In today's world, fitness coaching is no longer just about hitting the gym and working out. It's also about nutrition. Proper nutrition is essential for optimal health and function, both in and out of the gym.
Without including nutrition in your program designs, exercise is just a bandaid. You can’t build fitness on a shaky foundation of poor nutrition behaviors.
In this blog, we'll explore why nutrition is essential for fitness coaching and how to create a simple but sustainable nutrition plan for your clients.
When it comes to fitness coaching, nutrition is just as important as exercise. Proper nutrition can help clients reach their fitness goals faster, improve their overall health and wellbeing, and even enhance their mood and cognitive function.
Here are some of the key reasons why nutrition is essential for fitness coaching:
Exercise and nutrition go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can’t have a conversation about health without including both.
We all know that nutrition matters. It’s even become cliche to say that “what you do outside the gym matters more than the hour you spend working out.” But although we all know how true this is, we tend to focus too much energy program design and not enough on lifestyle and nutrition.
As fitness coaches, it’s our job to help our clients get healthier. It’s a responsibility we should take very seriously. So why do so many coaches limit themselves to just delivering workouts?
There are three big reasons why coaches stop at exercise:
If you’re serious about being a fitness professional—both delivering exceptional results to your clients and offering a high-value coaching service that provides you with a sustainable career—then you have to overcome these challenges.
In the next section, we’ll share a simple approach to coaching nutrition so you can deliver a high-value and complete coaching service.
Now that we've established why nutrition is essential for fitness coaching, let's dive into how to create a nutrition plan for your clients.
Keep it Simple and Start with the Basic Lifestyle Guidelines
Fitness coaches should start with simple lifestyle behaviors before trying to prescribe complex nutrition protocols because building a strong foundation of healthy habits is crucial for long-term success.
Starting with small, achievable changes such as drinking more water, getting enough sleep, and increasing daily activity can create a positive momentum and help clients feel empowered and motivated to make further improvements. Simple lifestyle behaviors also have a significant impact on overall health and well-being, and can often lead to better food choices and more mindful eating habits without the need for complex nutrition plans.
By starting with the basics and gradually building upon them, fitness coaches can help their clients create sustainable, long-term lifestyle changes that promote health and fitness.
In the OPEX Method, we refer to these behaviors as the Basic Lifestyle Guidelines, or BLGs. You can read more about the BLGs in this blog. We also have a simple checklist that coaches can incorporate into their coaching process to ensure basic standards are met across the 8 BLGs.
Alignment
Energy
Food
*Learn how OPEX coaches assess food logs using a tiered system from lower order to higher order in the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program.
Hydration
Movement
Sunshine
Sleep
Poop
While 95% of your clients will see great success without specific nutrition plans if they follow the BLGs, you may find that it’s necessary to
Nutrition is an essential component of fitness coaching. It provides the body with the fuel it needs to perform at its best, supports recovery, and promotes optimal health.
By creating a personalized nutrition plan for your clients, you can help them reach their fitness goals faster, improve their overall health and wellbeing, and enhance their mood and cognitive function.
In turn, this increases your value as a coach and will help you create a sustainable career doing what you love.
If you're looking for a complete system for coaching your clients, then start with our Free Fitness Coaching Course and get an introduction to the OPEX method of coaching.