably expect that a nutrition appointment will revolve around meal plans, calories, supplements, and foods to eat or avoid. Instead, I often find myself asking questions that seem, at first glance, completely unrelated to nutrition. I ask about sleep. I ask about work. I ask about stress, family responsibilities, daily routines, and what a typical day actually looks like from the moment they wake up until they go to bed.
Over the years, I have learned that symptoms rarely exist in isolation. Someone may come to me because they are struggling with bloating, fatigue, headaches, weight gain, or digestive discomfort, but very often the story begins long before the symptom itself appeared. Sometimes it begins with years of poor sleep. Sometimes it begins with a demanding job that never truly switches off. Sometimes it begins with caring for everyone else while consistently neglecting oneself.
I remember when I was trained in clinical nutrition early in my career, it showed me that if I could simply identify the right dietary approach, many health concerns would improve. While nutrition remains one of the most powerful tools we have, my own clinical practice using a functional/holistic approach has taught me that food is often only one piece of a much larger picture. Two people can follow remarkably similar diets and experience very different outcomes because their lives are different. One may be sleeping seven or eight hours a night while the other is surviving on five. One may have time to sit and enjoy a meal, while the other eats in the car between commitments. One may have a relatively calm nervous system, while the other has spent years operating in a state of chronic stress.
This is why I have become increasingly interested in understanding how people live rather than simply what they eat. Our eating habits do not occur in a vacuum. They are influenced by our schedules, our emotions, our energy levels, our relationships, and the countless demands placed upon us each day. If we ignore these factors and focus only on food, we risk overlooking some of the most important contributors to health.
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons my patients have taught me is that health is rarely the result of a single decision. It is the sum of many small choices, repeated day after day, often without us realizing their cumulative effect. Nutrition matters enormously, but so does sleep. So does stress. So does having time to rest, move, connect with others, and recover from the pace of modern life.
For that reason, when patients leave my clinic, they do not always leave with a long list of foods to avoid. Sometimes they leave with a greater understanding of the role that their lifestyle may be playing in their symptoms. And sometimes that awareness becomes the most important step toward improving their health.
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