Let’s dive right in, shall we? In my opinion, these are the 3 most common nutrition coaching mistakes that coaches of all levels of experience make. I’ve made them all myself, so I’m not judging. But I do think reflection is key to becoming a better nutrition coach.

Let’s go!

Focusing on what clients eat, and forgetting about how they eat

Before you whip out a healthy plate model, before you talk about healthy swaps, there’s something you need to do first. Too often nutrition coaches jump the gun and go straight to what their client is eating, but they’ve neglected to ask about the wider food environment.

Who does your client eat with? Where do they eat? Who does the grocery shopping and the cooking? Not only do these things need to be taken into account logistically, they also have their own impact on health and wellbeing.

Compare eating a salad alone on the couch while watching TV to eating a takeaway pizza with your loved ones at the table, talking about your days, swapping stories, and spending quality time together sharing food. Which is healthier? You might be tempted to say the salad, but I’m not so sure.

Studies show that eating together as a family is linked to lower rates of depression and anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, smoking and teenage pregnancy. Plus, higher rates of resilience and self esteem.

The same goes for cooking. You can purchase quite high quality convenience food these days, but you’ll miss out on the benefits of cooking. Cooking can relieve stress. And that sense of accomplishment that comes from making something from start to finish does wonders for happiness. Plus, the creativity it allows and the feeling that you are in control of what your family eats – all these things contribute to wellbeing. So much so that some therapists are now actually using cooking as way to treat depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. And I haven’t even mentioned the obvious fact that home-cooked meals tend to be healthier, even if you’re not really trying to make them healthy. You simply cannot cook something the same way mass produced processed food is cooked.

So before you dive into what your clients are eating, be sure to ask them about the bigger picture around food in their lives.

Focusing on excluding foods, not including foods

Putting more emphasis on the negative than the positive is an evolutionary trait passed down from caveman days. It’s called the negativity bias and it’s thought that humans do this because our alertness to danger was so imperative for survival back then.

But when it comes to what they eat, putting our clients attention on cutting out foods can be a recipe for disordered eating. ‘Clean eating’ quite easily morphs into orthorexia nervosa, an eating disorder characterised by an obsession with healthy eating and a fear of unhealthy foods. Orthorexia, like all eating disorders, is debilitating in and of itself, and it can morph into other eating disorders as well.

You might think it’s a pretty big jump from cutting down on junk food to an eating disorder, but in my experience, this is about the mental attitude. When we, as nutrition coaches, put our focus and energy into essentially telling our clients off and making them feel bad about what they eat, it manifests into our clients developing an all or nothing attitude with food.

But if we put our focus on what to include instead, e.g. “Let’s talk about ways we could add some more protein into your meals”, this changes the entire vibe of the consultation. Our clients are then more likely to engage with the conversation (because they don’t feel that they are being told off), take ownership of the changes they want to make, and follow through. Win win win!

Forgetting that diet is just part of a much bigger picture

Food is just one thing I talk about with my clients. Obviously it’s a big focus, but it’s not the only thing affecting their health. Exercise is probably going to come up, too, which is just fine, but we should also remember the 3 S’s: sleep, stress management and social connections. These things are going to have a whopping impact on our client’s mental and physical health, so they need to be taken into account.

The bottom line is this: your client could eat perfectly every day, but if they are staying up all night, stressed out of their mind about work and home life, and feel completely alone, their health will suffer regardless.

And no, you don’t need to be the world’s foremost expert on sleep disorders to talk about having a consistent sleep routine! The same goes for stress management and social connections. Having an understanding that these things matter, reminding our clients that these things matter, and perhaps writing down a few ways we can incorporate these soft drivers of health into our action plan is generally enough for most clients.

So why do we, as nutrition coaches of all kinds (nutritionists, personal trainers, health coaches, dietitians) make these mistakes? It seems to transcend what type of nutrition coach you are, and your level of experience.

I think part of it is the way we’re taught, part of it is trying to prove our worth by showing clients what we know instead of listening to them and having them come up with their own solutions, and part of it is feeling like we have to give clients what they want (namely, a diet). For a thought-provoking quiz about this, try Is your nutrition coaching style subconsciously influenced by diet culture?

I fixed these mistakes in my own practice, and you can fix them in yours too. And when you do, you’ll see incredible changes in your clients’ outcomes.

Oh and P.S. After all that heavy talk, if you need a reminder of what a great job you’re doing (because if you’re reading this, I have no doubt that you’re a committed nutrition coach who is doing a great job), give this quiz a go: Are you a nutrition coaching superhero or villain?