Finding The Right Nutrition Coach

Published: 2024-08-29

Many people who have tried weight loss have been caught in the restrictive dieting phase where you are told to not eat anything or restrict full food groups. Often these have a specific time limit like 21 days or a month. However, as a Precision Nutrition coach, when I coach my clients, I make a plan that fits them where they are, whether they have a lot or a little of information about nutrition, depending on how their daily schedule and habits look now and then we work towards something that will actually fit their life and is sustainable in the long run.

Understanding Weight Loss

For weight loss to happen you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. The formula at a glance is quite simple. Add more movement in your life and limit sodas, lemonades, or other sweetened empty-calorie drinks and you will start to lose weight. What many restrictive diets do is take this needed deficit to the extreme. Some might suggest that you should eat only 1,000 kcal, others might tell you that you should cut out full food groups like “don’t eat any carbs” or similar statements. These fad diets are often time-restrictive and promise high weight loss at a rapid speed. So, what’s the problem with this? It sounds like a great way to lose weight quickly. Well, losing weight too quickly can lead to loss of lean mass rather than fat mass, which means that you are losing water weight and muscle mass instead. Additionally, eating at a high deficit and cutting out food groups will result in a loss of both macro and micronutrients and can be detrimental for your health.

How do you know if what you are doing is a fad diet or too restrictive? Ask yourself whether or not this diet seems like it is something you can do in the long run or only for a short period. If the answer is that you can only do it for a short period, it is probably too restrictive.

If you want to know more about fad diets, check out this article: “Fad Diets – True Miracles or False Advertising?”

The Precision Nutrition Way

When you work with a Precision Nutrition Coach you will get a more sustainable approach to nutrition. That means you would not go “cold turkey” on what you are currently doing, but rather build small habits that add up over time into a lifestyle that reaches your goals. Valuing macro and micronutrients also becomes a priority as they are essential for a healthy lifestyle. For example, a client who eats fast food every day and drinks only coffee or lemonades and sodas with every meal wouldn’t go to eating only salads and drinking only water. Instead, they would meet where they were, perhaps changing the option of what they pick at the fast-food restaurant rather than cutting it out completely. Maybe changing the type of coffee drink and lemonade and then going from there. Chances are that the reason this particular client was eating fast food was because they didn’t have time to make lunch and/or dinner, and fast-food restaurants offer a convenient solution that is also cheap. Understanding your starting point and building habits from there will have a much better success rate in actually changing your behavior and reaching the goals you want, but more importantly, maintaining that goal afterward.

Finding A Good Nutrition Coach

It can be hard to find a good nutrition coach when there are so many available options on the internet. Looking for registered dietitians is great (registered dietitians have more schooling than nutritionists and have a degree. If you have medical concerns regarding dieting, e.g. specific diets for people with diabetes, eating disorders, or similar – a dietitian is your best option), however, they tend to be more expensive granted they can give you more in-depth advice. Nutritionists can be harder to weed out because there are many certifications out there, accredited or not, which would make people call themselves nutritionists (nutritionists can help the general population with nutritional problems such as weight loss, gaining muscle mass, general fitness, etc., but prescribing any diets for medical concerns is outside of their scope of practice). Nutritionists are great options for most people and tend to be cheaper than dietitians. Just make sure they show their certifications, and you can always look into the accreditation of these. Some of the highest accredited nutrition certifications in the U.S. are Precision Nutrition, NASM, and ACE, however, there are more out there, including different ones for other countries. Doing a consultation with a nutritionist can help you gauge if it is going to be a good fit for you and also if they seem knowledgeable of what they do.

Good luck on your nutrition journey!