How to Align Your Nutrition and Exercise Programs

Exercise and nutrition go together like peanut butter and jelly. You cannot have a conversation about health without including the two. As coaches, it is our job to educate our clients about the relationship between the two. But more importantly, we need to understand it ourselves.

In this week’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) sneak peek OPEX Fitness Founder, James FitzGerald, breaks down how exercise and nutrition are related and how the relationship between the two will differ depending on the client and their goals. 

Exercise, Nutrition Quality, and Mental Acuity

During this AMA James brings up the topic of food quality. “Right now we live in a society where food is viewed as a fix and a tool to change our body’s composition, but in fact, it is fuel and directly affects our mental acuity.” While diets such as IIFYM (if it fits your macros) focuses on nutrient quantity over quality James believes we should flip the conversation.

“While this is a nuanced conversation we need to focus on the quality of food and the hygiene practices around it to make sure that we are properly utilizing it as fuel,” says James.

As a coach himself, James has created some basic lifestyle guidelines to follow to make sure your food hygiene practices are top-notch, learn them for yourself here. 

Nutrition for General Population Clients

Nutrition plans should match your client’s exercise. Before creating a nutrition program for your client you should first think about their needs and what they are doing in a week. OPEX Coaches use client intake forms to suss out their client’s daily needs and expenditures, get a copy of our intake form for free here.

From there create a nutrition plan that will help your client reach their goals. But, keep in mind that this plan is not set in stone. It should differ depending on what the client is doing each week. For example, a nutrition plan for a client that walks 10 minutes every day will look drastically different from a client that is doing full-body resistance training three times a week.

Nutrition for Athletes

Nutrition plans for athletes follow the same guidelines as general populations, however, the requirements are much different. When designing a nutrition program the coach needs to take into account their daily usage.

However, for athletes fueling pre and post-exercise are of greater importance and mental acuity needs to remain high for an athlete to perform at the highest level.

Nutrition and Exercise Need to Be Personalized

Nutrition plans are like training, to be effective they need to be individualized. That is why we teach coaches to use a client intake form to get the information needed to create nourishment programs their clients can actually adhere to. Learn how to use client intake forms to design holistic nourishment programs by signing up for the Professional Coaching Blueprint. Sign up today and start creating nourishments plans your clients can adhere to before they go on another ‘fad’ diet.