Nutrition coaches assist people with building practices that lead to improved health, body composition, and/or performance. They work with the general population in order to facilitate the inclusion of healthy eating behaviours as well as empowering their clients to take responsibility for their own health.
Nutrition coaches are mentors and leaders who are responsible for guiding their clients towards a healthier lifestyle. In order to be a successful nutrition coach, you need to possess a knowledge of both nutritional science and behavioural change strategies. It is this knowledge of behaviour change that makes personal trainers great candidates to become nutrition coaches.
What Specialised Knowledge Do Nutrition Coaches Need?
Nutrition coaches need to have a deep understanding of nutrition science. This includes:
- The chemical makeup of macronutrients (protein, fats, and carbohydrates) and the roles they play in the body
- Vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients (from plants), myconutrients (from fungi), and zoonutrients (from animals)
- Calories, metabolism, and energy balance
- Digestion
- Water, electrolyte balance, and proper hydration
- Energy transfer, fat storage, and muscle gain
What Does A Nutrition Coach Do?
Nutrition coaches serve clients who do not suffer from any known medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, hypertension, etc.) and want to:
- Learn more about healthy eating practices
- Lose or gain weight in a safe as well as effective manner
- Improve athletic performance through foods which they eat
- Increase energy by making dietary improvements
- Discover more about healthy shopping, cooking, or solid dining-out tactics
Nutrition coaching is all about people. How they think, feel and live as well as why they act in the way that they do. As a nutrition coach, you will be working with real people and their real struggles, all within the complexity of their real lives. In other words, successful nutrition coaching has more to do with behaviour change psychology as opposed to nutrition science.
What Are The Benefits Of Working As A Nutrition Coach?
One of the countless benefits of working as a nutrition coach is seeing, firsthand, any or all of these remarkable changes in clients, no matter who they are. A nutrition coach can even choose to specialise with certain populations such as athletes, post-partum mothers, or overweight executives.
Many individuals enlist the services of a nutrition coach in order to help them sift through all the confusing information that’s out there. Between all the debates surrounding gluten, carbs, proteins, etc., there’s a lot to make sure that a nutrition coach is kept busy!
The purpose of a nutrition coach is to:
- Assist people with building lasting habits which allow “eating better” to become easy, consistent as well as automatic.
- Give clients support throughout the entire process, not just calculating their daily calorie needs as well as giving them an eating plan.
The best nutrition coaches out there are prepared to work with a range of clients with differing needs, limitations, strengths as well as goals. When you have a super understanding of your clients you will be best able to help them by developing as well as assigning the right tasks.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
Is being a nutrition coach something that interests you? If it is then you need to do our Advanced Exercise and Nutrition Coach course. For more information, please follow this link.
