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
Who do we serve in an intuitive eating business
First Step to start an intuitive eating business
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
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 Undiet Your Coaching 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 Non-Diet Coaching Certification 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 Coaching Certification Program
The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification 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.
Ready to get started building an Intuitive Eating Business?
You can access all of our services on our work with us page. We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve :
Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.
Good Money Business Mastermind A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it!
Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!
What is the business of intuitive eating?
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.
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.
An intuitive eating business is based on self-compassion, trust, respect of the individual innate body wisdom, and ability to heal themselves.
Being an Intuitive Eating Coach
An intuitive eating coach is a health professional who guides clients/patients in their recovery from Diet Culture.
As an intuitive eating coach, you are healing your client/ or patient… they heal themselves.
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.
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.
You help 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.
Your goal is to coach your clients in building confidence in their own eating cues to be their own internal nutritionist.
Helping them understand that all food is good.
Empowering your clients, give themselves permission to eat.
You help them learn to process their emotions without food.
What is the outcome of intuitive eating coaching?
You help them detach from being their bodies and their appearance.
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.
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.
What is Serving versus 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.
The opposite of serving is the hard sell, aggressive to close mentality that comes across as pushy and self- focused.
Serving is based on love. Selling is based on fear. Serving leads to selling without selling.
What is the 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.
What is a 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.