Can Personal Trainers Write Meal Plans For Clients?

Can personal trainers write meal plans? It’s without question one of the most misunderstood areas of the profession. With so much ambiguity and contradictory information online, this article explains what nutrition advice, support, and guidance personal trainers can – and should – be offering to their clients without stepping outside of their scope of practice.

So, Can Personal Trainers Write Meal Plans?

The short answer is no – but there are a number of nuances – and it is no secret that the majority of personal trainers do provide meal plans for their clients one way or another.

Personal trainers and nutrition coaches are only permitted to offer nutritional advice and recommendations to help their clients achieve health and wellbeing goals, based on the remit of their qualifications and the professional standards.

This advice must always align with government healthy eating guidelines and/or other evidence-based recommendations. We will visit these guidelines shortly.

Why Can’t Personal Trainers Write Meal Plans?

Personal trainers cannot provide meal plans to their clients because they are deemed too prescriptive and may inadvertently cause harm or distress if followed to the letter.

Providing a meal plan can also increase the risk of nutrient deficiencies – particularly if the plan is overly restrictive and lacks a balance of essential macro and micronutrients.

Personal trainers are only permitted to provide dietary guidance and advice to clients who are apparently healthy. Under no circumstances should personal trainers provide any nutrition advice to clients who have specialist needs or as a means of managing a medical condition for example diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol.

Only Registered Dietitians or appropriately qualified Registered Nutritionists can prescribe meal plans. For anyone who is unsure; we explain the difference between dietitians and nutritionists here.

What Nutritional Support Can Personal Trainers Provide?

Personal trainers should only offer advice that aligns with the UK government guidelines and/or other evidence-based guidance. These guidelines are clearly stated in CIMSPA’s Professional Standards for Personal Training.

This in itself is a broad statement that is open to misinterpretation and perhaps just one of the reasons why there is so much confusion throughout the fitness industry as far as nutrition advice is concerned. The full knowledge, understanding, and skills for nutrition and personal training are provided below (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The Standards do not officially state personal trainers cannot provide meal plans, but equally, they do not say they can. Furthermore, the CIMSPA Standards do consistently state that the advice personal trainers provide should educate and inform their client about healthy eating based upon evidence-based guidance.

So, what nutrition advice can personal trainers provide? Unfortunately, the answer is – it depends. There is no definitive list of tasks that trainers must adhere to. In fact, the only guidance from CIMSPA is illustrated in Figure 1 above.

The context of the nutrition advice provided here is important, because offering advice to a client for weight loss will look very different to a client that is training for strength, or another client who wants to run a marathon.

This is where trainers need to deviate from the general government guidelines for healthy eating (The Eatwell Guide), and think about incorporating more evidence-based guidelines from the scientific community (e.g., ACSM, NSCA, UKSCA, NASM, ACE, and others).

Without getting too specific, some of the duties that personal trainers, and those who call themselves nutrition coaches, might provide, include, but are not limited to:

• Calculating approximate caloric targets & deficits
• Providing macronutrient targets
• Educating clients on foods that support daily fibre targets
• Providing meal options, ideas, or inspiration
• Challenging nutrition myths and misconceptions
• Sharing recipes and meal prep ideas
• Providing daily fluid targets
• Supporting behaviour change support with dietary habits
• Giving objective information (not recommendations) on supplements

The Problem With Government Guidelines

The government guidelines for healthy eating are developed for the general population and typically unsuitable for those who have ambitions of hitting certain goals. This is where the lines start to blur for personal trainers in terms of what advice and support they can provide…

Consider a female office worker who doesn’t exercise and is largely sedentary. Her daily caloric requirements might sit at around 1,800 calories to maintain bodyweight. If she followed the government guidance of 2,000 calories per day, she would create a 1,400-calorie surplus per week. This equates to a monthly weight gain of approximately 1.7lbs weight/fat every month. That’s around 20.7lbs or 9kg per year. Clearly, people are not always so literal, but giving general guidance that isn’t individualised can result in cases similar to this – and worse.

Another example could be a young male who regularly performs high-intensity strength training. According to National Strength and Conditioning (NSCA), physically active men and athletes should aim for 1.5-2.0g of protein per kg of bodyweight. For an 85kg male, this equates to around 128-170g of protein per day (~512-680 kcals). The government guidelines recommend around 55g of protein per kg of bodyweight, which would leave the client well short of their actual needs, compromising the results that he would get from his training and increasing the future risk of injury.

Both of these examples illustrate why personal trainers need to be able to offer tailored nutritional advice – even if they are not writing bespoke meal plans. Given that clients have very specific goals, it’s clearly not realistic nor appropriate to limit the advice they provide exclusively to the Eatwell Guide.

What Does the Association For Nutrition Say?

CIMSPA and the Association for Nutrition (AfN) have a reciprocal relationship where nutrition courses and regulated qualifications are concerned. CIMSPA openly state that any regulated nutrition qualifications or CPD nutrition courses should be endorsed by the AfN as they are best placed to quality assure these products.

In an attempt to provide further clarity, we reached out to the AfN to get their position statement:

“If a personal trainer is providing clients with a couple of healthy meal suggestions, that typically falls under general healthy eating advice and can be provided by individuals qualified in nutrition below degree level. However, the provision of ‘meal plans’ tends to be classed as providing bespoke, prescriptive advice.

We would therefore advise that an individual only seeks this level of prescriptive support from a Registered Associate Nutritionist, Registered Nutritionist or Registered Dietitian, who will all have a minimum of an honours-level degree in nutrition.”

What Is The Difference Between Advising And Prescribing?

Advice is broadly defined as providing ‘guidance and recommendations about future behaviours.’ So, a personal trainer could outline a plan to demonstrate what a typical week ‘might’ look like by way of an illustration. As long as the client was very clear that the meal plan was just an example, this would sit within a trainer’s scope of practice.

Clients should be given sufficient objective, evidence-based information to make sure they can make their own informed decisions on nutrition. But it is no secret that giving ‘evidence-based information’ can be time-consuming and inconvenient. It’s often the reason why so many clients ask their personal trainer to create meal plans for them, even though doing so falls outside of the trainer’s professional scope.

Prescription is defined as ‘a recommendation that is authoritatively presented.’ Most personal trainers are considered as figures of authority by their clients, so it stands to reason that they are going to ask for more tailored support – for example meal plans. Personal trainers therefore need to give due care and consideration to how they present their advice to make sure it is not perceived by their clients as a prescription.

The distinction between advice and prescription is very subtle and largely relies on the language that is used. So, when offering nutritional advice to clients, it is good practice to illustrate that it is merely a suggestion.

Summary

Personal trainers are only permitted to advise, recommend, and educate their clients to improve the quality of their eating practices. Clients should be given the freedom to make their own informed decisions and feel comfortable to deviate from this advice without judgement or coercion.

If trainers are going to provide meal plans, they must not be prescriptive and should only be used for illustrative purposes. Clients must understand that these meal plans are examples of what a typical day or week ‘might’ look like.

It is also worth remembering that certain groups of clients will require specialist advice, for example those with food intolerances, allergies, deficiencies, or signs of disordered eating. These clients must only be supported by appropriately qualified dietitians and nutritionists, and as such, should be referred by personal trainers.

Author

Lee Cain

Writer, Tutor and Experienced Fitness Professional

Lee has over 20 years’ experience in the health and fitness industry and has performed multiple roles, including physical training instructor, strength and conditioning coach, lecturer, writer, tutor, assessor and verifier for vocational qualifications. He has a passion for all things exercise, with his key specialisms being strength and performance-based training.