Coach HubNutrition: where they've been, where they are, where they're going
Relevant nutrition history comes down to three things: where they've been, where they are, and where they're trying to go. Alongside that, you want:
- Likes
- Dislikes
- Dietary considerations (allergies, intolerances, religious or cultural requirements)
- Dieting experience, and whether they're dieting right now
- Questions that show you their food literacy
Where they've been
What someone has tried before is one of the most important things you can ask. Coaching is an art, and this is where you start reading between the lines. It's also where dieting history and medical history begin to overlap.
Past diets tell you about the biases, methods, routines and even flavours a client is attached to. For example:
- The ex-keto client. Someone who lost a lot of weight on keto will very likely push back when you hand them a balanced plan with carbs.
- The serial dieter. Someone who has followed lots of diets may take to yours easily, ask a couple of questions, then want to switch it up a few weeks in.
- The fad dieter. A history of fad diets can point to nutrient deficiencies, high food focus, low nutritional literacy, and strong positive or negative biases.
These patterns are common. Spot them while you read the intake and plan for them before they happen.
Dieting history does three jobs:
- Establishes baseline habits. It separates a one-off eating day from how they actually live.
- Reveals risks. Past restrictive diets can leave hidden shortfalls, like low protein.
- Shows what worked and what failed. So you don't repeat someone else's mistakes.
Where they are
Current eating tells you more than preferences. It hints at their cooking skills and how much time they really have. "Coffee in the morning, microwave meal for lunch, takeaway dinner" says a lot. Ask them how and why it ended up that way in your welcome video or first conversation.
Don't assume everyone has your nutritional literacy or your time. Their reality is reality. Meal prep, cooking and even shopping are skills that sometimes need building from scratch. Remember my 32-year-old client from Module 1 who had never cooked. It took four weeks before he told me.
Reading the current state tells you how much change the plan needs. If there's a lot to change, everything will feel like it's changing at once. Be deliberate about which levers you pull, so the plan feels like a stepping stone, not a complete uprooting of their life.
Where they're going
Sometimes how someone eats now is miles from what their goal needs. That gap matters, but it still gets closed with micro-adjustments, not an overhaul. Expect pushback from old diet biases and past coaching experiences, and plan for it (we pick this up again in Module 4, when we build training programs).
This isn't a nutrition course, so we're not going into the finer details here. The point is the principles of behaviour change, and why a meal plan that's good for you might not be good for them.