I’ve been my dad’s nutrition coach for a little over two years now and while working with ALL of my clients is rewarding, working with my dad has been especially rewarding in its own way. And while you may think I’m here to boast about how I’ve helped my dad lose a bunch of weight and finally get back to his high school football weight and body composition, I’m actually here to tell you that he hasn’t changed much physically and hasn’t really lost any weight at all.

You might be faced with some big life events throughout the year - the ones we don't anticipate and that aren't always celebrations. These are often complex, emotional, challenging, and demanding situations that can make our nutrition seem especially overwhelming. Looking at these significant life events, there are three key things I learned that I think would benefit your nutrition should you find yourself amid these big life events and life changes.

We already know that a calorie deficit is the most important factor at play when it comes to pursuing fat loss goals. But, for most, staying in a consistent calorie deficit is a lot more challenging (and far more complex) than just “eating less and moving more.” One roadblock I see hindering progress over and over is not being in the right place to commit to these goals from the start.

Recently, as I was doing a major plant care day, I thought of one of those unattributed inspirational quotes you see online that says something like “nothing in nature blooms all year long; be patient with yourself.” I love a good metaphor, so of course that got me thinking about all of the other lessons my plants have taught me, and (because I’m a nutrition coach) how those lessons apply to nutrition-related goals.

Individuals who strength train gain muscle, lose fat, look leaner, improve their health, and are more athletic than the general population. The reason we talk about strength training as nutrition coaches is because, alongside digging into our nutrition more, adding resistance training can aid in the pursuit of these goals.

Many of us believe that the smaller we are the more acceptable we are. And the smaller we are the happier we are. But here’s the thing: Weight loss isn't therapy. Therapy with a licensed mental health practitioner is therapy.

We often think of “meal prep” as a meticulous and time consuming routine that ends in perfectly portioned tupperwares full of your meals for the week. The beauty of a flexible approach to our nutrition is that we have the ability to shape “meal prep” into whatever fits our needs and our lifestyles best. We wanted to show the large range of what meal prep can look like for different individuals and their different circumstances, so this week we are sharing our best meal prep tips as nutrition coaches who have our own specific nutrition needs, as well as supporting our clients and their needs.

A pregnant body is growing a whole new life. All of that most important formation requires ample and diverse nutrition. No pregnancy journey is going to look the same, and that also applies to every individuals’ nutrition during pregnancy. This is a time to prioritize quality choices where possible and feed your body with whatever sounds good. When we have a solid foundation of nutrition, we are able to weather seasons of life where appetite and food choices look quite different without stress.

Our relationship with food is something that has been crafted over many years of familial influence, social gatherings, and trendy “quick grab” headlines. You likely have foods categorized into groups like “breakfast, lunch, dinner”, “good and bad”, “healthy and unhealthy”. While some of these categories might be useful, others might be a barricade built in front of our own food freedom.

Our team has grown since our last Gift Guide, but we love sharing some of our favorite products - nutrition, cooking, fitness, and health related - and are doing so early this year knowing that the holidays are sneaking up quickly. This week we’re each sharing a favorite health or fitness gift that we hope you find useful as you start holiday shopping (or start your own list of what you may want this holiday season!)

One of the best things we can do for ourselves is to eliminate the fixed mindset that medication means weight gain, and to instead shift our focus to prioritizing our mental health so that our physical health can follow. We need to reprioritize and recognize that the benefits of stable mental health outweigh the desire to lose weight.

As nutrition coaches, we are often asked - by both clients and non-clients - if we have any nutrition book recommendations. In this post we’re sharing the most impactful nutrition books we rely on. You’ll find that they’re far less about diets and more about other aspects of our health, nutrition, and behaviors. They teach us how to build and maintain long-term habits and how to eat food we enjoy so that our nutrition is sustainable.

I believe it can be really helpful to understand what our body’s physiological response to stress looks like and how it relates to food (including digging into why stress eating can feel so good). From there, we can get into a few practical exercises to help manage our physiological response to stress to help interrupt the physical urge to stress eat.

We’ve loved sharing a glimpse of what nutrition for our coaches looks like in the past. As our KLN team has expanded, we wanted to again share the diversity (and similarities) in our approach as we all juggle busy schedules, responsibilities, personal goals, and our love of good food.

Just as there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to nutrition, there’s also no one size fits all approach to meal prep.  Everyone has different macro targets and every individual can choose how much time is spent in the kitchen in order to hit these targets. However you choose to prep your food should suit your lifestyle and be sustainable for long-term success. 

To give you a bit more insight into what meal prep while tracking your macros can look like, we are showing you what a week of meal prep looks like for each of us. While we all follow the same concept of flexible nutrition, our approaches are very different and are dependent on our personal lifestyles.

We talk about goals a lot with our clients, so we wanted to kick off the year sharing some of our big, broad goals for this coming year. Read more about what we’re working on this year to improve our fitness, nutrition, and mental health.

We’re sharing some of our favorite items that we love and use in our daily lives. We hope you love them too!

The process. At some point, your coach has probably told you to “trust the process,” but what does that mean? And why trust “the process” when you’re frustrated that you’ve had a tough week or aren’t seeing the progress you’re looking for?