Healthy Eating to Suit Your Personality

Lunch at a friend's house - a delicious array of Spanish tapas

I was invited to participate in an industry panel at Premier Training London, last Friday, in order to give students a glimpse of what it’s like running my own personal training business.  They keep inviting me back.  They tell me it’s because I have an individual voice.  I believe it’s because I approach things differently.

Nowhere is this more obvious than when I was asked on panel, about the nutritional guidance I offer my clients.

My approach to nutrition is distinctive – an aspect that separates my personal training service from most others.  Another panellist tackled the question first, saying he favoured an elimination diet, restricting his clients to a non-wheat, non-dairy, non-alcohol, non-caffeine diet.

My answer was different.

I explained that my approach to a client’s nutritional diet does not revolve around completing food diaries or inflexible rules, but rather a single question: ‘how organised are you prepared to be about food?’  I know that in order to make a health-conscious diet effective, it needs to suit the client’s personality.  It’s no good telling a fish-loathing, broccoli-hating, cappuccino-loving dieter, that they need to eat fish, broccoli and sacrifice cappuccinos.  I believe a health-conscious diet needs to fit comfortably with a client’s life and tastes.

This way of approaching nutrition – especially with a view to weight loss – is not industry-standard practice.  But then, my clients are not industry-standard either.

After the panel, I stepped out onto the Seven Sisters Road.  As I’m not often in that part of town, I took the opportunity to visit the local independent ‘Happening Bagel Bakery’ and enjoyed one of their excellent halloumi bagels guilt-free. Being individual is a wonderful thing.