In the 21^st century, technology has become an integral part of our daily lives. Between our computers, phones, and the internet, communication between individuals has never been this instantaneous or easy. As such, the era has irreversibly altered many different occupations and fields of study. 

Nutrition coaching squarely falls under this category. Whereas coaches previously had to meet with clients in person, online nutrition coaching allows them to evaluate food logs, hold face-to-face meetings, answer questions within seconds, and quite virtually be in a client’s pocket during the workday.

Today, we’ll delve a bit into online coaching, why it can be a great tool for people at any stage of their dietary journey, and what to look for when picking the right coach. 

The Best Online Nutrition Coaching for Sustainable Fat Loss

Why Online Coaching?

This is a common and very valid question. After all, if you’re going to invest both your time and money into an endeavor, you want it to be worth the effort. So, simply put, what does coaching, and online nutrition coaching at that, really bring to the table? 

Before I do, let me get a disclaimer out of the way first. Coaching is a tool, not a mandatory aspect of any fitness journey. The mileage and success of each fitness journey will vary from person to person. It may very well be that a person already has their diet pretty dialed in and is of little need for outside assistance. In that case, awesome. Keep kicking butt. We love seeing that.

However, most people who go through coaching benefit from it to varying degrees. Someone entirely new to nutrition and dieting may be completely at a loss as to where to begin. Given how many different contrasting articles there are on the internet, it’s hardly surprising. 

It can also be that someone has the right ideas but is having trouble implementing them into their own personal lives. Still others may have made great progress thus far on their own but are slowing or stalling out and need a bit more insight or some more accountability to really finish the home stretch. 

Regardless of the personal circumstances, most individuals can benefit from a proper coach to some degree or another. So, how do you spot a proper coach?

Key Elements to Successful Online Coaching

A simple Google search for online nutrition coaching will uncover literally dozens of different companies and trainers offering their services. Every website looks different, each touts their own success stories, and the coaches all look like they’re in good shape, so how do you choose the coach or program that’s right for you? 

To an extent, you can’t be 100% sure going in. It’s always going to be a bit of a leap of faith. If you do your due diligence and digging, though, you’ll likely start to see some common trends among the more popular, effective companies and individuals. There is no one perfect way to diet down, but most successful approaches have certain fundamentals that maximize progress while minimizing stress. Here are a few to consider, although this list is far from exhaustive.

Sustainable Weight Loss

Weight loss is one of the main foci of dieting. It’s the metric most people use as an indicator of results and success. It is far from the only number that counts, but it can’t necessarily be ignored, either. At the end of the day, fat has mass and weight, so if it’s being burned off, weight must eventually drop. We want that number down, and we tend toward the idea of the faster it’s gone, the better. It’s a big part of why crash diets are so psychologically rewarding, at least initially.

The problem with this mentality is twofold. One, dramatic changes on the scale usually aren’t due to fat loss. Instead, the body tends to shed quite a bit of water weight due to the huge changes in diet. For example, if you cut out almost all your carbs, your muscles and liver will quickly drop quite a bit of their stored glycogen. This can be several pounds down on the scale, sure, but it isn’t from fat loss.

The other concern comes with the end of the diet. Say you do crash diet to your desired weight. Once you get the fat off, how will you keep it off? Will you just avoid carbs for the rest of your life? If all the changes were drastic, it’s much less likely that a given person will stick to them in the long run. The more common, unfortunate scenario is that the person returns to their previous habits, the weight returns, and they’re back at square one with extra frustration.

A successful nutrition coach should understand and demonstrate the difference between losing weight and losing fat. Additionally, said coach should be able to create a dietary plan that can be followed for an extended period of time without undue suffering. The dietary changes should be personalized, reasonable, and simple to implement. The less disruptive the alterations are to your pre-existing habits, the more likely they are to stick around. A solid coach can not only see these possibilities but also help ensure they tailor to your personal life as best as possible.

Personalized Nutrition Plans

This often goes hand in hand with sustainable weight loss. Knowing what to eat for your goals, how much, how often, etc. are all things that can be difficult to figure out on your own without significant trial and error. 

A common approach for coaches is to set meal plans for their clients. While this can work well on paper, it also has significant limitations that can hamper progress in the long run. As with crash dieting, the plans will usually work as long as they’re followed strictly. However, once the coaching ends, the client is left treading water without them. And again, in the absence of that structure, the old habits tend to come right back.

Additionally, personalization for meal plans can be extremely hit or miss. The stereotype of “chicken, rice, broccoli 3x/day” isn’t always a joke. There are coaches who will give almost identical plans to each of their clients, since they know it works. Again, that’s fine for making progress, but is that what you’re really going to eat for the rest of your days? I certainly hope not.

By contrast, an effective coach should have a good grasp of nutritional fundamentals and tailor their recommendations to best fit their individual clients. While there is nothing wrong with having the same dietary principles for most clients, their implementation should be tailored to an individual’s lifestyle and personal preferences. Food choices should be flexible, not restrictive. 

Speaking of which…

Flexible Dieting

Flexible dieting is a oft touted but sometimes misunderstood concept. It is the fundamental opposite of a rigid diet plan, and stems from the idea that there is no one right way to diet effectively. As long as the dietary principles are adhered to, e.g. a calorie deficit, adequate protein intake, etc., you have a lot of wiggle room in food choice.

Unbfortunately, there is a natural human tendency to push things to extremes. With flexible dieting, it can be misconstrued as “you can eat anything you want as long as calories and protein are taken care of.” In this view, you can survive solely off of Pop Tarts and protein shakes and still make great progress. From a pure weight loss perspective, this is true. From a health standpoint, well…

A proper coach understands that in most cases, flexibility adds adherence to a diet compared to a strict set of meal plans. Most of the food on a diet should be conventionally “healthy,” e.g. lots of fruits and vegetables, lean protein sources, complex carbohydrates, etc., and somewhat planned ahead of time. However, the occasional slice of cake or can of Coke can still be enjoyed with little to no overall impact on one’s efforts, especially when they are also factored ahead beforehand.

Accountability and Ongoing Support

As mentioned above, one of the most powerful aspects of coaching comes from personal accountability. The combination of time, money, and being beholden to an objective third party go a long way toward ensuring clients put forth dedicated effort. 

The objectivity is particularly important. A coach doesn’t have any personal investment in a client’s actions, aside from obviously wanting to help them succeed. This allows them to suggest ideas and provide insights that might otherwise be missed by a more subjective third party.

Finally, a solid online coach should use the digital nature of their profession to your advantage. While each coach has their own set of rules regarding communication hours, they do set their work hours to ensure they can respond to their clients as quickly and efficiently as possible. Having a knowledgeable resource at your fingertips can be a huge boon toward learning, minimizing trial and error, avoiding simple mistakes, and more. 

It also cannot be understated that having someone root for you can make efforts feel all the more rewarding and worthwhile. Having someone in your corner is always a good thing when the chips are down, and with a diet, that’s a matter of when, not if.

Long-term Lifestyle Changes

We touched on this point when talking about sustainable weight loss, but it bears repeating as its own core tenet. When we examine individuals who manage to keep their weight off vs. those who regress, the biggest differences tend to be in lifestyle habits. In particular, the simpler, more gradual changes tended to stick around much longer than the drastic, life-skilled ones. 

Most of the alterations tend to be both fundamental and simple to implement. For example, basing each meal of the day around a protein-based food is simple and ensures you meet your needs. By contrast, cutting out all your carbs is much likelier to backfire once the diet is done. Parking your car a bit further from your work gets in some extra activity. Swearing to run a mile 5 times a week when you’ve never trained before is a huge ask.

While these smaller changes are oft found through trial and error, a good coach can proactively suggest ones that tend to be recurring among successful clients. They also can adapt those changes to better fit with your own personal life circumstances, whether that’s your career, family, health, or anything in between.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to consider in terms of pulling the trigger on getting an online coach or not. The best thing you can do is to understand what a coach will actually do, assess your own personal needs, and evaluate if the tools brought to the table by one will really help your efforts. In most cases, coaches will provide at least some level of additional benefit, depending on the experience level and background of the client.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the number of available coaches out there. The successful ones will have the same fundamental principles in practice. As long as those conditions are met, it becomes more about actually connecting with and hitting it off with your new help. 

The new year is sneaking up fast on us, so now is as good a time as any to start putting feelers out. See what you find!