Meal Plans Don't Work...

Ok this maybe an unpopular opinion for many. After all i'm a nutritionist isn't that what I do? 

Prescribe meal plans and macros? 

Infact I do neither, I help my clients achieve food freedom, health and happiness by using cognitive behavioural therapy to achieve long term habit and behaviour change. 

This post is mainly for coaches. 

I used to believe that if I didn't conform to the industry starter pack of using my clients bodies to sell "transformations" or dictating every gram of their next meal surely I wouldn't get clients? 

In fact that way of marketing I realised over time just wasn't authentic to who I am as a person. I wasn't actually helping them. Not really. My business was about results yes. But I wouldn't reduce what I do to  before and after pictures. 

The same way going back to weight watchers the 15th time wont work neither will meal plans. It doesn't teach anything, Especially if theres zero education involved with them. 

If anything these services are infact a very sexy looking plaster.  

Your clients aren't getting results because they don't know where calories are in food. 

Or because they don't hit their protein daily. (This information of course once learnt helps many). 

It might feel like this is all they need, but in reality it's very superficial. Nutrition is easy and people are hard. 

It's sometimes hard to distance ourselves as coaches and meet our clients where they are at. They don't share your same knowledge, your same values. They don't eat, breathe and sleep this. That's You. Not them.

Your clients problems are likely to be nothing to do with food. 

Here's a list of what people actually do struggle with: 

1. Self compassion 
2. Thinking they are "never enough" 
3. Using food to replace unmet needs. 
4. Using food to self regulate and self soothe. 
5. Thinking changing their body will change their inner critic. 
6. Thinking confidence comes from changing your body. 
7. That they can only receive love at a certain shape and size. 
8. A dysregulated nervous system
9. A lifetime of food noise and disordered eating behaviours 
10. Generationally inherited body avoidance and insecurities

Most of these once achieved by inevitably changing the body only allow CONDITIONAL results. 

e.g "i'll be happy when" 

"when i'm xyz weight then ill be loved" 

"I'll be more confident when i've lost XYZ weight" 

These are only ever maintained within a narrow margin. Therefore you live with the dagger dangling over your head. On the perpetual hamster wheel of trying to stay where you are. Maintaining habits and behaviours that got you there, because if you don't. Goodbye love, goodbye confidence. 

It's all maintained by the driver of most peoples hidden motivator. FEAR. Change from a place of fear is never a long term solution. It might work initially but it burns bright and runs out of steam fast. Leaving judgement, shame and other negative emotions to pick up the pieces. 

I appreciate coaches market and offer services in a way they feel is right to them and their demographic.

I realised I personally had to change and I wanted to offer more with my business when I felt this invisible daily friction. I felt I was just showing up and constantly pushing the narrative that these things were the answer to all your problems. In a catch 22 I indeed then became part of the problem. It made me miserable. 

Clients messaging me 1year after coaching. 3 years after coaching, to tell me they still feel like they have achieved happiness with their bodies and their mental health. 

That's something a 6 week shred will never teach. Never embody.

Because we are not just our bodies. 

If you don't share the same view points as these that's TOTALLY fine. I respect we all have different opinions and values. 

These are just mine :) 

If you'd like to explore the deeper elements of coaching you can start here

Love always 

Didi x