Meal planning is an Essential Role of a Natural Nutrition Coach

Knowing how to meal plan is a key component to having a successful career as a Natural Nutrition Coach and will ultimately help your clients achieve their health goals. Many people are confused about what a healthy diet means. Conflicting nutrition information from popular diet trends, food bloggers, food activists, and nutrition research contributes to the uncertainty. People are easily misled by food labels and challenged by food restrictions due to illness or allergies.

Trying to figure out what to eat is not a clear and simple process, so it’s not surprising that the service most often requested from a Natural Nutrition Coach is a menu plan.

Each person has their own specific nutritional needs. An important responsibility of a Natural Nutrition Coach is to identify which eating style is ideal for a client, to determine which nutrients they may require in greater amounts, and to educate and support their client to make eating decisions based on their body’s needs.

This course teaches practical meal planning and menu design to prepare you to work with clients based on their eating preferences, lifestyle, and current health status. Where do you start when your client is a vegan bodybuilder with nut allergies? Or a child with diabetes who won’t eat vegetables?

You will learn how to apply natural nutrition principles to create a healthy, balanced menu that addresses specific health needs and tastes while considering time and budgetary limits.

These are just some of the topics we cover in Meal Planning for Your Clients:

• How to read and interpret food labels
• Portion sizes
• Which food additives to avoid and why
• The benefits of eating seasonal, organic, non-GMO food
• Organizing and planning a healthy menu for the entire week
• Healthy food preparation and practices, including instructions for soaking and sprouting
• Cooking methods to prevent nutrient losses
• How to overcome barriers to healthy eating, including time and budget constraints, picky eaters, and more
• Specialty diets, diet trends, and menu planning for clients following these diets
• Preparing a weekly grocery list
• And more…

You’ll receive a variety of useful tools and resources, including grocery and healthy snacking lists to share with clients, and access to Holistic Nutrition Hub’s Meal Planner, Recipe Builder, and other time-saving meal planning applications!

Throughout the course are activities, exercises, and quizzes, and at the end of the course, you will have the opportunity to practice putting your knowledge to use by preparing a menu for a family member or friend! The assignment will be reviewed and returned with helpful feedback to ensure you’re on the right track.

Course Outline

This course teaches practical meal planning and menu design to prepare you to work with (and offer additional services to) clients. Learn how to apply natural nutrition principles to create a menu that maximizes nutrients and incorporates individual health needs and tastes, while also considering time and budget restraints. Topics include healthy food preparation and practices (including soaking, sprouting, and fermentation), grocery shopping, portion sizes, mindful eating, and meal/menu planning for shift workers. Learn how to guide your clients to decipher food labels and labeling terms, recognize food additives, and understand the benefits of eating local, seasonal, organic, and non-GMO foods. Learn how to overcome barriers to healthy eating: time limitations, feeding picky eaters, eating outside the home and at work, healthy snacking, and breaking unhealthy eating habits.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Students will learn the components of required food labels, the terms, and methods involved in organic and processed food production, and how to recognize whether a food is organic, contains additives, or genetically modified ingredients. Students will develop a foundational understanding of the process of meal planning, and how to work with clients to establish a practical, healthy, and balanced menu they will be inclined to follow.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to demonstrate:

• An understanding of the various food labels and their parts.
• What ultra-processed foods are and their risk factors.
• How to identify common food additives and their risks.
• An understanding of natural and organic labeling terms.
• Examples of greenwashing.
• How to introduce clients to an organic diet and lifestyle.
• What GMOs are and how to recognize and avoid them.
• How to approach healthy meal preparation.
• How to introduce more vegetables into one’s diet.
• How to grow microgreens and sprouts at home.
• How to incorporate healthier ingredient substitutions into one’s current diet.
• How to plan a weekly grocery list.
• How to educate clients about mindful eating.
• An understanding of portion sizes and the best way(s) to explain them to clients.
• How to approach eating outside the home.
• What healthy snacking is.
• The elements of the Mediterranean diet.
• Knowledge of popular diet trends and how to identify which eating style may be the right approach for a particular person.
• How to conduct a nutrition assessment and assess a client’s goals to establish meal plan recommendations.
• Which questions to consider before creating a menu plan for clients.
• The steps to creating a meal plan.
• Countermeasures for clients struggling to follow their meal plan.
• An understanding of causes underlying common food cravings.

COURSE NAME: Meal Planning for Your Clients
COURSE CODE: Nutrition 1.5
COURSE HOURS: 10
COURSE CREDIT: 1
PREREQUISITE: Foundations in Natural Nutrition (Nutrition1.1) or an equivalent course is recommended

TEXT/OTHER LEARNING RESOURCES

PDF Textbook
Video(s)
Access to the Holistic Nutrition Hub
All learning materials are provided.

ACTIVITIES/ASSIGNMENTS

• Case study
• Healthy Ingredient Swaps
• Meal Planning Practice Assignment

EVALUATION/GRADING:

Pass Mark: 80%
Meal Planning Practice Assignment 25%
Course Material & Quiz 75%
TOTAL 100%