Any non-diet business coaching must include a segment on non-diet marketing.

For many, the words marketing is “yucky” or even “salesy”. Many of my new intuitive eating business students at first will tell me “I hate that part of my job”. Is that you, too?

If you are a health professional and have a private practice, then marketing is a vital part of your business. This is even more relevant for non-diet approach health practice.

To help you fall in love with marketing so that you can thrive in your business, this article will discuss…

Understand the non-diet business coaching framework

The best non-diet marketing strategy

3 pillars of non-diet marketing

Ideal Client Readiness

Emotional Connection

Nurturing

Professional Training Center

Non-diet mentorship program

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 4

Links mentioned in the episode…

Webinar Non-Diet Marketing

Mentorship Program

Free Intuitive Eating Guide

PRO Series – Free Training & Resources

Podcast series – Full listing

Understand the Non-Diet Business Coaching Framework

Let’s lay down the groundwork first about the non-diet approach before we get into the marketing aspect.

The non-diet approach to health is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome. This approach focused on all the other factors that can impact one’s health beyond body weight. In other words, the ultimate goal is to support the patients to become their own experts at their bodies.

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recovery from diet culture and learns the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.

The non-diet business coaching framework teaches women health practitioners on how to build successful non-diet businesses. I share the basics of this framework in the first two podcast episodes of the Going Beyond The Food Show Non-Diet PRO.  The Intuitive eating Mentorship episode and Intuitive eating Business episode.

 Marketing to our future client can appear to be challenging at first. as I argued in my article Diet mindset professional training, our future clients have been used and abused by diet culture and have a very low tolerance to traditional fear-based marketing tactics.  Hence, non-diet marketing should be based on love, education, and nurturing.

The Best Non-Diet Marketing Strategy

Marketing is the art of making change happen.

The success of non-diet marketing resides in the overall non-diet business strategy you have created for your business. So, let me repeat this very important point again: a marketing strategy is part of this overall business strategy.  Do you have one of these?

An effective non-diet marketing strategy will help tell a compelling story about your offer/product in a way that will help your niche market (future client/patient) connect to your offer/product with a strong desire to commit (purchase). As a result, the commitment of resources leads to transformation for your client and equal sales and revenue in your business.

The 3 pillars of non-diet marketing

I will be covering the 3 pillars of an effective and profitable non-diet marketing strategy. Know that I have covered in much greater details inside our non-diet professional pre-recorded non-diet training webinar “7-Step Blueprint to Build Quickly A Profitable Non-Diet Business & Attract Client Ready To Stop Dieting by so you can help free hundreds of women from diet culture!”.  So, if you are new, you may consider registering for this free resource.

Pillar 1: Ideal Client Readiness

Trying to please everyone is the #1 marketing mistake that I observed in the health & wellness business sector. This is why the second element of a successful business strategy should include a comprehensive analysis of your ideal client and niche market. After that, you can create a unique marketing initiative that connects with your future clients.

Trying to convince people they need to change is the #2 marketing mistake I observed in the health & wellness business sector. That’s because not all your future clients are ready for your non-diet message now. If your future clients are still deeply entrenched in diet culture, then it will be a complete waste of your time and resource to market to them. Therefore, they need first to be open to a new approach.

Time and time again, women non-diet health entrepreneurs make these mistakes because they operate from fear instead of love. Fear of missing revenue and excluding potential clients is the main denominator of this fear.

By trying to please everyone, you actually prevent your niche clients from connecting with you and most importantly, take action towards their own transformation. Consequently, you prevent your business from being successful.

Therefore, your marketing strategy needs to ensure you connect to your unique niche market and with those in your niche ready to take action towards their own transformation.

Inside our Non-diet Approach Mentorship Program, we teach a unique blueprint that blends in the transtheoretical model of transformation with basic marketing techniques.

Pillar 2: Emotional Connection

Our future client has been used and abused by diet culture and the weight loss industry. They have bought a lot of weight loss products out of desperation, and as we know, nothing has worked. Hence, your future clients need not only a different approach but also a different type of marketing.

Emotional marketing refers to marketing and advertising efforts that primarily use emotion to make your audience notice, remember, share, and buy (commit). It taps into the innate human desire to FEEL.  Certainly, this is critical to a women-based audience.

The goal is to validate the way they FEEL now and show them how they can FEEL different later (after committing to your product). This type fo marketing helps out future clients buy from their hearts. This is because studies shows that people rely on emotions, rather than rational, to make decisions.

Emotional marketing inspires people to act. Similarly, it encourages more interaction between you and your brand long term which is critical to developing a sustainable non-diet business. Out of 1,400 successful marketing campaigns, those with purely emotional content performed twice as better as those with only rational content.

The most effective way to connect emotionally with your ideal client is to tell stories.

Pillar 3: Nurturing

The last pillar of a successful non-diet marketing strategy is to create a relationship of trust and credibility with your ideal client. That’s because the vast majority of your future clients will be doubtful given their experience thus far with diet culture. I know I was…. You?

Inside the non-diet professional mentorship program, we refer to this step of the program the “Non-Diet Marketing Funnel”. Think a liquid funnel here…. it’s the journey your client will go through as they enter your world.

Although we as non-diet health professionals are very familiar with a weight-neutral approach to health, our future customer is not. We have to face the facts: we live in a society that is fatphobic and heavily entrenched in weight loss approaches. In other words, we are the infancy stage of a non-diet world…

Hence, we need to educate our future clients to the non-diet approach. With each new interaction with potential clients, we need to educate and educate some more. And when you think you are done educating… educate some more lol! Likewise, you need to move your ideal client along your non-diet marketing from not knowing about the non-diet approach to understanding the basics of the non-diet approach. This needs to happen before they commit (purchase) to anything with you.

As your ideal client moves further down into your non-diet funnel, they will start trusting you and see you as an expert in this approach. As a result, they will be more willing to take a risk with what seems to them as a “completely crazy” approach to their problem: to ditch dieting, learn to eat intuitively, and accept their body.

Non-Diet Business Coaching Training Center

Would you like to see an example of nurturing in the non-diet world? If not done yet, join my non-diet professional community by requesting our starter pack for training for intuitive eating. I’ll send you the nurturing funnel I have built for professionals.

We also have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.

You can access the non-diet professional training here.

Non-Diet Business Coaching Mentorship program

The Beyond The Food Mentorship 6-month program is an intuitive eating business and non-diet professional mentorship program. It encompasses anti-diet business coaching alongside the necessary non-diet professional skills set training to make your clinical approach successful.

This is what I was seeking but couldn’t find years ago.

Diet mindset professional training was not available when I started my transition to a non-diet approach to nutrition and health as a clinical nutritionist; had to figure it out on my own. Piece it all together…

I shared my professional transition that my client Carolyn triggered in First Do No Harm: The Intuitive Eating Mentorship Journey. I argued that the current model of practice for a nutrition professional top-down approach is causing more harm to a particular segment of our clients. The female yo-yo dieter…which is, unfortunately, the vast majority of our client population.

The solution: The bottom-up approach. Start first with addressing the diet mindset so you can talk about nutrition and health later in the journey. Enter diet mindset professional training!

In this article, we will cover:

Diet Mindset Professional Training

How human make food choices

How the diet mindset develops

Common thought errors

Diet Brain: The adaptation

Self-Coaching for Intuitive eating

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 3

Links mentioned in the episode…

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

PRO podcast series – Full listing

Set Point Podcast 

Self-Coaching Article

Diet Mindset Professional Training

In my professional studies as a clinical nutritionist, we barely touched upon the psychology of eating or diet mindset professional training. We jumped right into the WHAT to eat emphasizing greatly why it was so important to our health with a lot of facts and data.

So, I went into private practice and model what I had learned. Spending hours creating a complex protocol. Very quickly, I realized that wasn’t going to work… clients were overwhelmed and scared of the complexity of what they would have to do. I went to what I was taught: trying to convince them with studies, facts, and data as to why restricting this and that food was essential to their health. That didn’t work either.

Why wasn’t it working? Back then, I had no answer but today after years of independent studies I can tell you why: intellectual knowledge is not what motivates humans to change or make different choices. Especially not with food. The answer diet mindset professional training.

How human make food choices

So, if data points and fear-mongering isn’t an effective tool to help people change their eating habits, what is?

Of course, the primary driver to food choices is hunger however, what we choose to eat is not only our physiological and nutritional needs. Many other factors influence our food choice according to research:

Biological Determinants

For example, our innate eating cues hunger, fullness, and satisfaction which is what is recognized as eating cues in the world of intuitive eating coaching. You can also include here Set Point theory which I discussed in depth with Chris Sandle on our Going Beyond The Food Show podcast series about weight loss.

Economic Determinants

In sum, here we can think of cost, income, availability of food which is truly out of our control as health practitioners. These are major issues with the newest version of diet culture: the Wellness Diet.

Physical Determinants

For example, access, education, skills (e.g. cooking skills), and time availability which are mostly out of our control as health practitioners.

Social Determinants

This aspect of our food choices such as culture, family, peers, and meal patterns are mostly out of reach for us as health practitioners except one that is particularly relevant to our segment of women who have been chronic dieters: weight discrimination.

There is emerging evidence that experiences with weight stigma may lead to different eating behavior. For example, individuals ate more food after exposure to a weight stigmatizing condition. Additionally, in a study, 79 percent of women reported coping with weight stigma on multiple occasions by eating more food.

A properly structured non-diet approach to health engages clients and patients in learning coping skills to help reduce the impact of weight stigma.

Psychological Determinants

This is the world of mind and emotions. Elements such as mood, stress, and guilt are one area that as non-diet health professionals should be included in our approach.

Today, it is widely recognized that food influences our mood, and that mood has a strong influence on our choice of food. For this reason, these determinants are the first 3 pillars of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ .

Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about food

This is where we include intellectual knowledge about food but also include all the constructed food beliefs pass down to us from the weight loss & wellness industries in order to sell their products.

How the diet mindset develops

What’s unique about our eating behaviors, unlike many other biological functions, is too often subject to sophisticated cognitive control.

We consciously manipulate our food choices beyond the need of our bodies to achieve other external gains/ goals in our life. One of the most widely practiced forms of cognitive control over food intake is dieting (cognitive dietary restraint).

In most studies on the topic of food choices, it’s most often observed that women and men behave differently with food. In this study, women reported significantly higher restraint, more guilt after eating in various types of social situations, and more overeating in reaction to unpleasant emotional state mood.

Women’s bodies are imposed on different beauty standards than men’s bodies. Diet Culture reinforces the thin ideals to women leading 91% of women in western societies to dislike their bodies and using dieting (cognitive food restraint) to meet diet culture expectations of their body size and beauty.

With repeated failed attempts at dieting, dieting has a 91%-95% failure rate over 5 years period, women’s brain & body develops coping mechanism as a mean of surviving diet failure and weight stigma. This is why we need diet mindset professional training!

Common thought errors or cognitive distortion

When it comes to how we think, the dieter’s brain adapts using what we know as cognitive distortion or thought errors.

Let’s take a step back first to make sure we all understand how the human brain functions.

When faced with an event or a trigger, labelled in the model below as circumstances then given an interpretation. This interpretation is based on our long-held beliefs, past experiences, values system including diet culture. We then form an opinion, a thought which then ignites an emotion. The emotions we feel then creates the actions or behaviours we take. The collective action we take then creates our result.

Over time, the brain, or mind, adopts a “way of thinking” as a means to survive what we perceive as a difficult situation. These flaws in thinking are known as cognitive distortions or thought errors. This is what keeps women in the cycle of dieting and body shaming even though it has proven to be a very ineffective way of living life.

• Mental filtering
• Jumping to conclusions
• Personalization
• Black and white thinking
• Catastrophizing
• Overgeneralization
• Labelling
• Emotional reasoning
• Magnifying/ Minimizing

Over the years of working with women in a non-diet model of care approach, and my personal journey in recovering from 25 years dieting career, I have observed a pattern in cognitive distortion. I coined the term Diet Brain to better express this pattern.

Diet Mindset Professional Training: Diet Brain

Diet brain, the term I coined a few years back, is the collective of 4-main thought errors. In my clinical observation and personal experience overcoming each one, this pattern that is present in most women chronic dieters I have worked. What are these traits?

All or nothing / Black and White thinking

This can be best described as the on the diet / off the diet lifestyle. The good and bad food dichotomy as dictated by diet culture. With time, it spread these faulty thought patterns to every aspect of our life: exercise, work, career, relationship, how we raised children….

Perfectionism

Simply put: Everything must be perfect to off so we can be worthy of love, acceptance. At first with diet, food, and exercise but as failure cumulated, it becomes a way of life to prevent potential rejection due to “unperfected body”.

This cognitive distortion leads to a perfectionist fantasy. We make our current life so miserable by thinking that solving your problem (aka body size and appearance) will provide us with the happiness we are seeking that we actually never live (and enjoy) our current life.

Mental filtering: It’s my body’s fault

The body and its size take the blame for everything that’s wrong in your life. From health to a relationship, to opportunity, to emotional state… it’s all the body’s fault. Women then consistently compare themselves with others based on beauty and body size.

People-pleasing

This is when women move to external validation because internal validation is absent. As they believe that they are unacceptable, they will attempt to please and comfort everyone around them as a means of avoiding rejection and gaining acceptance.

These four most common cognitive distortions most present with women chronic dieters then strongly influence their eating patterns, ability to practice self-care, and create health-promoting habits.

The non-diet approach will first help the client and the patient with their mindset and emotions before engaging in nutrition education. In our diet mindset professional training, we teach the framework of self-coaching.

Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating

Self-Coaching is a framework that supports first becoming aware of our thought, observing them without judgment and last to change our thinking. It’s also an effective approach supported by neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.

We’ve developed a unique framework that supports the long-term goal of helping women recover from diet culture and become intuitive eater and body neutral. This is the best tool for diet mindset recovery for a professional approach.  Self-coaching for intuitive eating is applied in 3 steps:

Step 1: Self-observation

The process of self-coaching cultivates the first skill which is about being an observer of our inner world – our thoughts and our emotions. This process helps raise the level of interception that clients will need as they begin to explore their innate eating cues with intuitive eating.

Step 2: Non-judgement

Self-coaching is about exploring your inner world with a “lense of curiosity” instead of judgment. Asking the question “I wonder why I think like this or do this” instead “I’m so stupid because I do this” is empowering and creates deep mental clarity. You can then decide how you want to think about X or what you want to do about Y.

Step 3: Conscious response

The last step of self-coaching is about choosing conscious responses or thoughts that work best for you and your specific situation, problem, or challenge. Self-coaching is ultimately about deciding consciously instead of reacting unconsciously.

Self-coaching as a thought in an intuitive eating mentorship program is about teaching our clients to connect to their innate wisdom and their power. It leads to emotional intelligence by taking charge of your mind and emotions.

That’s the feminist approach to food and health.

Get Started with Diet Mindset Professional Training

We have created for you a number of free non-diet professional training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health. You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.

You can access the non-diet professional training here:

Non-Diet Professional Mentorship

Our Non-Diet professional Mentorship program is a high-level business mentorship program for health professionals who want to take their business to a non-diet model of care. This program includes diet mindset professional training.

A 6-month journey of business and personal growth exclusively designed for female health entrepreneurs mastering their own journey beyond the food with intuitive eating and body neutrality, while also learning to market their intuitive eating business with a heart so they can have a massive impact on women’s health.

Diet mindset professional training was not available when I started my transition to a non-diet approach to nutrition and health as a clinical nutritionist; I had to figure it out on my own. Piece it all together…

I shared my professional transition that my client Carolyn triggered in First Do No Harm: The Intuitive Eating Mentorship Journey. I argued that the current model of practice for a nutrition professional top-down approach is causing more harm to a particular segment of our clients. The female yo-yo dieter…which is, unfortunately, the vast majority of our client population.

The solution: The bottom-up approach. Start first with addressing the diet mindset so you can talk about nutrition and health later in the journey.

In this episode, we will cover:

Diet Mindset Professional Training

How human make food choices

How the diet mindset develops

Common thought errors

Diet Brain: The adaptation

Self-Coaching for Intuitive eating

Links mentioned in the episode…

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

PRO podcast series – Full listing

Set Point Podcast 

Self-Coaching Article

In today’s episode, we are going to explain what an intuitive eating business is really about. Starting an intuitive eating business can be overwhelming and scary. Even those that have a regular health practice to transition to a non-diet model can be frightening.

We will reveal what steps you should take to create a heart-centered intuitive eating business that will be successful.

In this episode, we will cover:

• What is the business of intuitive eating?
• What is an Intuitive Eating Coach?
• Serving versus Selling non-diet model of business.
• Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
• The first step to start an intuitive eating business
• Why Non-Diet Business coaching is different
• What is a Non-Diet Mentorship program?

Links mentioned on the episode

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

PRO podcast series – Full listing

The thought of starting an intuitive eating business can be scary and overwhelming.

Even for those that currently have a health business and want to transition to a non-diet business is frightening. Will I be able to sustain my income?

How can I make money off if I’m not selling meal plans, diet programs, detoxes, and cleanse?

If I’m not creating complex protocols for my clients: why would they pay me?

These are the type of questions this article aims to answer and many others.

What is the business of intuitive eating?

Being an Intuitive Eating Coach

Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome

Serving versus Selling

Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business

First Step to start an intuitive eating business

Non-Diet Business coaching

What is a Non-Diet Mentorship program?

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 2

Links mentioned on the episode

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

PRO podcast series – Full listing

What’s an intuitive eating business?

An intuitive eating business is when you exchange money in order to support someone with intuitive eating. This support can come in many different ways:

• Teaching them an intuitive eating framework
• Coaching their learning or progress as an intuitive eater
• Supporting them in their intuitive eating journey
• Encouraging to move forward when they struggle
• Answering their questions
• Inspiring them to move forward in the face of adversity
• Creating products that will support people who want to become an intuitive eater

This business is not a formulated typical health business and does not hold the same value system considering that most health businesses are created to support diet culture ideology.

The most prevalent difference in a diet culture-free business resides in its approach to healing. An intuitive eating business is anchored in what I describe as a “bottom-up” approach versus a “top-down” approach. The goal is to empower you to become your own expert at your body. A typical health business that is rooted in diet culture is built around the provider being the expert and telling you how to engage with your body. Very disempowering.

An intuitive eating business is based on self-compassion, trust, respect of the individual innate body wisdom, and ability to heal themselves.

As of today, the most frequent intuitive eating business model is the coaching business model. You exchange money with your service as a coach.

Intuitive Eating Coach Business

As an intuitive eating coach, you are healing your client/ or patient… they heal themselves. Your clients/patients have all they need to heal their own relationship with food and body. For many, that’s a departure from their professional training… it’s ok to feel unsafe at first.

An intuitive eating coach is a health professional who guides clients/patients in their recovery from Diet Culture. Moreover, your job is to guide clients on the path of becoming an intuitive eater by listening to their concerns and helping them with problem-solving. Recognizing what we spoke about in the first episode of season 1 of the Pro Series Beyond The Food podcast, that the human relationship to food is by far more complex than just simple food choices.

Problem-solving with your client as an intuitive eating coach will not require you to provide a complex meal plan or macro ratio. Instead, helping them master their mindset particularly shifting away from diet mindset towards a compassionate mindset.

You will help your client move from an external cue to know what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat towards internal cues. As well as helping them feel their hunger, fullness and find satisfaction in what they eat. Instead of teaching your clients to suppress their cravings and how to “fill up on aid food”, you actually help them be in their body at the moment.

You help them understand that all food is good. That being healthy doesn’t mean being restrictive and feeling deprived. That they no longer need to earn their food. You empower your clients, give themselves permission to eat.

Intuitive Eating Coaching Outcome

Your goal is to coach your clients in building confidence in their own eating cues to be their own internal nutritionist. Instead of helping your client live a “normal life” in a very restrictive dietary protocol and how to make cauliflower brownie, you help your client give themselves permission to eat.

With compassion, you guide your client to cope with emotions differently. Helping them build resilience and emotional intelligence. Helping them learn to process their emotions without food.

As your clients build trust and respect with their innate body wisdom, you help them detach from being their bodies and their appearance. In addition, helping them reconnect to their innate worth as women. Guiding your client away from shame towards neutrality. Helping them embrace self-care beyond their physical bodies.

Finally, you help educate your client to a weight-neutral health approach guided by health at every size principle. Moving their body with joy and practicing gentle nutrition.

Being an effective intuitive eating coach requires you to be an intuitive eater first with a willingness to grow and learn from your clients. You must possess intuitive eating professional skills but also, mindset coaching skills, behaviour modification skills. Also, mindfulness and body image resilience skills.

Serving versus Selling

Let’s talk about what everyone thinks about but doesn’t want to talk about. It’s going to get uncomfortable for some…

It’s ok to be making money coaching intuitive eating, to exchange your coaching services for money. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be successful in your intuitive eating business. It’s ok to monetize your professional skills.

Ready for this one: The more revenue you create, the more money you make in your intuitive eating business means more people freed from diet culture. Yup, it truly is.

Now, how you monetize your services and create business revenue does matter. You can build a business in a masculine, patriarchal way or you can choose to embrace your female energy that empowers everyone even those who do not purchase from you.

You can serve instead of selling. Serving means engaging with our clients without expectation. You offer value by creating free content, teaching your audience the very basics of intuitive eating, providing free resources to everyone. You become a resource helping people break down their own barriers, fears, and supporting them with an empowering message. Guiding them to the next level resources available.

The opposite of serving is the hard sell, aggressive to close mentality that comes across as pushy and self- focused. When you are focus on selling, you create free resources guard to disempower people so they are led to believe that the only way for them or resolve their problem is by buying your product.

Serving is based on love. Selling is based on fear. Serving leads to selling without selling.

Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business

We must recognize that the intuitive eating model of nutrition is not accepted by the traditional model of healthcare. As a result, intuitive eating services are mostly never covered by traditional insurance providers. Our services are typically private care, meaning an out of the pocket expense.

This is why most intuitive eating professionals have to be entrepreneurs alongside their profession. You can provide service for someone else’s business but in most cases, you will need to be running your own business.

This means that you need to embrace entrepreneurship and learn about setting up and maintaining a business, marketing your intuitive eating business as well as getting and retaining clients.

Let’s make something clear here: a professional health certification isn’t how you will learn to run a business. The vast majority of health certifications do not include business training and if they do, it’s not focused on a non-diet business model but instead a model that supports diet culture.

That’s why I created the Going Beyond The Food Non-Diet Mentorship program. If we want to be successful in dismantling diet culture, I need you to know how to successfully operate a business.

First Step to start an intuitive eating business

The first place to start is with a business strategy. That’s you creating a brand-new business of transitioning your current business to an intuitive eating business model, you need a business strategy.

The strategy is what will turn your passion into biz and blow you to impact thousands of women. It’s the roadmap you will look up to as you work day-to-day in your business. Your business strategy consists of the following:

• Why
• What
• Who
• Where
• When and the…
• How much

The first layer of your business strategy that we teach is the why… not the what. This is where most business strategies go wrong. The business you create needs to be in alignment with your personal values, your personal goals, and how YOU want to lead your personal life.

To be an effective heart-centred intuitive eating business owner, you must care for yourself first. Make sure your business supports YOU not the opposite.

Non-Diet Business Coaching

Today, I own and operate a very successful intuitive eating business. It’s not always been like this. In this first episode of the PRO Series podcast, I share the story of my own professional and business evolution.

It took time and resources for me to get where I’m today. For over 4 years, I searched and trained in various professional training programs to create the Going Beyond The Food Method. I shared more on this in this podcast episode.

Although I had 15 years of retail business operation experience, I also had to learn the health business model. I had to educate myself, get coached in my blind spot, be mentored. Over the last 10 years, I invested approximately $60,000 in my business.

• I hired an experienced nutrition business coach before even graduating -8K
• The year following my graduation, I committed my first health business mastermind -10K
• 4 years ago, I hired an online business coach to help me transition my business online – 10K
• Over the next years, I have purchased 26k in online business skills courses to learn email marketing, funnel, summit, branding, etc…

Non-Diet Mentorship Program

The Going Beyond The Food non-diet mentorship program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best intuitive eating professional. It’s a program geared to refine your professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.

It helps you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.

I believe that the only way for us to be able to end diet culture oppression of women is by us women coming together and helping each other as women back into our power via intuitive eating and body neutrality. This is a woman issue…that must be resolved by women.

As women, we need to step up and change the future for the young generation of girls. We need to teach them that they aren’t defined by their bodies, we need to crush DC so it never gets its dirty hands on the upcoming generation.

The liberation of the upcoming generation will only come through our generation’s liberation from diet culture and patriarchy.

Currently, the traditional model of nutrition, coaching, and even health care is not set-up for this…it’s entrenched in diet culture. Most of the wellness industry is deeply entrenched in diet culture. The alternative health industry claims to be about the root cause… but never looked at the reason why women engage with food and body.

Bottom line we need a new approach

We need women who can help other women change their relationship to food and body, empowering women to become their own experts at their bodies, to help women build confidence in themselves and their power to know what’s right for them.

Women who will support other women. We need emphatic, compassionate women who have the skills to connect with other women and a passion for change.

My job is to ensure these women are doing their job so well while creating a sustainable business so they can keep impacting more women for years to come. Furthermore, my job is to ensure that these women are successful so they crush diet culture for the generations to come.

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 1

Links mentioned on the episode

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

I help women with intuitive eating mentorship programs today but it wasn’t always so…

8 years ago, I was 2 years into my nutrition practice, Carolyn walked into my office. And she had just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She desired to be “healthier”.

I proceeded to take a diligent intake. And this intake process included a food journal, detailed health history as well as a symptomology assessment. Based on my assessment I concluded that a “whole food diet” would support her goals.  Along with other lifestyle modifications.

Not only how I was teaching nutrition different but also my approach. So Carolyn would add foods to her plate instead of removing foods. Carolyn left my clinic with her food list, food journal and “ideal plate” handout in hands.

Then two weeks later she was back for a follow-up. Within 10 minutes, she was in tears.

“I’m so sorry Stephanie I wasn’t able to follow what you told me to do and thought this time would be different. My urges to binge on processed food at night are back in full force. “

“I ate my kids’ food in secret.  What is wrong is wrong with me??”

Are we causing harm to our clients?

Shifting to a non-diet approach to health

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️

Intuitive Eating Mentorship

Non-Diet Professional Training

Non-Diet Business Coaching

How to Get Started

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 1

Links mentioned on the episode

PRO Series – Free Training & resources

Mentorship Program

Intuitive Eating Guide

Are we causing harm to our clients?

We do not know what we do not know.

I was aggravating an underlying condition for Caroline.  Not only did Carolyn had a disordered relationship with food but also with her body image due to years of chronic dieting. And all of my assessment tools and training never accounted for this condition. I was neither taught to assess how patient-related to food or to consider past dieting behavior in my assessment.

Fast forward 8 years later. When I reflected back on my first few years of practice not only most of my female clients were in fact in a disordered relationship with food but I also was.

Most nutrition experts engage in disordered eating

In 2012, an international study in 14 countries found a whopping 77 percent of nutrition students felt that eating disorders were a concern among their peers. And the reasons behind this are complicated: theories run from an obsessive overexposure to information about food and exercise, to pressure within degrees to be an “ideal nutritionist.”

Individuals that develop disordered eating may at first initiate a quest for a healthier lifestyle but then dysfunctional, compulsive beliefs about food emerge that then impair health, work, and social functioning.

If you are curious to know if have a disordered relationship to food then you should complete our free professional intuitive eating intake forms. Assess yourself and share your results with us!

Shifting to a non-diet approach to health

Carolyn was the most impactful client-practitioner I have had to this day.

Not only did she triggered in me a must needed professional shift but also a personal transformation. So my quest for another way of serving my client and healing myself began with her.

7 years ago when I searched for support, training and non-diet professional mentorship nothing existed. Instead, I read the Health At Avery Size® research and book by Dr. Lindo Bacon.  And then began applying a weight-neutral approach to health in my practice.

Over the next 4 years, I collected both a variety of professional and personal skills. This collection of tools is today known as The Going Beyond The Food Method™️. And this non-diet methodology is currently taught in Going Beyond The Food Academy.

The Going Beyond The Food Method™

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is a way of working with clients and patients which removes that emphasis and pressure to eat for weight loss or health. Instead, it embraces the Health At Every Size® weight-neutral approach to health, intuitive eating, body neutrality, mindfulness, and a self-coaching mindset.

This non-diet methodology respects the fact that each human has innate body wisdom. And that our the body knows what we need and what is best for us including food, eating, movement, weight, and self-care.

A practitioner who uses our methodology is focused on helping women rebuild a relationship of trust, respect, and neutrality with their bodies.The client is empowered to identify what will be best for her to optimize their own health and wellbeing.

At the core, a holistic based approach recognizing the 4 human bodies: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical human bodies. This non-diet approach for health coaches, nutritionists or any other health experts is a gentle process. And it focuses on skills building.

Ultimately, it’s about helping women conquer back their power and thrive unconditionally!

Intuitive Eating Mentorship

The Going Beyond The Food Mentorship program is an intuitive eating mentorship program, an anti-diet training and body image professional training. And it’s designed to support health professionals desiring to shift their practice to a non-diet model.

This is what I was seeking but couldn’t find years ago.

As a professional, a non-diet approach to health and nutrition can be scary as it empowers your client and patient to be their own health expert.

Non-Diet Professional Training

“If we are not going to hand out meal plans and “good and bad” food list, what will we do?”

That is a very common question and also a great starting point to understand which professional skills set will be required in a non-diet approach.

Food choices and healthy habits aren’t only derived from intellectual knowledge but also from our emotions and thoughts. This applied not only to healthy habits but to every habit we choose to do as a human.

As a non-diet practitioner, you will need to help with your clients with the mindset and emotional intelligence tools. We teach self-coaching for intuitive eating.

Chronic dieters and women who dislike their bodies are in their head instead of their bodies. You will need to help them come back into their body and to connect to their bodily sensation including their eating cues. Mindfulness is the perfect tool to cultivate body attunement.

Intuitive Eating Training

Intuitive eating is a well- researched and complete framework to help you reframe the before, during and after relationship to food with women. As a certified Intuitive eating counselor, I have studied directly with Evelyn Tribole and now included this empowering framework with all my clients in our non-diet online training.

As a non-diet professional, your skills wouldn’t be complete without a tool you can use to help your clients to heal their relationship with their body image.

Body Neutrality is the framework I have selected to teach in our program. It helps women understand that we aren’t defined by own physical bodies. This body image professional training goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Non-Diet Business Coaching

Shifting your business to an anti-diet business model requires some small business adjustment mainly in the content of your professional services, health programs, and marketing.

Your intuitive eating business skills will require you to move to a serving message from selling messages. Your future client or patient will need to be educated about what is a non-diet and weight-neutral approach to health.

The 5-step process to build a successful Anti-Diet Business

1. Determine the non-diet business format that will support your personal goals

2. Define & refine your ideal clients and their needs

3. Create a non-diet service offer.

4. Market your offer or product using our exclusive non-diet transformation funnel system.

5. Deliver your product.

Bonus – Scale & Diversify

How to Get Started

We have created for you a number of free intuitive eating mentorship training resources to help you begin your research in the field of non-diet approach to health.

You can access this non-diet professional training by clicking here.

You will find non-diet online training, webinars, podcasts, and articles.

One last thing

Here’s the truth: As long as you teach any labelled diet (Keto, paleo, GF, DF, ….) and or handout food list and meal plan, you aren’t teaching sustainable health or nutrition. Point.

If the above is you, just about now you’re likely pissed at me. That’s ok sister! I get it. I was on the receiving end of this exact discourse about 4 years ago and I was mad but it planted a seed in my mind… and here I’m today!

It’s not your fault. As far as I know, today…no nutrition school or health coaching program currently offers Intuitive eating as part of their curriculum. So how were you supposed to know??

But now you know…. So, what will you do? Continue to arm people teaching diets or learn intuitive eating for yourself and slowly, gradually integrate it in your practice and help your client real sustainable changes.

It’s your choice. If you choose to opt-out of diet culture, we can help you in your journey.