Like I mentioned in another post; when being a personal trainer, nutrition is bound to come up in conversation with clients.
So, here is a list of the 4 most important principles for you to use with your clients!
Principle 1: Consistency
Consistency is most important when it comes to nutrition. Without consistency it’s impossible to truly know what is going on. 1 week a client might crush their nutrition while the next is totally out of whack. If a client wants to change their body composition, nutrition will likely be part of the game plan. In which case working on becoming more consistent with nutrition habits is a great first step.
Not only will it make them more aware of what and when they eat, it can also help their circadian rhythm!
Another bonus of being consistent is that you don’t have to worry about tracking calories or macros. If you consistently eat the same foods every week, all you will have to worry about is portion sizes.
Here is an example of how food tracking can be used.
Principle 2: Track Before You Change
This is seriously important.
You must make sure your clients track what they are doing before they change something.
Too many people go from 0 to 100, or in this case they go from over 3000 calories to under 1800 calories. This is bad.
It’s too big of a change and will decrease overall results! It will either be too difficult of a change for someone to remain consistent with or it will cause a metabolic adaptation or both!
A metabolic adaptation means your body gets use to surviving on the decreased amount of calories. So going from 3000 to 1800 calories might create a big change quickly, but the body will get used to it, then if you want to change more, you have to decrease calories further. The overall change would be less than it would be if you decreased calories from 3000 to 1800 gradually.
Principle 3: Protein is the Monarch Macro
The reason this principle is so important is because research has proven that with calories and protein intake equal between diets, carbohydrate or fat intake doesn’t matter, in terms of body fat loss.
AKA, get the right amount of protein and other calories can come from anything, so long as you don’t go overboard.
Not to mention protein will help with muscle growth or help decrease muscle loss if someone is going through a large body weight change.
Plus, protein is the most satiating macro nutrient. Someone struggles with too big of portion sizes? It’s likely they don’t have enough protein in the meal or they just eat too fast, like me! I eat too fast 😅
Principle 4: Practical is > Ideal
Listen, most people want to look good.
The majority of us want to have a nice body but the majority of us also want to eat what we really like!
Eating the ideal foods for someone to get their body to look the way they want doesn’t always match the life they want to live.
As a personal trainer, we’re often different. A lot of us go above and beyond what our clients would be willing to do just because we are really passionate about our health. That does not mean we should try to force our lifestyle down our clients’ throats.
But people like going out to eat, most people like having adult beverages, and everyone wants to take the path of least resistance.
If having the “ideal” diet takes away the joy of food, camaraderie, and good times, it’s probably not actually ideal! We don’t want to encourage our clients to enjoy life less.
We want to help them find what is most practical for them to enjoy, remain consistent with, and meet their goals.
It’s definitely easier said than done, but it’s also definitely possible!
There you have it! I hope you find these 4 principles valuable and useful when discussing nutrition with your clients.
