If February is Heart Month, March is considered Nutrition Month in Canada thus the perfect occasion to take a look at your eating habits and speak with a health or nutrition expert to see what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.
The Chronicle met with Pierrefonds CLSC clinical nurse and health education counsellor Danielle Morin to be able to share pointers and insights on how to improve your health through nutrition.
Morin meets patients every week who sometimes have been referred to her by doctors or simply people who have chosen to improve their eating habits by their own initiative. She is a firm believer of no-nonsense approach.
She claims people often come up to her with firm plans to go the gym, bring their lunch to work every day and never go to the restaurant. A total non-believer in diets, a lot of times, she has to work on people’s confidence to alter this mentality that diverging from the plan a couple times a month isn’t a terrible thing.
“It is not logical to think like that. The proper approach is to ask yourself: what you are really capable of doing to improve your health? What you can do to improve your diet? Drastic changes like diets often don’t work. People should take better habits and choosing to start by eating lesser portions is a step in the right direction,” she said.
In her approach, she tries to convey to the patient what are the eating habits that bring about weight gain. Eating right can mean different things for different people. Morin gives out information on what number of portions of each food group one should eat depending on their age and gender based on the Canadian Food Guide. Finally, she proposes a computer questionnaire on eating and exercise habits after which she can suggest changes to the person.
@ST:The advantages
@R:There are many advantages to eating right. Not only does it bring you energy but it can also serve as a deterrent for hereditary diseases.
“When people eat right, they have energy to do physical activity, to take care of their children. When people eat wrong, they are always tired. In the family, if there is diabetes, hyper-tension, you can prevent it if you make changes early,” she said.
Morin works a lot on confidence. She helps people find personal reasons to motivate them to eat right according to what they live. She favors small changes. She suggests eating healthy can have an effect on stomach burns, concentration and sleep.
You can schedule a rendez-vous with Morin by calling her at 514-626-2572 ext. 4566 or by emailing her at dmorin.pfnds@ssss.gouv.qc.ca.
