Suraj is the founder of Peas & Pans, meal planning software for nutrition coaches.
The eight parts of a client meal plan document, from the week at a glance to the swaps and the grocery list, and whether to show the client their macros.
How to turn a client's meal plan into a grocery list they will use: add up the week, convert grams to packs, group by aisle and plan around shelf life.
One example client taken from intake answers to a finished week: Mifflin-St Jeor with the arithmetic, macros in grams, recipes, day checks, a grocery list.
How to turn a daily calorie and macro target into per-meal numbers for three meals and a snack or four meals, with worked tables and the protein research.
A client's weight has stalled. When to adjust their macros, what to change first, how long to wait before you judge it, and the research behind plateaus.
How often to run nutrition coaching check-ins, the schedules two large lifestyle trials used, and why the gap between contacts should never reach a month.
What this blog is for, who writes it, and the first things we will cover: meal planning workflow, protein and calorie targets, client check-ins and food data.
The order of decisions that turns a client's meal plan into one hour of work: the targets, the shape of the day, eight meals, the data, the swaps.
Mifflin-St Jeor from four intake answers, a rate of loss instead of a deficit, and the two weeks of weigh-ins that correct the number you guessed.
Run meal planning for 20 coaching clients in one weekly block: four protein bands, a library of 40 meals, and the swaps that stop the follow-up work.
How much to charge for nutrition coaching, worked out from the hours one client takes, the rate you need to clear, and what belongs inside the package.
The protein target to set for fat loss, muscle gain and maintenance, the position stands and papers each number comes from, and what moves it.
What a recipe link and a label photo really give a nutrition calculator, which numbers the labelling rules already rounded, and what a coach fixes by hand.
Which answers on a nutrition coaching intake form predict adherence, the records test a major trial screened on, and eight questions worth keeping.
What each FoodData Central data type is, which one to trust for a client's plan, and why its calories are calculated from the macros rather than measured.
A client stopped replying. What the dropout research found, the contact schedule the DPP ran, and the three messages to send before closing the file.
Rounding rules, Atwater factors, five USDA data types and user-built entries: four reasons calorie tracking apps disagree, and which number to send a client.