From Gym to Kitchen: Expand Your Fitness Business with Nutritional Coaching

If you’re a fitness buff, you know that most of your gains are made in the kitchen rather than the weight room. That’s because you need to fuel yourself effectively if you want to have great workouts and recover properly from lifting weights, spin classes, yoga sessions, or lengthy runs. 

Expanding your knowledge from the gym to the kitchen will help your clients make more progress and achieve their summer physique, too. As a trainer, you can add another feather to your cap by gaining a deeper understanding of food and the role it plays in any good fitness programme. 

Delving into the world of nutrition can also be lucrative. You already know who your hottest leads are and can add “bolt-on” style packages to help folks better control their diet to meet their fitness goals. This may supply the extra income you need to open your own studio, expand your services, or increase your asking price. 

The Business of Nutrition 

Nutrition is gaining traction in the fitness industry. Today, more clients are aware of dangerous fad diets and are holistically taking steps to promote and protect their health. As a trainer, you can tap into this potentially lucrative market and add some meaningful income to your company by adding a nutrition element to your current business plan. 

When starting a fitness business (or, adding a nutrition side hustle), be sure to follow well-established “Do’s” and “Don’ts” including: 

• Create a solid business plan before you start sinking funds into cookbooks, blenders, and shakes
• Market your new nutrition side hustle properly so clients can learn about your product/service
• Network and collaborate with others in the nutrition space in your area
• Invest in your education to gain qualifications and accreditation

These proactive steps will help you figure out how, exactly, you want to run your nutrition business. During the transition, ask for client feedback to better tailor your approach to diet and nutrition advice. This will help you tweak your business plan and become a more effective nutrition coach. 

An effective business plan can help you better understand the profit margins associated with nutrition, too. For example, if you plan on selling fitness-specific cookbooks, a business plan should identify associated costs and estimate a break-even point. This is crucial if you want your nutritional coaching side hustle to be a success. 

Core Principles of Nutrition for Fitness

Before you can leap into the world of nutrition, it’s worth doing some background research first. This will help you understand the core principles of nutrition and avoid common pitfalls like fad diets and dangerously low-calorie meal plans. Rather than leaning on conspiracy-esque “ancient” tenants, base your nutrition protocols on well-established principles set forth by the British Nutrition Foundation. This includes: 

• Control calorie intake to change your client’s total body weight (fewer calories when losing weight; increased calories when gaining muscle). 
• Fuel clients for training properly with carbohydrates like pasta and rice. 
• Encourage athletes to eat around 1-2g of protein per kg of body weight
• Ensure that clients remain well-hydrated throughout the day

These simple tenets will improve your client’s health and help them achieve weight-related goals. For example, if a client wants to build muscle, you can instruct them to eat ~200 more calories per day and encourage them to take creatine and increase their protein intake to around 2g per kg of body weight. This will give their body the raw materials it needs to recover after workouts and gain some muscle mass. 

Food and Health 

Proper nutrition isn’t just about looking good in the mirror. Folks who hire a nutritionist expect to benefit from better health, too. As a nutritionist, you can help clients improve their health and wellness by making recommendations based on their current diet and details like whether or not your client is diabetic. 

You don’t need to deviate far from basic nutritional principles to help people improve their health through diet. Instead, have them track their diet and make suggestions based on NHS healthy eating recommendations like: 

• Eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables per day
• Switch fatty red meats for oily fish
• Cut down on saturated fat and sugar
• Avoid foods that have more than 1.5g of salt per 100g 

You can also suggest that clients cut down on alcohol. This may be tricky, as many people are dependent on alcohol for relaxation purposes. However, research unequivocally shows that no amount of alcohol is good for you. You don’t have to force every client to go tee-total, but you should be firm about the reality that booze undermines people’s health. 

If a client expresses interest in trying a diet to improve their mental health, encourage them to speak to a therapist first. Research shows that there may be a link between those who follow keto diets and improved mental health (Tillery et al., 2021), but many others who use diets for wellness fall into a slippery slope of self-treating when they should be diagnosed properly. Instead of thinking of dietary changes as a replacement for help, convince clients to see diet as part of their wider treatment plan. 

Conclusion

Running a nutrition business is a great way to bring in some extra cash while improving the health of your diet. However, before you start giving your dietary advice, you’ll need to create a strong business plan. This should include key details, like where you plan to get accredited, and should help you identify a particular niche. This planning will set you up for success and help your clients get more from their training. 

References

Tillery, E. E., Ellis, K. D., Threatt, T. B., Reyes, H. A., Plummer, C. S., & Barney, L. R. (2021). The use of the ketogenic diet in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. The mental health clinician, 11(3), 211–219. https://doi.org/10.9740/mhc.2021.05.211