Dr. Swati Chakraborty is a celebrated nutritionist and dietitian. Please find out how she traversed from a MBBS degree to a nutritionist via psychiatry and read about her interesting journey so far. You can follow her on Instagram.
What is unique about your profession as a nutritionist and whom does your business cater to?
I am a nutritionist and dietitian by profession. I landed into the field of nutrition via serendipity, after completing my MBBS degree and work experience in psychiatry. I opened my chambers in 1988. My business initially started with doctors sending patients to my chambers for seeking guidance and counselling in nutrition. I diversified my business gradually to understand and include the lifestyle changes of my clients and that’s how weight management and reduction was also added to my business portfolio. Slowly, my clientele also expanded to include Bengali film and television industry’s celebrities.
How did your MBBS degree help you in starting your career as a nutritionist?
When I started my career as a nutritionist, I had no formal training in nutrition. All I had was an MBBS degree with a solid working experience in psychiatry. I learnt from experience, from relentless studies of various journals, case records, books and other materials. But the medical knowledge that I gained during my MBBS degree and handling patients with various psychological issues have always been a bedrock of my work as a nutritionist or lifestyle changer. It helped me to understand how our body functions, how it influences our mind and how tweaking our lifestyle a little here, and a little there can bring about a vast amount of positive impact.
In your career, how did you find psychology is linked to nutrition?
Making patients aware of their faulty lifestyle is one thing but forcing them to change it is a totally different issue. Here the knowledge of psychology comes to play because I must motivate them. I will try to explain it with the help of some examples. A diabetic is asked to omit potatoes and sweets from their diet, making them irritated or unhappy, which again shoots up the blood sugar level. Young girls are being given treatment for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), but alongside, they must see a counsellor to allay their anxiety. Sometimes childless couples run from one clinic to another and then conceive after adopting a baby. It is neither a rocket science nor a miracle. Certain percentage of infertile women may conceive after a good counselling. Unless a nutritionist touches the raw nerve of a client, he or she cannot command a position of trust and empathy. So, psychology is needed to form a bond between the patient and the nutritionist which helps to make the baggage of losing weight or changing the lifestyle more bearable and acceptable.
Please mention about a few professional highs and lows while pursuing nutritionist as your career.
I would like to tell a story that began probably as a low, although it gave me a clear perspective about what I want. So, I would let the reader decide how the highs and lows are interrelated.
From 1982, I worked on a project for six years, which I named “less medicine- no medicine” for the benefit of the young boys and girls dwelling in eleven slums scattered all over Kolkata. While working, it dawned on me that I could only prescribe medicines but could not prevent diseases or improve their health condition. It required improvement of lifestyle and proper food. These young boys and girls were the children of daily wage earners like maid servants, masons, sweepers etc. In the unhealthy condition they used to take contaminated food and bathe in unclean water resulting in diarrhoea, skin diseases, dysentery, common cough and cold and other allied ailments. Malnutrition was also a major problem. I advised the parents simple tips such as providing the kids with clean drinking water, clean food and also gave them some vitamins and simple nutrient related interventions. This improved their health and they were not dependent anymore on medicines. Although this also meant that the project finished before the intended duration, and I had to quit on not such a happy note.
Realising the value of lifestyle and nutrition in treatment, I started my career as a nutritionist. That’s why I mentioned perspective is very important and we get a lot from our lows in life.
Indian diets in 1980s-1990s were very different compared to what we have today. How different is the job of a nutritionist back then compared to now? What are the challenges of a nutritionist’s job in today’s landscape?
Before 1980, our social scenario was traditional and very different from today’s. Earlier, home cooked food was served, which were seasonal and locally sourced and produced. Sundays, usually, were feast days. Seasonal and local fruits were part of daily intake. Physical activities were much more prevalent. Cooking, shopping, commuting involved more rigorous physical labour. Children used to play, swim, dance, and sing in the real world rather than the virtual world. The eating style from then has gone through a sea change. Now it’s mostly nuclear families with both members working. Dinner is almost the only meal eaten at home with food ordered online. Food items from all over the world are just a click away and junk food of very different climates have become our staple. Earlier food used to satiate hunger but now it has become a status symbol. In this very different eating and living pattern overweight and other various associated problems have become part of our lifestyle now. People are aware of values of good lifestyle, but they get wisdom from half-truth search engine and misguiding commercial advertisements. So, the job of a nutritionist is becoming more important and difficult at the same time.
After walking a long path of being a nutritionist and seeing the bombardment of packaged sugar laden food in our diet on last few years, nutrition deprivation is a phenomenon not only in poor but in well to do families too. What would be your suggestion to today’s parents and generations who consume it?
A combination of knowledge about what is good and teaching it to children is important. Precooked packaged foods should be limited so are sugar laden desserts. While teaching the human digestive system, teachers can emphasise on the end result of these wrong choices. At the same time, better alternatives such as nuts, dates, figs, light ice cream, fruit salad, banana split, sweet potatoes with honey, stewed apple with cinnamon powder can make a difference. Sadly, the poor cannot have it and the rich kids are not motivated enough to have these. We can only keep trying.
Please tell us what motivates you.
I am 75 years old now and if something still motivates and keeps me going are my clients’ healthy lifestyle journeys. I will narrate two incidents. For the last two months or so, two girls were calling me up, saying that they wanted to come and meet me. I came to know that they are friends, both stay in Khardah, 2.5 hours away from my place, and both have been my clients many years back! Eventually, they fixed up a date and came to visit me. They were, both, a little overweight, not much. I came to know that both had wanted to extend the program for further weight reduction, but I had dissuaded them from doing so. I had told one of them that she will be okay if she goes into maintenance and I refused the other because she had a narrow, oval face, and if she reduced more weight, she may look a bit haggard. And though they were sad, they realized why I asked them not to continue and finally left with happy faces. On the one hand, it meant there was no business, but a client’s health is way too important!
There was another client who had an advanced stage of fatty liver disease (FLD). With the diet and lifestyle change I advised him, we could reverse his FLD. This was a moment of happiness for me as its progression of FLD may have severe outcomes. So, my overall answer is the thing that still motivates me are happy customers!