How to choose a nutrition coach, and what nutrition coaching should include
Choose a nutrition coach by asking whether the plan starts from the food you already eat, whether you get a framework or a meal plan, how supplements are handled, whether anyone ever mentions a dose, whether food is tied to your training, and what it costs. My answers are below. Anyone who fails the dosing question fails the whole list.
Part of nutrition coaching with Sam, inside every plan from $149, in Morton Grove and online. What it includes and how to start, or call or text (847) 387-0244.
Does it start from your food?
The first question should be what you ate yesterday, not what you should eat. A framework built from a stranger's grocery list lasts until the first week you cannot find the ingredients. Mine starts from the intake: what you cook, what you will keep cooking, when you are hungry.
Is it a framework or a meal plan?
A meal plan is a list you follow until you cannot. A framework is a set of rules you can rebuild on any Sunday: protein at each meal, fibre, calories that fit training days. Ask which one you are buying. Only one of them survives a holiday.
Then ask what happens in week eight. If the answer is a new plan, you are buying plans. If the answer is that somebody reads your check-in and changes one thing, you are buying coaching. The second one costs more per month and less per year, because you stop starting over.
How are supplements handled?
Categories, not brands, and label literacy over marketing. Grams of protein per gram of powder, cost per serving of protein, where sugar sits in the ingredients. The guide on choosing a protein powder shows the method. A coach who sells you the tub is selling, not coaching.
Does anyone mention a dose?
If a coach tells you how much of anything to take, walk. That is a doctor's job or a dietitian's, and the right coach says so. I write about the science of some compounds on the research pages because people ask, and there is no dose on any page of this site.
The same goes for anyone selling the product they recommend. A coach who earns on the tub has a reason to put it in your plan that has nothing to do with you.
Nothing is sold through this site. No tubs, no links, no codes. The advice is the product, and it stays cleaner that way.
Is food tied to the training?
It has to be. A protein target depends on how you train; the training depends on whether you ate. The nutrition coaching page explains why mine is built inside every training plan, and nutrition coaching against meal plans and diet apps compares the alternatives.
What does it cost?
With me, nothing on top of the training: it is inside the $149 Custom Plan and the $199 a month coaching. How much nutrition coaching costs spells out what each tier includes. If a medical condition needs diet rules, get them from a doctor or a registered dietitian first, then bring them to the application and the framework works inside them.
Common questions
Should a nutrition coach be a dietitian?
For a medical condition, yes, see a registered dietitian. For a healthy adult who trains, a coach who builds food around the training is enough, and mine says so on the first page.
Do I need to track everything?
Sometimes for a couple of weeks, to see where the food is. Long term most people keep a protein target and a few portion habits.
What if I have tried every diet?
Then a diet is not the missing piece. A framework built from your food and tied to your training is, and so is somebody reading your check-ins.