Q&A: Nutritional Pharmacist's Perspective on New Year Dieting Trends

“New year, new me” is a phrase the general public is all too familiar with at the start of every new year. Health care providers, too, are aware of the common trend where patients attempt to start a fresh, health-focused journey at the start of the year, but many of them fail to see it through.

Sarah Gray, PharmD, GAICD, joined Drug Topics in an exclusive interview to discuss this start-of-the-year dieting phenomenon as well as the overall importance of nutrition on patients’ health outcomes. Beginning her career as a pharmacist in the community practice space, she’s since become a certified nutritionist and has started her own independent counseling service—known as The Nutrition Pharmacist—to help patients optimize their health and wellbeing.

“Everywhere you look is ‘What's the magical special diet that everyone should follow?’” said Gray. “For me, there's obviously no 1 special or magical diet. A nutritional lifestyle looks at every individual and what they actually need.”

On top of nutritional lifestyle trends that arise at the beginning of the year, Gray also discussed her experience as a certified pharmacist and nutritionist. | image credit: doucefleur / stock.adobe.com

Read on to learn more about the most important aspects of a nutritional lifestyle from a certified nutrition expert. Using geography to discover some of the healthiest populations in the world and diversifying a patients’ food intake are just some of the interventions Gray takes advantage of to educate and counsel her patients.

Stay tuned for more content from our interview with Gray. On top of nutritional lifestyle trends that arise at the beginning of the year, she discussed her experience as both a certified pharmacist and nutritionist. She also discussed each profession as a whole and how pharmacists have the unique opportunity to extend their capabilities within health care.

Drug Topics: Can you start by briefly summarizing the importance of a nutritional lifestyle on an individual's overall health?

Sarah Gray: I think for me, it's the cornerstone, or the foundations, for good health. We can do lots of different things in our lives, and we know that it's really important to sleep well, to move your body, to look after your mental health, and self-care, but in my experience, and through studying nutrition and also helping people every day, it's around that foundational piece. The cornerstone of health is that you're giving your body the nourishment that it needs, the fuel that it needs, and the right things for it to be able to function and thrive. It's just, for me, really the foundation of health.

READ MORE: Mediterranean, DASH Remain Supreme Among Other Dietary Regimens

And it can impact so many things, not only from prevention of chronic disease. It’s as simple as eating 1 extra [serving] of fruit or vegetables or whole grains every day. There are heaps of research showing that those things, particularly vegetables, can reduce the risk of chronic diseases, and it's quite a simple intervention. Through eating lots of different foods, particularly plant foods, you can give your body lots of different nutrients, but also these bioactive compounds—which obviously I have an interest in as a pharmacist—are compounds largely found in plant foods. They play a really protective role in the body, anywhere from protecting the gut through to the brain. For me, it really is the part when you're looking at a person's health and how you might be able to make some interventions to improve that.

Drug Topics: If you say someone is living a nutritional lifestyle, what does that mean to you? Can you give us some examples of what a nutritional lifestyle may look like?

Sarah Gray: It being the New Year, the time we're speaking now, it's actually all the rage. Everywhere you look is “What's the magical special diet that everyone should follow?” For me, there's obviously no 1 special or magical diet. A nutritional lifestyle looks at every individual and what they actually need. It's not about being perfect, but it's about giving your body what nutrients it needs to thrive. When I thought about this question, what came to mind to me was the Mediterraneans. The Mediterranean diet, and the people that live in those regions, have this really well sorted out. This is what I would say is the closest thing to an ideal lifestyle. They're prioritizing a variety of plant foods. They have animal protein sources, so meat or chicken, just a few times a week; lots of fish with high omega-3 levels, so good-quality fish; high-quality fats, my favorite being extra virgin olive oil; and whole grains. [The Mediterranean diet has] less of the processed packaged foods and more whole foods—things that are found in nature.

My favorite thing to do when you look at nutrition is having a look around the world and the way that different people live, and their longevity and their health. There's a region in Greece you may have heard of called Ikaria, which is one of the world's Blue Zones—an area where people have an average lifespan of around 10 years more than other areas of Europe and even the US. These people live this Mediterranean lifestyle, eating those foods, lots of herbs, vegetables, plants, and minimal animal protein, and also living outside, enjoying nature, and being quite active as well. To me, that would be closest to what is the most ideal nutritional lifestyle.

Drug Topics: With it being the beginning of the year, it's often a popular time for patients to start fresh and begin focusing more closely on their health. Do you see any issues or challenges with this trend, and what advice would you give to someone attempting to start fresh?

Sarah Gray: I never see an issue with people focusing on their health and trying to do something bigger to support their health. In a way, it's a good and a bad thing at this time of year. If people want to actually improve their health, the first step is you have to want to do that. I can sit with people, and I can have nutrition consultations, and as pharmacists, we can talk to people and counsel them, but if they don't have that inner motivation, it can be hard. It's a good place to start, but we do see this time of year is lots of different fad diets or miracle cures and things that we know are quick fixes that can't be sustained in the long term. I was looking at some research and the stats show that 2 in 5 people quit a new diet in the first 7 days. Today, we're here in Australia, the 10th of January, and already we've got 2 out of 5 people having quit those new diets they would have started on the first of January. It's just not sustainable.

Looking at what advice I give people, as pharmacists, we can recommend our patients focus on their overall health goals. Go back to what health looks like for you. It's not always just about weight loss. What are your health goals? Do you want to have more energy? Do you want to increase your muscle mass? Do you want to sleep better? What are those health goals? And then, focus on building things around your health that help you actually get to that goal. When you build these fundamentals, so whether it's improving your nutrition or other lifestyles, you actually start to find that those new healthy habits can give you health benefits well beyond your health goal. We know the body systems are so interconnected, so one small change, which might be adding more nuts and seeds to your diet, can have benefits from helping women balance their hormonal health through to boosting energy in your diet, or helping with those B vitamins, for example. [It’s] looking at what can you do as the foundation that will have many benefits across health, which may include things like weight, which is a very common topic at this time of year.

READ MORE: Digestive Health Research Center

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