You’ve decided you are ready to get your nutrition on track and you want to hire a nutrition coach! Congratulations! Hiring a coach is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
I’ve hired coaches for every realm of my life over the past decade plus. I’ve invested more than $110,000 in various coaches, masterminds, and programs to take me further in this game of life. Whether it’s been for professional growth, personal growth, exercise coaching or nutrition coaching, I’ve enjoyed the accountability, guidance, expertise and support. I would not be where I am today without it!
How to Hire a Nutrition Coach
Looking to get some guidance and help with your nutrition? Below, I have listed what some important aspects would be when thinking of hiring a coach for nutrition. These will help you find the perfect fit for your needs!
Make sure they align with your values
Alignment of values is critical as you want your coach to be on the same page as you in several ways.
Imagine hiring a nutrition coach that was vegan and coached all their clients to become vegan and you love meat, fish, and eggs? Or imagine hiring a coach that believes that Keto is the only way to lose weight but you know high fats make you feel sick and constipated?
When your coach is aligned with your lifestyle and goals, you can take the sustainable path and just feel more “at home” during the process. Nothing is worse than conflicting with your coach about variables that are critical to your success.
Define your terms of success with your nutrition coach
Your idea of success may be fitting into your old jeans. Your coach’s idea of success may be you bench pressing 100lbs. Make sure you’re on the same page for what will make you feel great about your progress and how you will measure that progress.
Ensure their approach is sustainable
My guess is you want to make this a lifestyle approach, meaning, you want it to stick.
You don’t want to lose weight really fast just to have it all come back, right? That’s what I thought! The word lifestyle simply means it fits into your normal world. Sure things will have to change a little because after all, ‘if nothing changes, nothing changes’! However, going too hard or too fast or too crazy won’t help you physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Sustainable means you can do it for more than 6 weeks. Sure, you may be able to abstain from bread or say no to donuts or pass on the macaroni and cheese for 6 weeks, but is that going to be something you can do for years to come? I don’t know about you, but I would not love my life if I could not have mac’n’cheese every so often!
I love when we teach our clients how to fit in a brownie, a glass of wine, or a cookie every now and then while watching their progression continue and not feeling guilty about it.
Is the coaching human based or app based and how does the accountability work with that?
Nothing is better than having a real human check in on you a few times a week and to have regularly scheduled times you meet that human (phone, zoom or in person).
Accountability is the glue that holds everything together for actually doing what needs to happen with nutrition. So if your nutrition coach is really an app, how far will you really get? Upgrading to a premium version of MyFitnessPal or paying for Noom won’t be enough to help you navigate the real world because they are app based, robotic driven platforms and not actual humans taking your life and all the variables into consideration.
If you do hire a human coach, make sure you know what the communication expectation is and what avenues they use for that communication. If you hate email and never check it, working with a coach that emails probably won’t work nor will it be sustainable. Same goes for having a coach that can only communicate during the day when you really need your check ins to be after work in the evening.
How often does your human coach check in with you? Are they just providing you information and letting you run free? Or are you meeting every month, every other week, or every week?
All this matters for accountability sake and if you really want results.
What certification(s) or what degree(s) do they have?
Nowadays, everyone that eats apples calls themselves a nutrition coach.
There are various degrees and many certifications out there that are able to provide substantial education for someone to officially become a nutrition coach. Depending on your health history and goals, one may be better than another.
For example, if you’re a diabetic that also is dairy free, you may want to work with a Registered Dietician.
Maybe you have no major health history but you are looking for more of a wholesome approach to mindful eating. A Holistic Nutritionist would be a better fit for you.
Just because someone did a bodybuilding competition once upon a time does not make them qualified to work with nutrition clients; especially ones with health history considerations like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease or high cholesterol. Ask about the qualifications, education and experience before buying.
What is their track record? What types of results have they helped other clients achieve?
This goes beyond just weight loss. I’m talking about body fat reduction, lean muscle mass increase, inches off the body for body composition results.
Outside of that, what have they done for “non scale victories”? Some examples of NSV’s are wearing smaller size clothes, getting off medications/prescriptions, improving medical stats like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, sleeping better, coming out of depression, less chronic pain, improved mobility/flexibility and better confidence!
You should be able to read reviews from previous or current customers as well as see some pictures of transformations. If you choose to work with a newer coach that has yet to work with clients, what type of guarantee do they have?
Do they ‘walk the walk’ or just ‘talk the talk’?
I don’t know about you, but I would not go to a dentist with wooden teeth! I want a dentist with a great smile, healthy gums and teeth!
So for your nutrition coach, are they walking the walk or just talking the talk? I’m not saying your coach needs to be skinny or super ripped; it needs to make sense to you. It just doesn’t make sense to have a coach that is eating pizza and drinking beer most nights of the week, skipping meals during the day and pounding sugar drinks for energy. It’s a red flag if your coach is not living the lifestyle they preach. It seems like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised what you find out there.
Get a coach that will take you from where you’ve been to where you wanna be without doing it at 150mph
Let’s say the last 3-4 months you have been skipping breakfast, eating a fast food lunch, and then dinner is either cereal or cheese and crackers. You also drink several nights of the week, you sleep 5 hours a night on average, and your only form of activity is walking the dog. Let’s say you have 35lbs to lose, you want to drop a couple pant sizes and get your high blood pressure down.
Your coach needs to take ALL of that into consideration when creating your next steps to achieve your goals.
It does not make sense to have your coach tell you you have to cut the booze, eat breakfast, make your lunch and start cooking dinner all while getting to bed 2 hours earlier, oh, and exercise four times a week. Not only is this not sustainable, but it is a harsh adjustment from where you have been. Your brain and body will not like it at all.
A great coach will ensure you are making one to two tweaks at a time and that the process feels smooth.
If your coach doesn’t ask you at all what your lifestyle has been like in depth prior to giving you goals and things to do, it’s a red flag.
Unqualified coaches will often just hand out a general meal plan and/or exercise plan that they use for everyone. They don’t create a bridge for you to cross over, they just expect you to jump. I’m all for a leap of faith, but not that kind!
Hiring a Nutrition Coach
So now that you are ready to hire a nutrition coach for accountability, education, and support, you know what to look for so that you get the best coach for your goals, starting point, personality and lifestyle aspects. Feed Your Soul Fitness has an extensive roster of nutrition coaches and we would love to see if we are the right fit for you. Whether you work with one of our Dietitians or with either our Holistic or Clinical Nutritionist, we will make sure you get to your goals in a sustainable and approachable way. Take a look at our webpage to see all the before and after pictures of clients we have worked with.
Online Nutrition Coaching
Note that our clients are all over the USA despite our studio being based in Denver. We work with locals and people from both coasts!
Feel free to watch a testimonial video to hear in their own words how their transformation and journey were while working with our coaches. We hope to have you in our community to help you with your health and wellness goals!
