Nutrition Programming: Increase Brand Awareness & Revenue

Many fitness professionals steer clear of educating clients on nutrition for fear that it is out of their scope of practice unless they are registered dietitians. Other fitness professionals compromise the scope of practice and downright break the law by prescribing customized meal plans and trendy diets. Each state has governing laws for nutrition programming. The American Nutrition Association clarifies each state’s provisions here: https://theana.org/advocate.

How do fitness professionals ethically and legally teach clients in desperate need of nutritional support to maximize optimal health and why should we add nutrition coaching to our businesses?

Four Key Nutrition Objectives You Can Successfully Teach Your Client

After researching the top Google searches for nutrition, the general population is, surprisingly, not searching for fancy meal planning. The top Google searches reveal that people are searching for basic nutrition education: “how to eat healthy,” “how to lose weight,” “serving sizes,” “measurement conversions” and “what are macronutrients?” These are all topics a fitness professional can legally and successfully advise on.

1. Teach energy balance to accomplish goals: One of the top concerns clients have is “how to lose weight.” Educate clients on energy balance, which is the ratio between calories (energy) consumed and calories (energy) expended. Fitness professionals can address the topic of how many calories are in certain foods and how many calories are expended performing certain exercises.
2. Teach portion and serving size control: More people are cooking at home, leading them to search Google for “how to measure ingredients,” and for “portion/serving sizes.” Portion control is essential to client success.
3. Teach clients how to read Nutrition Facts Labels: The searches of “how to read nutrition labels” and “where are the macronutrients located on a nutrition label?” rank within the top 20 Google nutrition searches. Teaching clients how to read nutrition labels empowers the client.
4. Teach why proper nutrition is important: While fitness professionals may think that the general population is too sophisticated for foundational nutrition education, getting back to the basics is actually what people are searching for.

The Importance of a Nutrition Coach Certification

Having a nutrition certification creates confidence and credibility for the fitness professional. Clients have more trust in a professional with a nutrition certification. Having this credential makes the professional more marketable and enables her to charge a premium. In addition, having a nutrition certification provides the professional structure to follow when giving the client advice. The additional credential also helps the professional improve communication and coaching skills. Adding a nutrition component to a client’s program will increase the likelihood that he will reach his goal.

Expanding Your Brand Awareness and Your Bottom Line

People are looking for expert nutrition advice to help maximize their results. Approaching a registered dietitian may seem drastic and expensive. However, a local personal trainer or fitness instructor is more visible, approachable and appealing. Adding nutrition education as a program offering can expand revenue streams by adding the program to existing in-person clients or online businesses. Expertise in nutrition is a referral business that can expand quickly once the word gets out. Fitness professionals can network with local chiropractors, massage therapists and physical therapists to increase program size or add clients, thereby increasing your bottom line.

Fitness professionals should focus on what is important: empowering clients to make healthy nutrition and movement choices. FiTOUR® has launched the Primary Nutrition: Theory Application and Advanced Nutrition: Practical Application Certifications. Visit www.FiTOUR.com to learn how to expand your career by incorporating nutrition into your coaching business.