I love being a dietitian. Knowing that what you do can influence someone’s mental and physical health is utterly fulfilling. Dietitians are trained clinically, this means we know how to treat medical conditions like high blood pressure or obesity by offering guidance on what you can do to change your diet. Being trained in Sports Nutrition is completely different. Sports Nutrition optimises fitness, performance and your physique before and after training or sports. And of course in the background of both clinical and sports nutrition is my passion for Lifestyle Medicine, the discipline which covers what many of us know we ought to do, with evidence-based strategies to actually make those behaviours happen.
About Felicity Lyons
Dietitian & Sports Nutritionist
I have been a dietitian since 1998, working across the NHS and within academia at Imperial College Healthcare Trust and Robert Gordon University. Since 2011 I have been a freelancer which permits great flexibility regarding how I like to work and within what areas. Consultant work in a mental health unit pushed me to explore nutritional psychiatry and the impact of a great diet of high nutritional quality on the mental health of patients. A clinic in a gym allowed me to see first hand, the positive impact that working out and exercising has on so many individuals – mentally and physically. I pursued a postgraduate certificate in applied sports nutrition to update my knowledge on the impact of exercise on the body and nutritional requirements. I find this area of work fascinating and really quite different to clinical work. Behind all of this lies my interest in treating an individual holistically – looking at the whole person. This is Lifestyle Medicine – understanding that all aspects of a lifestyle impact our health on all fronts.
These days my work centres on my clinics in Clapham, and Central London, helping individuals manage their relationship with food, weight, physique, sporting performance, and bowel health. My aim is to communicate how nutrition and positive lifestyle habits can transform your life. Exploring relationships with food, embedding different habits and supporting individuals to achieve what might be proving tricky, is all part of my skill-set.
My Lifestyle
Me? I am goody 2 shoes on the food front. My boyfriend is a classically trained French chef who does his best to tempt me with delicious foods and treats every time we meet. Luckily, apart from the mutual love of butter, we are not into high fat foods but interesting cuisine from around the world. I call him my French vegetarian because although most of the food he eats is plant driven, he is of course a consumer of oysters, mussels, and occasional smoked meats.
Exercise wise I am a typical on-again-off-again exerciser of hula hooping, running, and yoga. Somehow or other, I manage to maintain a good level of brisk walking – very likely because I have a buddy to do it with… indeed it often feels like a counselling session as we walk out our dramas with our teenage boys ( I have 2 of them, and she has 1). Exercise definitely works.
