Hello, I'm Kate Freeman, and this is the Daily Dollar. Transform your eating habits and achieve long-term wellbeing with ALA Health. ALA Health is a mobile app that combines micro-learning with meal planning into a seamless user experience that teaches you how to eat well for the rest of your life, one habit at a time. Download it now from the App Store.
It's free! On this episode of the Daily Dollar, we're chatting about nutrition coaching and what it actually means to be coached to eat well by someone who's qualified and actually knows what they're doing. It's dollop time. Hey, hey, my name's Kate.
I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empower to maximize your health. Every weekday will dollop an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life.
My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this. Hello, and welcome back to the Daily Dollar podcast.
I am really excited, everyone, because I have recently reopened up my client book, like Proper Full, for one-on-one nutrition support for a whole day every week. I'm so excited to work with clients individually again. It has been a long time since I've had a full client load. I have picked and choose various people to work with over the years with one-on-one support, but I only generally have one or two clients at a time.
And yeah, I'm pretty choosy about it, to be honest, because I've got a lot on with running two businesses, a mobile app, and a dietetics clinic. But I'm now in this really lovely place where the healthy eating clinic, which is my business, down in Canberra, in the capital of Australia, is running very, very well without me. We just do a little bit each week to keep that one ticking over, like pay the bills and pay the people. And just checking with my amazing manager, Claire Walski, over there.
And the app is doing fab, guys. We've got some really cool things coming out with that soon. I'm really keen to start working on version two features. And one of the things that I really wanted to do, which was the motivation for seeing clients was, I'm going to be super transparent with you, is firstly, building apps and developing apps costs a shit ton of money, guys, like a lot.
It's a lot, but I have a fabulous developer, and he is such a good egg. And worth every penny I spend on him and his team. So part of picking up coaching clients again is so I can have the revenue for this new business, and the health is a startup business. It's really new to develop these second features and guys, they're going to be so awesome.
And my next motivation, though, is because I really want to one build something really genuinely helpful and meaningful. Like, I'm not in this to make oodles of dollars. I'm in this to actually create something really, really cool that actually helps people with their nutrition, that genuinely is a tool that helps people stay organised, make food choices, and just feel good about what they're eating. And so me seeing clients one on one is one, an opportunity to work with people again, and to really understand what their key pain points are, you know, get their thoughts on different app features we might like to build, but just really immerse myself back into working with people.
And also the third and last motivation for going back is that I just miss it a bit, really. I miss working with people. I love working with people who are ready for change. I love working with people who are ready for some mindset shifts, who are over-minded.
So anyway, I'm super excited about that. And I wanted to just talk about this concept of coaching, because I now call what I do, nutrition coaching, which, if I'm honest, is a slightly wanky term, like wanky. I don't know, not everyone thinks it's wanky, but in the industry, if you are a qualified, like university qualified, nutrition professional, health professional, to call what you do coaching is wanky. And that is because a lot of unqualified people provide coaching services, but they actually don't have the qualifications to do that.
So there's, I know a lot of nutrition coaches online who provide nutrition coaching, but they have no university degree. They did some like random certificate for online or some like weird weekend course in nutrition. That's not a lot of training in what is a very complex and nuanced field of science, physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, food systems, food chemistry, like it's huge. So I've called it nutrition coaching, though, for a couple of reasons.
And if you've ever wondered what a nutrition coach actually does and one that is qualified to do so, then this episode is for you. So, and maybe you can decide if this is something that you need or not. I recently did pick up a new client, which I'm stoked to work with. She is my ideal client and I'm really excited to work with her.
And one of the things she said in our first session was, I have struggled with my relationship with food and my body, my entire life. And I have never seen a nutritionist before and I just decided that it's time for me to get coaching, help and support in an area that actually takes up a lot of my life. And I just love that. Like she was just like ready to be like, I'm wanting help for this area.
And I was just like, amazing. And as someone who has sought some help recently for mental health, I talked about my iron deficiency and stuff like that. I've been struggling with anxiety. Like, I get it.
I got to the same point where I was like, it is time. It is time for me to get some help. And no regret says, so stretch that I did that. So let's talk about coaching.
When I used to see clients many, many years ago, more regularly and had like a really full client load, I used to have people say to me, particularly coming back for the second session, I'd be like, what did you take away from the first session? Like, how did you go with the first thing we were talking about? They would say to me, you know what? I actually thought that you were going to tell me off for like eating bread or toast.
Or they would be like, well, do you know what I mean? Like, I ate all the food in the house like the day before my appointment. So I could be like ready in my like perfect eating mode before I came to your appointment. And then I realized after your appointment that I didn't have to get it all perfect.
And it was actually going to be all okay. And you weren't going to expect all of this change from me all at once because it's really hard. And they was like, this is a breath of fresh air to like have this, I guess, space to make changes more sustainably. And it's cool.
And when I've had people, you know, say things like, oh, I thought you were going to tell me to stop eating chocolate. You know, we'd have a laugh together. But honestly, a lot of people do think that, you know, maybe nutrition coaching or seeing a nutritionist or a dietician is somebody judging your food choices and telling you to eat salad forever. And maybe there are some nutritionists out there who are like that.
I mean, I have heard of a few, not to name names. But that is absolutely not what it's like with me. Coaching with me is pretty much the exact opposite. So if we take a really common client scenario for mine, which is someone who has a history of yo-yo dieting, they have low self-esteem, they feel really nervous or frightened about eating carbs.
They're trying to constantly cut out carbs only to then binge on them regularly. If I'm working with a client from that perspective, our sessions are not about meal plans. They're not about me, like, revenue up and be like, pull your stocks up and just try harder. This is what we work on.
We talk about unpacking old food rules. What are the food rules that are holding you back that are causing you to be stuck in this rigid box that you then break out of and then have, you know, no structure at all. And we start to build more flexible guidelines. We learn how to build meals that she actually enjoys, things that are nourishing but also satisfying but that she likes eating that feel like she looks forward to eating them.
We work on things that foster rebuilding trust in herself and her body because a lot of the time we feel like we can't be trusted around particular foods or we feel like we can't be trusted to eat the right amount. But really that trust has just been eroded away by diets taking away our autonomy. And so we can rebuild that together again. And essentially we're learning to eat in a way that feels good long term.
So it can be that really long term mindset. This is not like a six week diet plan or anything. We're like, what kind of eater do you want to be in 20 years time? That is what I can help you be.
So if you do coaching with me, I don't do calorie counting. If you're a really, really old client of mine, you'll remember that we did look at calories and we would do it in, it was a big part of my practice. I did weight loss for many, many years, but I now know for most people that is a really unhelpful framework to look at food and make food decisions. It's not that calories aren't important and I still consider them when I'm giving advice to people.
But I don't to the point where you have to know like how many calories I'm prescribing you or you have to keep track and count them. Because what I'm interested in is you making food decisions based on your hunger fullness cues and we teach you what to do with that information and how to sense that information and stuff like that. We won't do regular weighing like I don't use your weight as a yardstick for success. I like to focus on things that you can directly control, like how consistently you're doing certain behaviors, how you're feeling or your energy levels are like rather than just swaying yourself.
Again, it's not that your weight isn't important. It is one aspect of your health, but there's so many other ways that we can measure and track your health. So I want to help you focus on those things as well. And there's no one size fits all plan.
It's really talking through understanding what happens in your day, all the barriers that you're facing with food prep and shopping and eating and everything and constructing a way of eating. That helps you meet your body's nutrient needs, achieve long term health in the context of your life. So essentially I am aiming to be really supportive with evidence based information. I don't make stuff up like genuinely don't.
I mean, I hate cauliflower with all my heart, but I don't tell people that cauliflower is evil and they should not eat it, even though I feel that deep in my heart. Because it's not actually true, it's not evidence based, it's just what I feel. So I give advice based on evidence, not based on what I feel. I give realistic strategies that work for your life.
And I encourage you to be open to trial and error to know that sometimes you'll try something that won't work and that is okay. We can try something new and that it's in the trial and error where we really start to be, oh, I'm understanding myself. I'm understanding what's working. I have that flexibility to make these three decisions and to learn from what didn't work and find something else to try.
I want to give you some tools to feel confident and not confused. Ayla Health is a huge part of that, the app that we've built with our micro learning little meal planner in there, the live chat so you can get support when you need it. So cool, I'm so proud of it. And I can't wait to roll out the version two features for you.
So essentially coaching is not about being perfect. You know this about me, right? It's about learning. It's about support.
It's about making food feel easy again, helping you work with your body rather than against it. So if you're curious about how it might work for you, you can actually book a free 30 minute strategy session with either myself or my colleague Stephanie Lechus over at aylahealth.com.au. Don't argue, there is no pressure, no obligation, just a chance to see if we're a good fit for each other. Hey, hello.
Yeah, love to meet you. The link to that is in the bio. Have a wonderful day, everyone. We'll catch you next time.
The Daily Dollar Podcast is proudly brought to you by Ayla Health. Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last. As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes.
You can also join the conversation over in the Ayla Health community group on Facebook. We'd love to see you there. If you've got a topic you'd love to hear us chat about on the Daily Dollar, please let us know. Email us at hello at aylahealth.com.au or you can send us a message on Instagram.
Until next time.