Annoying Nutritionists

Training Bodybuilding
1

My girlfriend is graduating from college next week with a dietetics/nutrition degree and she is annoying the shit out of me. Here are some classic lines that have lead into fights…

“Most Americans get enough protein in their diet and you don’t need to take any more.”

“Taking 200 grams of protein is really bad for you”

“You don’t need creatine. It’s just an expensive supplement that doesn’t do anything. Any benefit is just in your head.”

“People get enough creatine in their diets as it is, you don’t need to spend the extra money.”

“You should eat at least 300 grams of carbohydrates per day.”

“The GI factor doesn’t really matter all that much.”

And the list goes on and on and on!! Then whenever I point out that when I was following all of those things very strictly I was the most ripped I have been. This usually pisses her off and her response is “I just hate you telling me that what I’ve studied for the past 3 years is wrong and worthless.”

Does anybody have some things I can toss her way that will shut her the hell up? The more studies the better.

2

I’ve had the same problem with past girlfriends. One girlfriend would go on that abs need to be worked every day because they recover in a couple hours. Another girlfriend claimed that my ECA stack would kill me and that it doesn’t work.

It really goes on and on. The best advice is to just avoid these arguments entirely. You’ll get no sex if you keep getting into arguments all the time. Just tell her that you’ll take her suggestions into account.

Or just flip out and start citing studies and journals from the top of your head, like I did.

3

“I just hate you telling me that what I’ve studied for the past 3 years is wrong and worthless.”

At least she admits it…

4

Yeah, tell her to

A) Start experimenting with “300 g’s of carbs a day”, or any other information that she believes in and is obviously misinformed about.

B) Stop believing that by paying $10,000 a year in schooling (or whatever it is) is going to give her a real “education” and automatically make whatever comes out of her mouth actually worth something.

And…

C) To GO READ T-MAG!

5

Kindly inform her that by attending college for Nutrition, she has now sucessfully learned HOW to study. If she is concerned with rising above this adolescent state of knowledge, she must now realize WHAT to study.

I spent 4 years in an exercise science degree, and have no problem coming to grips with the lack of knowledged I procured from the classroom, hopefully soon she will be able to do the same.

She has already wasted quite a bit of money, no point in wasting time as well.

Print her out a few key articles from T-mag, specificaly some of Berardi’s nutrition pieces. Don’t give her a heaping stack all at once though, break her in slow.

I feel your pain, I have dealt with this situation many times. My answer usually comes in the form of a well-referenced article.

6

I don’t know if your goal should be to “shut her the hell up”. :slight_smile: You might want to explain that for the purposes that the studies were done that produced the results she is using as law, that those quotes may work, but not in the way she thinks. (i.e. “Most Americans get enough protein in their diet.” To do what? Live? Or look like the gods and goddesses we should be?)

Also, about the placebo effect she mentioned for creatine, who gives a crap? If there were a pill out there that only lengthened your penis because you thought it was going to work, then, damn, it would sell. That placebo effect argument has its place, but it doesn’t mean you should write something off because of it.

Try to show her that a lot of the studies that she may site were either done a long time ago or done poorly (and explain why). Let her know that her education’s value isn’t the list of facts that she garnered, but the ability to think critically about nutrition. Sure, they had to show her some studies and make her read some books that contained a lot of information (some good and some bad), but that’s just a starting point. Tell her that she should continually try to push past our current realm of knowledge.

7

I remember this girl I used to work with coming to my office to tell me that she had just learned in her nutrition class that absolutely nobody needs more than 69 grams of protein per day and that that was indisputable. More than that and you would destroy your kidneys, liver, heart and just about everything else. I didn’t even bother to argue with her. I had a can of tuna to eat.

8

If you dislike her so much, why are you still w/ her? Get yourself a T-vixen and get it over with.

9

Tell her that if she’s going to be a nutritionist (or anything similar), she needs to start getting some real-world experience to go with her book learning. Then challenge her to actually try various diets out on herself and see what happens. Be supportive when you say this, like you’re trying to help her prepare for her career (which is, after all, true).

I hired a new secretary a year ago, and at that time when I told her something (in response to the inevitable “I’d like to lose a few pounds…” musings) she didn’t believe me. So I gave her something very easy to do (substitute cheese for one carb meal a day). When it worked for her, wonder of wonders, she started listening a little more closely.

If you put the onus on her to give it a shot, then it will become very difficult for her to continue to spout off about stuff that she doesn’t have the gumption to try out herself. Of course, forcing her to confront her own inconsistency may just be the end of your relationship. So if you want to keep her tread lightly…

10

Fuck, deepsquatter just crashed! back again. Annoying nutritionists you say. I encourage the overcompetitive overconfidant youths in my exercise science course to look at everything in the context it was done and to realise that everything and everyone exists on a continuum. Nothing is cut and dried or black and white.
Heard anything about the blood type diet? Is there anything published on the inuslin index that I can use to explan why low gi doesn’t necessarily mean low insulin?

11

Just stuff your balls in her mouth. No way she’ll be able to complain then.

12

I’m with Stella…
Find a chick who eats steak!! :slight_smile:
But seriously, sit her down and say, WITHOUT belittling her education…
That’s what you’ve got to work with. This is how I want to do my thing. Nobody should have to shut anybody up in a good relationship. If you can’t agree to disagree like adults, or if she can’t accept the way you want to live/eat, you might have some issues.

13

haha i am taking those classes she was taking…yeah i basically show up for tests…laugh alot and then leave and i have an A…the prof. actually looks at me when she says something to see if i think its ok. It kinda funy but i am paying 1500 a credit at this freakin school…so its really not. But i learned some decent biology stuff atleast.

14

ya know what’s really scary ? if these students are being taught so wrong about nutrition, i wonder what else they are being taught wrong about general medical practice !!!

15

In the end all college is a peice BS paper to get you somewhere. Hopefully.

College Degree means abosultly nothing to me. I know people w/o degrees that are millionares. By the age 30.

16

Um, I would sincerely hope that nutrition students aren’t being taught ANYTHING about general medical practice.

Not sure what you’re getting at, Podge.

17

Char-dawg has it right. Keep doing what you are doing. Sooner or later she will ask how you do it. Then tell her. Real education begins after college. It is called the real world.

18

To Fitone:

That’s usually what a person who doesn’t have a degree says. Sometimes I get tired of people saying that college degrees are worthless. Unless you had to go through it you have no idea. It’s up to you to pick out what is bullshit and what is not. We get bombarded with bullshit every day and it’s up to us to pick it out.

19

A college degree is only a BS piece of paper if you do the minimum to get by. Grades, standardized test scores, and the image you put forth in interviews will tell a lot about how motivated and competent you are.

My girlfriend’s mom is a “nutritionist” at a high school. She has no basic understanding of the basic principles of diet and exercise. I wish she would read this site. After constantly getting into arguments about things I have learned in school versus things she misinterpreted in a women’s mag/Atkins book, I have learned that the best thing to do is to agree to disagree. Here are some of the comments that made me want to pull my hair out:
“The Atkins diet makes no mention of counting calories, it only matters if you limit your carb intake.”
“What is an amino acid, a kind of fat?”
“Low carb beer is better because the alcohol is burned as sugar.”
“In ketosis, muscle tissue is not wasted due to the strict use of fat as fuel.”
And the winner, when I played devil’s advocate and asked her if bacon was the breakfast of champions: “Recent studies have shown that diets high in fat, even saturated, decrease risk of heart disease.”
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

20

Cor-ay! Good to see a fellow Hoosier in the house. How’s life in 'Nap?

Before I get to the primary gist of this post, I’d just like to jump in with J-Lo (JasonL). The statement that [quote]College Degree means abosultly nothing…[/quote] is an absolutely horrendous statement and is an exaggerated generalization.

Many a college graduate put in extreme amounts of effort and time to make the most out of his/her edumacation (that’s right, I said edumacation). Of course, there are others that: 1) do the bare minimum they need to get by, and 2) take everything that they’re taught and read in a textbook as gospel.

However, many others make their education work for them by developing critical evaluative skills, ciphoning through the material given to them to decide what’s for real and what’s not.

I guarantee that if you compare college graduate and post-graduate individuals to those individuals without the aforementioned credentials, you’ll, without a doubt, find the former much more successful than the latter.

Now, back to Cory. Cory, I’m a student of Sports Nutrition, as I would also consider many of the others in these parts. There’s a drastic difference between eating for performance, body composition, activity, etc. than for the general population. I would imagine–although I’ve not had much exposure to Dietetics/Nutrition courses–that the programs geared for general nutrition are focused on sedentary America or those with far less activity than athletes.

That being said, I could possibly make 5 of the 6 statements that you quoted your girl as saying as being truthful. You’ve got to be more specific, though.

Cory, I have to ask the question, though. I mean, is this all that you two ever talk, rather argue, about? Or do you two click for the most part? Obviously, if this is a normal topic of conversation–albeit with raised voices–then you might consider moving on. In addition, Cory, I feel that you need to solidify your statements and arguments. If you’re not explaining and verifying the claims of your own, how does that reflect on the confidence and validity of your beliefs?