As a nutrition consultant, you stay on top of nutrition news and studies so that you can discuss the latest trends with clients and be informed about your profession. But are you equally organized when it comes to running your consulting practice as a business? Or empowering your clients to track their nutrition more effectively?
Having expertise is vital, but so is using solutions that streamline your operation—and help clients have access to the nutritional info they need. That’s where effective apps and software come in—to give you the capability you need to be more productive, set goals, attract more clients, and improve client relationships. When you’re able to do those tasks easily, you’re likely to find increased revenue and more referrals.
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Here are some options when it comes to apps you can use with clients that will benefit both of you:
1. MyFitnessPal
Keeping a food log can feel like a hassle for clients when they’re trying to jot down everything they’re eating, and it can also be a pain for you if you have to transcribe those notes into a spreadsheet. Fortunately, there are several food-tracking apps that make the situation easier. MyFitnessPal has one of the largest food databases when it comes to nutrition apps and also boasts a barcode scanner so a client can achieve faster tracking.
You’ll be able to look at a downloadable report that gives a history of all meals and snacks, including macronutrients and calories. This makes it much easier to go over any changes with clients, and to make specific suggestions about meal timing, food choices, and calorie level.
2. Substitutions
For many nutrition consulting clients, it can be confusing to substitute foods they once ate with healthier options or ones that don’t trigger food allergies. For example, they may not know that there are choices for substituting peanut butter that still give them plenty of nutty taste, but without the allergy concerns.
Developed by Gormaya, Substitutions has more than 1,300 ingredients and swap-out suggestions that can be hugely helpful for modifying recipes based on dietary restrictions. You can reduce sodium, lower carbohydrate intake, go gluten-free, replace dairy, and even make spice substitutions.
3. Figwee Portion Explorer
Explaining portion sizes based on everyday items—a serving of chicken breast as a “deck of cards,” for instance—can still be confusing for many clients, especially if they’re also trying to track macronutrients like carbs and fat. Figwee Portion Explorer is a handy app that makes it much easier to understand what serving sizes actually mean, through the use of food photos instead of analogies.
For example, if you’d like to figure out how many calories are in your portion of corn, you can look up the food on the app and get several photos that might correlate to what you’re about to eat. Are clients eating corn on the cob, shelled corn niblets, or creamed corn? The app has that type of breadth, with helpful photos that make it easy to select serving sizes.
4. NutriAdmin
Apart from apps that clients can use, software can also be a major boost to your business, and one like NutriAdmin gives you multiple functions within the same framework. This is useful for keeping all your information in one place, rather than toggling to different apps that might not play well together.
NutriAdmin has customizable client profiles, client questionnaire forms, meal plan creation capability, online payment options, client reminders, and appointment scheduling. You can also produce reports that draw from client data, saving you time when you’re trying to compile information.
5. AppointmentPlus
If you have other business functions in place and simply need a more streamlined way to book and track appointments, software like AppointmentPlus can be easy and fast.
The software allows your clients to make their own appointments and change them when needed, freeing you from scheduling calls and emails. You can also use this software to accept payments, capture customer data, maintain multiple staff calendars, overlap appointments, create a waiting list, and handle other functions.
6. Evolution Nutrition
Looking to provide additional services to your clients such as meal planning? Evolution Nutrition makes it easy to scale your nutrition and fitness consulting business and expand your offerings. They offer an app as well as desktop functionality so that you can collaborate with clients from anywhere. Even better, Evolution Nutrition has a variety of membership options, from those who are just starting out to an enterprise solution for established businesses with a large number of clients.
What apps or software have you used to make running your nutrition consulting business easier and more valuable to clients?
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