The fitness industry is set up like a snake eating its tail. It gives certification and requires cecs to keep that certification and then offers limited sources of those approved credits. New trainers and educators in the wellness space are conditioned to believe that if it doesn’t give us some external validation through approved CEC’s or the magic of letters after your name then it’s not worth the time to study. So we look for more and more of what to teach clients instead of developing the skills to better communicate what we know.

Today I’m talking about coaching. When I say coach I’m talking about anyone who educates others about anything. From preschool to post doc, little league to pro athlete, boutique studios to big box gyms, school counselors to corporate consultants. Coaching of any kind is a business of change making and you can make it big or you can make it small and everything in between. But without courage, creativity and collaboration you can get lost in that cult of mediocrity filled with all the weight loss gurus, self love sisters and money making motivators out there.

Ideally we would all get everything our body needs to function optimally from real, whole food. Theoretically if we did that then we wouldn’t need to count calories. Or even watch portion sizes because the body has built in on and off switches for our appetite and is brilliantly designed to find the perfect energy balance. Sadly I think we can all agree that the standard American diet is deficient on many levels.

Our modern life of convenient hyper palatable food consumption has disrupted that delicate balance and led to food addiction, gut dysfunction and metabolic disease. Today, the lack of nutrition awareness and just basic general activity in modern life and you see most people deficient in many micro nutrients, using food as therapy on some level and desperate for a quick fix to fill in the gaps. That’s where supplements come in.

The fitness industry is notorious for fads. Fad equipment, Fad formats and especially fad diets and supplements. Each one with claims that this will finally be the thing that will give you the results you have been searching for. Even if nothing you’ve tried has worked before, THIS will. Every few years there’s new science, new understanding, new technology, new supplements and it can be as overwhelming for fitness professionals as it is for our clients. So how do we filter and curate that information in meaningful ways and stay within our scope of practice.

That’s our Work IN today. And we’re going to start with the diet piece.

Isn’t it interesting to note how many of us in wellness come to it through some kind of struggle with food and body image?

That is the crux of this diet culture - our relationship with food.

One might think fit pros SHOULD have their act together when it comes to nutrition we’re human too. We survive the same trauma to get here as everyone else. And just because you are athletic when you’re young or look fit now doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out. In fact when it comes to disordered eating and eating disorders Athletes are far more likely to suffer from some kind of body dysmorphia or eating disorder than non athletes at any age.

What that means is we’re all in it together.

Fitness. It’s a great career for many reasons. One of them is the low cost of entry. Most fitness certifications are fairly inexpensive compared to a 4 year degree. But all of them require some kind of continuing education to maintain. If you’ve been in the industry for any length of time you’ll find that a lot of what’s offered for cec’s while excellent information may not align with the kinds of things your clients need.