New Year, New Approach
New Year’s has always been one of my favorite holidays.
I love the energy that comes with refreshing goals, letting go of what you don’t need, and celebrating the possibility that comes with a new year. There’s something inherently hopeful about this time as we take a collective pause to reflect and reset.
But alongside that energy often comes a lot of pressure especially around food and movement.
As January approaches, weight-focused goals dominate the conversation. Diets are repackaged, food rules get stricter, and many people feel an urgent need to “fix” their eating. While most of us could benefit from being more intentional about nutrition in the new year, dieting is not the way to do it.
And as Registered Dietitians, we know this.
Diets Don’t Work…
We’ve seen this story play out over and over again both anecdotally with clients and in the research.
Decades of evidence show that dieting does not lead to sustained weight loss for most people. In fact, long-term studies consistently find that weight lost through dieting is often regained within a few years, and many individuals end up weighing more than when they started.
Even more concerning, repeated dieting is associated with:
Increased weight cycling
Disrupted hunger and fullness cues
Lower metabolic efficiency over time
Higher risk of disordered eating behaviors
Increased psychological distress around food
In other words, dieting doesn’t just fail to deliver long-term results, it can actively undermine health and well-being.
Yet despite this knowledge, many nutrition interventions still revolve around plans, prescriptions, and external rules. We teach people what to eat, but not how to build a sustainable relationship with food.
Which raises an important question:
If dieting isn’t the answer, what is?
A Shift We Need to Make as RDs
This is where I believe it’s time for our profession to evolve.
Lasting nutrition change doesn’t happen in an office, on a handout, or inside a perfectly written meal plan. It happens in real life when our clients are in kitchens, grocery stores, and those everyday moments when they’re feeding themselves and their families.
When we shift our work from prescribing to building skills on how to navigate those moments, we’re setting clients up to truly shift their food behaviors and mindset long-term.
The most powerful and underutilized skill we can teach is cooking.
Approaching Cooking As a Nutrition Intervention
Cooking is often framed as a lifestyle preference or a hobby, but the evidence suggests it’s much more than that.
Research consistently shows that people who cook more frequently:
Tend to have lower BMIs than those who cook less often
Have higher diet quality, including greater intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fiber
Consume fewer ultra-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages
Cooking also primes us to enjoy our food more - we’re more likely to enjoy something that we played a role in which can be helpful if we’re building our palette up for more whole foods. But beyond the numbers, cooking addresses something diets don’t: which is agency.
When someone knows how to cook, they don’t need to follow a rigid plan. They can look at what they have, what they’re craving, and what their body needs and create something nourishing and satisfying.
Cooking also offers benefits that extend far beyond nutrition:
It’s a creative outlet, which supports mental and emotional well-being
It encourages mindful engagement through being present, using the senses, slowing down
It can be a powerful act of self-care, especially when reframed away from perfection
It builds confidence, replacing food rules with self-trust
It builds curiosity about food and makes us more engaged eaters which can impact how we participate with the food system
In many ways, cooking is the missing link where nutrition science meets true behavior change.
From Knowing to Doing
As RDs, we know that our clients already know a lot - especially in the age of AI so information isn’t usually the missing piece.
What’s missing is the bridge between knowledge and action or between understanding nutrition and living it in a way that feels not only doable, but also enjoyable.
Cooking creates that bridge.
When we bring nutrition coaching out of the office and into the kitchen, we help our clients:
Translate guidance into real meals
Reduce reliance on external rules and plans
By supporting autonomy, confidence, and long-term behavior change
Move away from diet culture without abandoning nutrition science
This is the kind of work that truly lasts and that I’m so incredibly passionate about.
A New Year Opportunity
The new year doesn’t have to be about stricter rules or “starting over.”
It can be an invitation to try something different, something more grounded, more compassionate, and more effective.
For clients, that might mean learning how to cook a few reliable meals instead of chasing a perfect diet.
And for us as RDs, it might mean expanding our role and shifting from expert advisor to culinary nutrition guide where we meet people where change actually happens.
In the kitchen.