In today’s post, I’m talking all about the client + coach relationship and how to really get the most out of your work with a coach. Whether you work with one of our coaches or have worked with any sort of coach in the past or are thinking about working with a coach, understanding how you can bring your best to the table can make or break your success in reaching your goals.

We often see tips for curbing an increased appetite, but what about those of us that consistently struggle with a lower appetite? Here are habits that can help you navigate having a low appetite.

Smart watches - Apple Watches, FitBits, Garmins, etc. - can be such an incredibly helpful tool for daily life, but they become more detrimental than helpful when we rely too heavily on the data they provide. But we can understand how to utilize them in a way that is most beneficial for us and our needs, without having them give us inaccurate information.

After over seven years working as an online nutrition coach (and years in the fitness industry before this!), I want to share four major nutrition mistakes we often see as coaches working 1:1 with our clients. These mistakes aren’t because our clients are uninformed or wrong; they’re just often things we have been told (incorrectly) most of our lives.

Our ability to stay reasonable when feeling incredibly stressed or emotional tends to be most challenging. And unsurprisingly, ensuring we're well fed is a significant helper and factor with us thinking (and acting) reasonably. Here are a few ideas that may be helpful to ensure you're eating enough, especially when with significant time demands and stressors.

Meal prep is one of those things that we know can benefit us by cutting down on time in the kitchen and brainpower trying to constantly decide what to eat, but is also exhausting and often ends with tons of uneaten meals. This is where batch prep comes to the rescue, especially when planning meals for your whole family.

Something I often urge clients to do is to keep easy-win snacks on hand at all times, but especially during travel - whether that’s a day of work travel, a family road trip, or just a long day of errands where you’re out and about the whole day. While on the road, gas stations can be a fantastic place to find those “easy win” snacks.

Diet culture is a system that places value on our weight and size over our health. Diet culture is supported by a multi-billion dollar industry that pushes weight loss through every medium possible.⁣ Diet culture tells men, women, and children that they are not small enough, strong enough, or lean enough. ⁣DIET CULTURE IS HARD TO IGNORE.⁣ Anti-diet culture is not the same thing as anti-dieting, and let’s talk about why.

You might be faced with some big life events throughout the year - the ones we don't anticipate and that aren't always celebrations. These are often complex, emotional, challenging, and demanding situations that can make our nutrition seem especially overwhelming. Looking at these significant life events, there are three key things I learned that I think would benefit your nutrition should you find yourself amid these big life events and life changes.

For many, our nutrition history has been very confusing. There has been so much right or wrong thrown our way via marketing; so many “good” foods and “bad” foods as decided by some particular fad within diet culture; fleeting trends with changing definitions of what’s right and wrong; and certain thoughts and feelings we’ve attached to certain food choices. So, how do we go about breaking these habits of guilt and shame around our food choices?

Nutrition and healthy eating may not feel like it’s even in the realm of your top five or ten priorities. It doesn't have to be! But that also doesn’t mean you can’t see progress just because you have other priorities that come first. By taking some small actions, you can still feel like your nutrition is important to you, and actually supporting the life you’re currently living.

A pregnant body is growing a whole new life. All of that most important formation requires ample and diverse nutrition. No pregnancy journey is going to look the same, and that also applies to every individuals’ nutrition during pregnancy. This is a time to prioritize quality choices where possible and feed your body with whatever sounds good. When we have a solid foundation of nutrition, we are able to weather seasons of life where appetite and food choices look quite different without stress.

What if we acknowledged that you can still have your “hot girl (or guy) summer” WHILE starting to initiate the changes you may desire to make starting NOW? And what if I told you that as you begin those changes NOW, you may be able to develop multiple hot girl summers in a row without a quick fix?

Our relationship with food is something that has been crafted over many years of familial influence, social gatherings, and trendy “quick grab” headlines. You likely have foods categorized into groups like “breakfast, lunch, dinner”, “good and bad”, “healthy and unhealthy”. While some of these categories might be useful, others might be a barricade built in front of our own food freedom.

Why are gyms and fitness classes packed with new gym-goers in the beginning of January but then back to normal crowds come mid-February? I don’t think the problem is that we’re bad at trying to be healthier, but that we are inherently bad at setting ourselves up with New Year’s resolutions we can actually keep. Today we’re talking about 3 things you can do set goals you can actually keep in 2022.

One of the best things we can do for ourselves is to eliminate the fixed mindset that medication means weight gain, and to instead shift our focus to prioritizing our mental health so that our physical health can follow. We need to reprioritize and recognize that the benefits of stable mental health outweigh the desire to lose weight.

Today’s post talks about the power of setting minimums - how they can be an effective tool for progress, and the recurring theme that progress is about flexibility, not about an “all or nothing” approach.

I believe it can be really helpful to understand what our body’s physiological response to stress looks like and how it relates to food (including digging into why stress eating can feel so good). From there, we can get into a few practical exercises to help manage our physiological response to stress to help interrupt the physical urge to stress eat.