The term "counseling" comes from the Latin and provides a double meaning: consulo-ere which translates as "consular", "comforting", "coming to help", "taking care", or, as a consultation-are, refers to the meaning to request the "opinion of a sage" or the "advice of an expert".
The counseling is therefore a discipline focused on the relationship of help to the other but has features, abilities and techniques that differentiate it from counseling to the person or groups in the broad sense: it has also been defined as "the art of meeting", not a simple verbal encounter between two or more people, but rather a global approach to the whole person of the other in the totality of his expressions and manifestations, built on communicative and relational modalities designed to facilitate the opening of new ways of understanding the problems of addressed from time to time, in order to find solutions or perspectives that are alternative and personal to the individual problems underlying the request for his intervention. Leveraging the skills, qualities and resources of the person involved in the problem situation, the counselor does not simply aim to solve problems but rather to develop new processes of understanding and learning through a mutual experience that takes place within the counselor-consultant relationship, in order to achieve a better self-expression on the part of the person requesting the intervention, who is in a position to find personal ways out of the problematic situations that are the subject of the consultancy.
Counseling can deal with how to address and resolve specific issues, make decisions, deal with crises, improve relationships, deal with developmental problems, promote and develop greater personal awareness, work with internal and external feelings, thoughts, perceptions and conflicts.
The main skills and characteristics of a counselor are:
1. empathy;
2. unconditional acceptance of the other;
3. active listening;
4. good use of questions.
Food Counseling is an individual path of active learning of correct eating habits, through a series of meetings during which the person can be helped to become aware of their eating habits, acquire healthy and practicable daily eating habits, explore new possibilities, acquire greater food awareness.
Food counseling is a food education and health promotion tool that aims to provide individuals with the opportunity to develop the ability to make autonomous and conscious food choices with a view to a better quality of life, in order to acquire eating behaviors and of life favorable to health.
Food counseling is indicated for all those people who do not have mental illnesses and who present problems related to food-emotion-corporeality, to those at risk of foodborne pathologies as a preventive pathway and to those who feel the need to change their eating habits. Food counseling is also aimed at subjects in prescriptive diet therapy as a support to consolidate and maintain the results achieved over time.
Dr. Elena Longo, Dietitian, specialist in Food Science and Human Nutrition, freelance nutritionist, expert in Food Education and Techniques for Psychophysical Wellbeing.
