Diet Therapy Assignment: Nutritional Treatment for Weight Loss

Question

Task: Prepare a detailed diet therapy assignment on the topic “How diet therapy helps in weight loss?”

Answer

Introduction
Medical nutrition therapy is referred as a treatment that is used for helping people with overweight. The therapy can also be used by people with other health problems to keep a balance in their nutrition intake. The patient in this treatment isbeing observed closely with the dietician for their nutrition plan to stay healthy. Dietary therapy is one of the most common way of reducing weight used by most of the people in today’s time. There has been past research that shows the way dietary plan and dietary plan helps people in leading a healthy lifestyle and maintenance of the weight (Abbasi 2018).According to Alamout et al. (2020) replacement of the meals and composition of macronutrients does not help in maintaining dietary needs and maintaining weight. This is because losing weight needs a planning and changes in dietary pattern and helps in losing weight in long term along with living healthy. Moreover, composition of dietary is the best way to prevent weight gain once the weight is lost. Further, Soelimanand Azadbakht (2014) stated from the research is that the major food related vectors that encourages over consumption of nutrition and in turn lead to overweight are energy dense foods, high energy drinks and large portion sizes. This needs effective dietary plan for the population that helps in reducing fats, sugar and fiber in the diet and in turn reduces fats among the obese people. This shows the past works of research has effectively stated that dietary related strategies are beneficial in initiating weight loss among people suffering from overweight and other health concern issue. However, the research on the ways in which dietary therapy help in weight loss is still missing.

The purpose of the present research is to analyze the manner in which diet therapy is efficient in weight loss. The research will help in adding value to nutritional therapy because the outcome of the research will enable the people to learn more about diet or nutritional therapy and increase the demand for such therapy. Moreover, it will help in increasing the knowledge of such therapy among the population by letting them know the importance diet plays in helping them lead a healthy life (Smith et al. 2016). The outcome of the research will make the patients value nutritional therapy for dealing with their overweight issues. Moreover, the research will also help the therapists in understanding new ways by which they can make nutritional therapy more effective.

Aim and Objectives of the Research
The aim of the research is to identify the ways in which nutritional or diet therapy helps in initiating weight loss among people that is facing issue of overweight and other health problems. The researcher will meet the aim of the study through various research objectives:

• To examine the meaning and relevance of diet therapy.
• To investigate the role of diet therapy in the process of weight loss.
• To investigate the ways in which diet therapy helps in reducing weight among the people facing weight related issue.

Research Question

• How does diet therapy helps in weight loss?
Rationale for the Research Approach
The research approach is a plan that helps in designing the way data will be collected, analyzed and interpreted for reaching the most accurate outcome of the research. There are three broad categories of research approach or strategy that is used by a researcher to reach the final research outcome in the most efficient way such as qualitative, quantitative and mixed. Literature review is yet another strategy that is used by a researcher to investigate into the study by making use of results of past researches to answer the present research question (Snyder 2019). This research project will make use of qualitative research approach for answering the research question. Qualitative research approach makes use of open-ended questions and open communication to gather information from the people and know their thinking and perspective about the study area (Mohajan 2018). This research approach will effectively indulge in open communication to learn the ways in which diet therapy helps in losing weight among obese or other patients with weight related issues. This will enable the researcher to learn about diet therapy in an in-depth manner. However, there can be biases in the research because such approach highly relies on the experience of the researcher and thus lead to misleading conclusions.

Research Design
Research design refers to the strategy that the researcher adopts to integrate different components of the study in a logical way that can ensure accurate research outcome. It is one of the most important elements of research processes (Mohajan2018). There are various kinds of research designs used for qualitative research such as ethnographic, narrative research, case studies and phenomenology and others. This research will make use of case studies research design for investigating into the ways diet therapy help in reducing weight. Case study research approach helps in generating in-depth understanding of a complex issues. The benefit of using a case study design is that it helps in providing a realistic response to the research question (Basias and Pollalis 2018). This is because it helps in giving broad answer to the research question along with answering the present question in study. The case studies research design is approached through three categories such as explanatory, descriptive and exploratory. This research will make use of explanatory research to learn the ways in which diet therapy is beneficial in reducing weight among people. However, in such a research design it may be difficult sometime to reach accurate conclusions due to casual research findings.

Suitability of the Design
The case study research design is suitable in meeting the aims and objectives of this research study because it will help in effectively answering the ways a diet plan helps in weight loss in a detailed manner (Ridder 2017). Using numerical data is not suitable in this research areas because understanding the benefits of diet therapy is most suitable when addressed in a detailed manner. It will allow to collect lot of details on diet therapy that can be understood easily. However, there is lack of numerical usage in the data and this might reduce the accuracy and authenticity of the research result. Moreover, a small sample size in this research design may make it difficult to learn about the benefits of diet therapy from the entire population.

Limitations of the Design
The case study research design being used in this research work also has various limitations and may impact the overall accuracy of the final outcome. The suggested research design may by time consuming and expensive if done on a large scale and it will become difficult to generalize the results in a structured manner. Moreover, it will be difficult to cross check the information collected in this research design because there are large scale of clustered information and checking each information is difficult. Thus, to manage the efficiency of the research it is important to base the research on small sample rather than on large group of samples. Moreover, the research may face limitations from the biasness of the researcher in answering the research questions (Basias and Pollalis 2018). For example, participants included in the research may use their own intuition or experiences in sharing their knowledge about diet therapy and its relation with weight loss.

Sampling Method
Sampling refers to the way in which participants will be selected from a large population to take part in the investigation. There are different types of sampling methods used in the research such as simple random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified sampling and others (Mohajan2018). The sampling method that will be used in this research project is simple random sampling where every participant will have equal opportunity of being selected in the sample. Moreover, it is one of the best ways to represent large population. In this research project the diet therapists will be chosen for taking parting in the research and every therapist will have equal chance of getting selected in the research. This will help in effectively representing the entire population of therapists that use dietary plan for weight reduction. A sample size of five diet therapists will be chosen for the research that will represent the entire group of diet therapists. However, such sampling may create problem because such sampling is time consuming and need high effort to select the sample from large number of populations. In addition to this, recruiting participants for the research will take place in three stages such as identifying the potential diet therapists, approaching the therapists and obtaining consent from them for taking part in the research. The method will be time consuming, however, it will help in recruiting potential participants in an ethical manner.

Data Collection Method
Data collection is a process of collecting effective and relevant information about the research problem from different sources to answer the research question in the most accurate manner. There are two broad categories of data collection methods such as primary and secondary data collection. The research will make use of both primary and secondary data collection method to gather information relevant to the research question. Primary data collection method will collect data directly from the source that is the diet therapists. Interview method will be used to collect primary data from the diet therapists through telephone. This will enable to collect data from interviewee in most effective and less time-consuming way and complying with the social distancing norm due to convid-19 pandemic. Moreover, telephonic interview will make use of five questions and continue for half an hour to collect all data from five diet therapists’ participants. Additionally, researchers will use past works of literature on diet therapy and its role in weight loss as secondary data to align it with primary data and reach the final outcome with better accuracy (Snyder 2019). However, using a mix of both the methods may be time consuming and expensive for the researcher.

Data Analysis Method
Data analysis is referred to as a method of structuring and analyzing collected information in most efficient way to reach the final research outcome. The process is used to draw final research outcome and meet the objective of the research. There are various types of methods used to analyze data such as content analysis, narrative analysis, discourse analysis and others. The research project will make use of narrative analysis to analyze content collected from the interview. The experiences and knowledge of the therapists will be analyzed in a detailed manner and simple language to answer the research question. It will enable the researcher to narrate the collected information in a format of a story for making it easy for the readers to interpret the meaning of medical benefits of the therapy (McAlpine 2016). However, narrative analysis may become too lengthy for the readers to understand and fail to state the important information of the research.

Ethical Considerations
Ethical considerations are an important aspect of the research when humans are involved in data collection process. The ethical principles that are relevant for the research are confidentiality, respect to interviewee, consent and conflict of interest. The researcher will maintain anonymity to address the principle of confidentiality and respect of the participants. Moreover, informed consent will be collected from all the participants of the research through a consent form to manage the ethics of consent and justice to the diet therapists (Ngozwana 2018). Lastly, every participant will be given independent to respond to the interview questions to manage the conflict of interest that might arise in the interview.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that the research will take place in a structured manner using qualitative research approach. Moreover, the diet therapist will be consulted for the research to collect reliable information and reach the final research outcome in an accurate manner. The paper will make use of both primary and secondary data collection method to collect data and analyze it using narrative method. The ethical principles that are relevant for the research are confidentiality, respect to interviewee, consent and conflict of interest. ?

References
Abbasi, J., 2018. Interest in the ketogenic diet grows for weight loss and type 2 diabetes. Jama, 319(3), pp.215-217.

Alamout, M.M., Rahmanian, M., Aghamohammadi, V., Mohammadi, E. and Nasiri, K., 2020. Effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy on weight loss, improvement of hypertension and attentional bias to eating cues in overweight people. International journal of nursing sciences, 7(1), pp.35-40.

Basias, N. and Pollalis, Y., 2018. Quantitative and qualitative research in business & technology: Justifying a suitable research methodology. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 7, pp.91-105.

McAlpine, L., 2016. Why might you use narrative methodology? A story about narrative. EestiHaridusteadusteAjakiri. Estonian Journal of Education, 4(1), pp.32-57.

Mohajan, H.K., 2018. Qualitative research methodology in social sciences and related subjects. Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People, 7(1), pp.23-48.

Ngozwana, N., 2018. Ethical Dilemmas in Qualitative Research Methodology: Researcher's Reflections. International Journal of Educational Methodology, 4(1), pp.19-28. Ridder, H.G., 2017. The theory contribution of case study research designs. Business Research, 10(2), pp.281-305.

Smith, G.I., Yoshino, J., Kelly, S.C., Reeds, D.N., Okunade, A., Patterson, B.W., Klein, S. and Mittendorfer, B., 2016. High-protein intake during weight loss therapy eliminates the weight-loss-induced improvement in insulin action in obese postmenopausal women. Cell reports, 17(3), pp.849-861.

Snyder, H., 2019. Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, pp.333-339.

Soeliman, F.A. and Azadbakht, L., 2014. Weight loss maintenance: A review on dietary related strategies. Journal of research in medical sciences: the official journal of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, 19(3), p.268.