Common Nutrition Mistakes & How to Address Them

The world of nutrition business is as deep as it is wide and seems to be ever-changing. Consumers are often bombarded with numerous conflicting messages about "healthy eating". This can leave your clients feeling uncertain of what choices to make.

It is your responsibility as a nutrition professional to help your clients identify nutrition behaviors that may be counterproductive to their success and help them address the issues. Need to broaden your nutrition knowledge? Sign up for ISSA's Nutritionist course—learn how to personalize client nutrition programs, online and at your own pace!

Now, let's review some common nutrition mistakes your clients may be falling victim to.

Calorie Intake

When it comes to calories, it's really a two-sided coin. The goal is to eat enough calories to support the body and its activities, but not too much that extra gets stored as fat. Balancing energy intake can be challenging.

Calorie Surplus

Your clients may be hitting all their calorie and nutrition goals perfectly during the week. They are eating healthy and working out. But then comes the weekend. Calories don't count on Saturday and Sunday, right? Wrong.

Often clients do a great job adhering to their goals during the week and then fall off the wagon over the weekend. Or maybe they eat good at breakfast and lunch, but then they go overkill on their evening snack. This can often be a result of undereating earlier in the day. By the time evening rolls around, your clients' bodies are hungry for more and so a splurge is imminent.

Another issue that may lead to eating too many calories is not tracking accurately. People sometimes track their meals during the day but forget to log the small snacks throughout the day. The donut they snagged from the kitchen in the office, the handful of nuts to tide them over until lunch. These calories count and they add up quickly if not kept in check.

Encourage your clients to track their food using an app of their choice. Remind them to log everything, even the couple of fun-size candies they snagged after lunch. There's nothing wrong with eating these foods, but they add up quickly if not tracked accurately.

Calorie Deficit

Tracking calories is just as important to ensure your clients are eating enough. Under-fueling the body has negative consequences. Most thought around calories is centered around eating too much and how to avoid gaining weight. However, to lose weight, many individuals often make drastic changes to reduce calories.

These drastic measures could include consuming only 800 calories per day, fasting an entire meal, or going on a juice cleanse. While individuals often make these changes with hopes of weight loss, it can sometimes do quite the opposite.

Some individuals are not eating enough. Pair that with exercise, and bodies shift into even more of a calorie deficit. A healthy deficit is fine, but a drastic one is not. Pushing the body into a state of chronic energy deficiency isn't doing anybody any favors and won't lead to fat loss. Chronic calorie restriction can slow the body's metabolism and cause the body to become less effective at turning food into fuel for the body.

Our bodies don't like being deprived of fuel. As a result, it tends to hold onto everything it can get its hands on, including body fat. If your clients aren't eating enough food, their body is going to hang on to every bit of body fat it can as extra fuel.

It can be intimidating to eat more food at first. The society in which we live tells us to eat less and workout more. It can be quite against the status quo to eat more and workout less. Work with your clients to help them establish a personalized plan. Help them make small incremental increases in food volume. This will help repair their metabolism over time. Making small increases over time will also allow your clients time to process mentally and be okay with eating more food. After a time, instead of gaining weight, your clients will start to lose that stubborn belly fat the body has been refusing to let go.

Dehydration

Many individuals fall short when it comes to daily hydration. Oftentimes, dehydration is a hazard many people don't think about. They think it only matters if you're an ultramarathon runner or exercising for hours in the heat. However, you don't think about being thirsty until you're thirsty. At that point, your body is already dehydrated.

Our bodies are made up of about 50-75% water. Water serves an important purpose both inside and outside the cells of our body. Inside the cells, it is a medium for chemical reactions, used for the breakdown of substances and the diffusion and osmosis of substances across cell membranes. Outside the cells, water assists with many bodily functions:

• Digestion

• Absorption

• Circulation

• Creation of saliva

• Transportation of nutrients

• Maintenance of body temperature

Without the right balance of water, our bodies cannot operate at an optimal level. This can lead to issues such as cellular atrophy, muscular fatigue, slowed metabolism, reduced ability to fight disease, and reproductive dysfunction.

Encourage your clients to stay ahead of dehydration. It's important to drink water regularly throughout the day. Women need about 90 ounces of water per day and men need about 125 ounces. Drinking a glass of water when you wake up in the morning can be a great habit for your clients. A sufficiently hydrated body can function at its best. As a bonus, drinking water keeps hunger at bay which may help your clients eat fewer calories and support healthy weight management.

Going Fat-Free

The term "fat-free" doesn't translate to "healthy". There are definitely low-fat and fat-free foods out there that are great choices:

• Greek yogurt

• Skinless chicken breasts

• Fruits

• Starchy vegetables

• Whole-grain foods

It's important to make sure your clients don't get sucked into the idea that fat makes you fat. This can lead them to cut out an important macronutrient from their diet.

Fat is an important macronutrient along with carbohydrates and protein. The body needs fat for energy, to help with the absorption of vitamins and to protect the heart and brain. It's important to make sure your clients understand that not all dietary fats are created equal.

Healthy fat can and should be part of a healthy diet. Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are known as "good fats". This is because they are beneficial for heart health and cholesterol. Good sources of monounsaturated fats are avocados, olives, nuts, and peanut butter.

Omega-3 fats are a key family of polyunsaturated fats that help with reducing inflammation and support heart health. Sources of omega-3 fats are salmon, tuna, flax seeds, and walnuts.

The unhealthy fat your clients should watch out for is trans fat. Trans fats raise LDL cholesterol and lower HDL cholesterol. Artificial trans fats also create inflammation in the body which is linked to heart disease and insulin resistance. Primary sources of trans fats are commercially baked desserts, processed food, fried foods, and vegetable shortening. Anything containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils has trans fat, even if it claims to be "trans-fat free".

Encourage your clients to consume more healthy fats in their diet by:

• Adding avocado to their morning toast

• Replacing a cheat meal with a homemade dessert

• Eating some mixed nuts for a snack

Also encourage your clients to be mindful about consuming fewer unhealthy fats by:

• Eating less fried food

• Using grass-fed butter over vegetable shortening

• Being mindful to read the ingredient list on products to watch out for added trans fats

Going Gluten-Free

This issue is similar to going fat-free. Not all gluten-free products are necessarily healthier options. Oftentimes, gluten-free products are chock-full of fillers and alternatives to replace the gluten lost.

There seems to be a stigma going around about gluten:

• Gluten = bad or unhealthy

• Gluten-free = good or healthy

While this is true for those with celiac or gluten intolerances, it is not necessarily true for everyone. Gluten is not inherently bad. It is found in three grains: wheat, rye, and barley. Gluten often serves as a binding protein to hold foods together like bread, pasta, and other baked goods.

If you are working with a client that has celiac disease or a gluten intolerance, then by all means eliminate it from their diet. However, don't eliminate gluten for the sake of eliminating gluten. For the general population, this doesn't necessarily make for a healthier diet. Encourage your clients to be aware of how their body responds to gluten. If they don't experience negative side effects, there is nothing wrong with consuming gluten in healthy amounts.

Program Hopping

Everybody wants a magic pill that will give them the health, body, and life they want. But when it comes to nutrition, there is no magic pill. There are no tricks or quick fixes, regardless of the newest fad diets. Your clients may get themselves into trouble if they are chasing a quick fix or magic pill.

There is no shortage of diet plans and programs out there from paleo, keto, Mediterranean diet, intermittent fasting, vegan. The list goes on and on. The problem is that individuals tend to bounce from one program to the next. They try out a new program for a couple of weeks. If they don't see results as quickly as they would like, it's adios amigo and onto the next program. The issue with this is that the body needs time to recover from years of nutritional damage and neglect. A 30-day cleanse of better eating can't undo years of unhealthy lifestyle choices.

You must sit down with your clients and offer coaching and accountability. Success comes from creating a customized approach. There is no cookie-cutter program out there. Therefore, it's important to explain to your clients that it isn't a one size fits all approach.

Fitness professionals should work with their clients to unwrap their individually complex relationship with food and dieting. Determine steps for moving forward and making progress in a healthy way. Create an action plan and make sure that your client is on board every step of the way. Coach them through the plan and follow it through with them.

Addressing Nutrition Mistakes Your Clients Make

Good nutrition is the key foundation of healthy lifestyle change. A well-rounded and balanced nutrition approach sets your clients up for success. As a nutrition coach, take time to sit down with your clients and make sure they aren't making any of the mistakes listed above. If they are, work through them together. Help your clients better understand what healthy eating habits look like and help them avoid slipups that might knock them off their path to success.

The world of nutrition is as deep as it is wide and is sometimes confusing as ever. Fitness professionals are responsible for helping clients avoid nutrition mistakes and guide them on a path to success. Interested in learning more about common nutrition blunders and how to overcome them with your clients, check out the ISSA's Nutritionist course today.