Your job would be a lot simpler if helping clients achieve their health and wellness goals only required a single intervention. (But, let’s face it, working this way wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding!) In practice, helping each client experience optimal wellness often requires multiple interventions. Targeting diet and nutrition is an intervention used by practitioners across disciplines.
If you’ve ever made meal plans from scratch, you’ll know how quickly it can drain your productivity and energy. Nutrition software like That Clean Life can be a big help. It’s a proven time-saving tool when it comes to expertly guiding each client to make the best choices in the kitchen. With the right features built into your nutrition software, it can also help you add an alternative profit-boosting stream to your business.
This article will help you understand the various ways nutrition software impacts you and your clients, and outlines what to expect when integrating it into your practice.
Imagine you’re treating a client who is interested in supporting their liver health. Their path to wellness could include abstaining from alcohol, incorporating supplements – like milk thistle, turmeric, and dandelion root – and eating a diet that includes low glycemic, anti-inflammatory foods while limiting sugar, fat, and salt.
Simply advising this client to eat low glycemic, anti-inflammatory foods won’t necessarily make it happen. That’s because keeping nutrition guidance at a high level puts the onus on your client to research low-glycemic foods and figure out how to work them into meals.
Motivation can be a slippery slope when you’re asking clients to make significant changes to long-standing dietary practices. Resisting the pull of old habits and consistently making better choices requires willpower and consistency. That’s where nutrition software can be your new best friend.
The right nutrition software makes sharing recipes and incorporating the right foods easy. It can seriously speed up the process by using automation to create evidence-based meal plans – an activity that’s proven to drive positive outcomes. In fact, research found that individuals who plan their meals are “more likely to have a better dietary quality, including a higher adherence with nutritional guidelines, as well as an increased food variety.”
Planning and preparing ahead makes it easier for clients to stick to new eating habits. Customizing a meal plan to each client’s unique goals, restrictions, and preferences will greatly increase compliance and ultimate success with your programs. Using nutrition analysis software also lets you easily see the nutritional composition of the recipes you’re recommending and even gives you the flexibility to search recipes based on micronutrients and macronutrients, like magnesium, zinc, and fiber.
Flexible nutritional analysis software should also give you a choice between automatically including nutrition details with every recipe or leaving them out for clients who might find the information triggering.
Building a customized meal plan for a client traditionally takes a lot of time. You need to sit with the individual, actively listen to their needs, likes, and dislikes, and then draw on your expertise to build a plan that is both personalized and evidence-based.
With the right nutrition software, you can significantly streamline meal planning workflows and save hours typically spent sifting through your archives, scouring the Internet, and performing a detailed nutrition analysis. Here are some nutrition software features that will help you promote client wellness while protecting your time.
Nutrition software that includes editable templates help you jump-start meal planning. For example, if you’re working with a client who needs to change their diet to address gallbladder issues, having a template pre-populated with tested recipes that prioritize lean protein, fiber, and other essential nutrients can save you hours of time.
The meal plans and recipes your nutrition software automatically generates should be accompanied by accurate nutrition data pulled from a credible source, such as the USDA database.
Automation is awesome, but it doesn’t completely replace your expert touch. Your nutrition coaching software should offer filters so you can search for recipes with specific amounts of micro/macronutrients. It should also be easy to swap out recipes if one isn’t the right fit and to modify the nutrition profile on the fly by editing recipes.
Your nutrition analysis software should also let you share meal plans, collections, and recipes with clients in various ways. For example, an auto-generated .pdf that also includes your branding might be best for clients who prefer a recipe-book-style approach. Ideally, you can also upload these .pdfs to your client’s file or your session notes.
A client who is more hands-on or who has strong food likes and dislikes may appreciate the ability to edit the meal plans you send them and swap out recipes. Nutrition coaching software like That Clean Life lets you share a link to your online meal plan and can provide this level of customization.
Any meal plan’s success is ultimately determined in your client’s kitchen. Nutrition coaching software that has a built-in chat gives clients a way to reach out to you with questions and concerns without infiltrating your personal text messages or clogging up your email.
You can also use built-in food journal functionality to help clients accurately report what they ate by recording it when it happens. Reviewing journal entries frequently and sending encouraging notes can help keep clients accountable. You can also see where they might be going off track and send notes to quickly course-correct.
Nutrition software isn’t just for dietitians. Many health and wellness coaches who provide nutrition guidance to clients have training and certification in fitness, psychology, and even counseling. For example, personal trainers, mindfulness coaches, and holistic health coaches are all likely to view nutrition as a fundamental driver of overall well-being.
When selecting nutrition software for coaches, many features outlined earlier in the article remain relevant. This includes templates for creating personalized meal plans and the flexibility to manage client profiles, track progress, set goals, and communicate with clients through a centralized platform.
The right nutrition software holds great potential to help you scale smarter and impact more clients. Here are some ideas to get your wheels turning.
You can lean on nutrition software to help expand your offerings and productize your knowledge.
The right nutrition software can help you grow your practice while also managing time-stealing repetitive tasks. Built-in features make providing the best care possible easier while maintaining healthy boundaries and avoiding burnout.
The right nutrition software can help you grow your practice while also managing time-stealing repetitive tasks. Built-in features make it easier for you to provide the best care possible while maintaining healthy boundaries and avoiding burnout. It’s worth assessing how many individual software licenses you could stop paying for if you had the following features all bundled into one platform:
One size does not fit all regarding your clients’ nutrition needs. The best nutrition analysis software for dietitians will give shortcuts to analyze nutrients and build meal plans without starting from scratch every time. It should also be flexible enough to allow for infinite customizations – because no two clients are exactly alike.
Providing practical, actionable guidance on nutrition planning and healthy eating often plays a crucial role in helping clients achieve their wellness goals. But asking clients to navigate conflicting nutritional information and build their own meal plans can quickly extinguish the burning desire for change that led them to seek your help in the first place.
You don’t have to spend endless hours manually analyzing nutrients and creating meal plans that clients will love (and follow). Investing in nutrition software can help you bring your expert guidance to life clearly and promptly. A solution offering robust practice management capabilities takes it to the next level.
The recent partnership between Practice Better and That Clean Life fills this gap. We’re excited to partner with all types of wellness pros to seamlessly integrate nutrition planning and healthy eating into all their client care plans!
Practice Better is the complete practice management platform for nutritionists, dietitians, and wellness professionals. Streamline your practice and begin your free trial today.
