Well, hello, health coaches.

Welcome back to Health Coach Radio.

Today, I want to dive into something that came across my earbuds recently that really stuck with me.

I'm sure like a lot of you, I devour content.

I can't remember a time when I didn't listen to a podcast while doing everything.

The mundane things we have to do, the putting away the laundry, the weeding, the garden, the blow drying, the hair.

I feel like I'm listening to podcasts constantly.

Part of me worries about that constant exposure to content, but also I feel like I can justify it because I'm learning.

Hi, I'm Erin Power.

I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and mentor and your host of Health Coach Radio.

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So in this particular case, I was listening to Peter Atiyah, one of my favorite physicians to learn from.

And I've even upgraded my membership to his paywalled podcast.

And it was his Ask Me Anything AMA episode number 75 that came out in early September of 2025.

And he outlined what he considers to be the five non-negotiables of any diet.

He called them the five pillars of sustainability.

And I thought to myself, this is perfect coach language.

Because as you and I both know, clients don't show up asking for sustainability.

They show up asking for speed and results.

They want keto to melt 30 pounds by Christmas or a plant-based diet to heal all their issues or intermittent fasting to undo decades of diet chaos.

Well, our job as coaches is not to argue the diet label.

It's to help our clients understand whether their chosen approach, whatever it is, can actually stand the test of time.

And so I think that's pretty cool because that's where this five pillar framework gives us a way to think through this.

If you do know Peter Attia's perspective, he doesn't like talking about diets because the labels of it all put him into these kind of difficult conversations with these warring factions and very sort of religious dogmatic beliefs, food religion is kind of a thing.

But it doesn't really work in the realm of a client-led coaching relationship.

So even those of us who do subscribe ourselves to a personal diet approach, we still must have sort of a broader view when we think about sustainable eating patterns for the individuals we're working with.

So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through the five pillars and explain why they matter, show you where clients typically get stuck and then share how to use this framework in your sessions to empower discovery around diets instead of debate.

So let's start here.

Clients almost always show up with diet baggage.

Now you all know I do weight loss, but I think this is true for any type of food related change you like to make with clients.

If you're working on autoimmune symptoms or performance or recovery or pre and postnatal, whatever your area of specialty is, clients have a lot of pre-programmed diet information.

They've tried keto, they've tried Weight Watchers, they've done a Whole30, they did a 75 hard, they've read this, they heard that, they're seeing this on their social feed.

They've lost weight, they've gained it back, and now they want us, their coach, to tell them what's best.

And in some cases, I'm finding my clients are basically coming to me absolutely overwhelmed and bewildered, just tell me what to do because I don't even know anymore.

but if you take the bait and become the best diet referee you can you lose you're either going to end up defending your favorite diet or you're going to get stuck trying to troubleshoot someone else's diet but either way that's not empowering for the client it's not even client-centered and quite frankly it's exhausting for us as coaches and I don't think it delivers the results the impact that we want to deliver for people.

So instead, imagine being able to say, okay, let's step back.

Any dietary approach we take must satisfy these five pillars.

And if it doesn't, it's not going to work.

It's not going to last.

So let's evaluate your diet through this lens together.

And I think that's powerful.

It puts the ownership right back into the client's lap and it makes you the guide rather than the boss.

Okay, so here are the five pillars.

Pillar number one is energy balance.

Yeah, the science of this is that no matter what the diet label is, if energy intake chronically outpaces output, weight gain happens.

So we gain weight when energy in is higher than energy out.

but if we have a calorie deficit energy deficit we run the risk of like diet burnout especially if that deficit is too extreme so we have to play both halves of this energy balance piece especially when we're working with clients because as a health coach we're working in close personal working relationships with clients we're not just giving them calories and telling them to follow this meal plan.

We're working with them in conversation.

So we have the advantage of nuanced conversation around energy balance.

But the client trap is they already know how to obsess about calories and they're already burnt out about it.

Or they have been trained to ignore energy balance because keto means calories don't matter and hormones matter more.

Okay, so we're following Peter Othia's pillars and he puts energy balance as pillar one.

And I would suggest that the bulk of the research would suggest that as well.

So let's agree to that.

You might have to challenge your own bias.

I've had to do this myself.

I think it's one of the most impactful things a coach can and should do.

Challenge your own biases.

So here's the coach move.

Ask reflective questions.

When you ate this way for a few weeks, what happened to your energy levels?

What happened to your clothes?

What happened to your hunger?

When you have a client working through maybe a change in their energy balance, ask them to contemplate and notice the subjective experience of the energy deficit.

Is the energy deficit too much?

Is it not enough?

Are they seeing results?

Are they feeling close to burnout?

We have to be constantly adjusting this.

But I just want to reiterate because I think people who I know have stopped believing in the energy balance model.

And I think I did too for a period of time.

But I believe in it again now.

And you know, when somebody like Peter Attia really hammers it home for me, I listen, and I'm willing to be flexible on this.

So my perspective, since you asked, nobody did ask, but I do have the microphone.

I work with my clients and get them into a what I call a mild imperceptible energy deficit, we just feel a little less hungry.

So we just eat a little less.

We don't really count it, but the energy deficit is happening because it has to.

So there's lots of ways to get the energy deficit.

You don't have to count calories, but there has to be an energy balance change for a weight loss diet to work.

But wait, there's more because pillar number two is metabolic health.

Because we want a stable blood sugar.

We need a healthy insulin response, like good insulin sensitivity at the cells.

We need good lipid profiles.

Our metabolic health matters.

By the way, this list is not in order of importance.

These are pillars.

They're all equally important.

So just as energy balance is important, so too is metabolic health.

So too is hormones.

And I say this for anybody listening who's a staunch calories in, calories out person.

The metabolic effect of food matters.

The way the body processes and partitions fuel matters.

Is your client metabolically dysregulated?

it would be good to factor in some tactics that can improve metabolic function.

So my perspective is, you know, a generally lower carbohydrate eating pattern for somebody who is maybe mildly insulin resistant, or seems to be symptomatically that way, probably a good play.

Even Dr.

Atiyah himself mentions that in the episode.

I think focusing on sort of a healthy whole foods, but the totality of lifestyle input is really a massive factor here.

So this is really where we get to remind our clients that metabolic health is a bigger picture than just energy balance.

What's your stress like?

What's your sleep like?

How is snacking?

What are you eating at mealtimes?

How does hunger show up?

How does energy show up?

How does appetite and craving show up?

These are all metabolic symptomology, really.

And getting a sense of how your client's metabolic health is, is very useful.

You might get curious around their lab work.

Now, we do have to remain in scope of practice because deciphering blood work is not in the purview of the health coach.

It doesn't matter what the name of your credential is.

If it's got functional in the title, if it's got therapy in the title, you're not functional, you're not a therapist, You're a health coach.

Congratulations.

But you can ask questions around the client's last blood work.

When was the last time you had blood work?

What did your doctor say about it?

The next time you go get your blood tested, would you be open to asking your doctor to check your fasting insulin or your triglycerides?

We're not diagnosing.

We're not encouraging testing, but we're helping the client connect their diet to real measurable health and helping them advocate to get the appropriate biomarkers tested so that their metabolic health can be factored in.

I just really believe in metabolic health.

I just, we have to layer this energy balance piece over a healthy functioning metabolism.

Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart.

I mean, the energy balance is the tactic, but the metabolism is the machinery.

If the machinery doesn't work, the tactic won't work.

So we come together, kumbaya, the calorie people and the hormone people.

It's both.

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The third pillar is protein adequacy and nobody is surprised.

The science of this is without enough protein, we lose the satiety factor of meals, which makes us eat more junky snacks, which is not great for metabolic health or energy balance.

But also, we run the risk of losing lean body mass, which causes that quote unquote slowing down of metabolism.

Now, we do know from the metabolism research that metabolism doesn't slow down, but loss of lean body mass is a loss of a majorly metabolically active tissue.

And we want to preserve that tissue so we retain metabolically robust, just a body that's using fuel really well.

So we need protein for that.

We also need strength training for that.

But most clients are under eating protein, especially women, especially if they've been programmed into like dieting and restriction and little demure female eating patterns like plant based or very dairy yogurt supplement focused.

Like a lot of women and people I know are eating a lot of protein bars and protein powders and not really eating a lot of food.

It just gets tricky.

But my perspective here is, and this is my perspective, and there's differing perspectives, so I will confront my own bias on this as well.

Just let me come full circle here.

I don't like to overwhelm my clients with X number of grams per kilogram.

Every time I hear that math equation in a podcast, my eyes glaze over.

What?

I am Canadian.

We have the metric system here.

But I don't know how many kilograms I weigh or I want to weigh.

I don't know how to multiply grams by kilograms, by pounds, by, I don't want to measure that on a scale.

So what I do with my clients is I ask them to take me through a typical day of eating.

And then we say, can you see an opportunity to put more protein in here?

The extra metaphorical egg on the breakfast plate, could you have a double portion of chicken on your salad?

Just more, just more.

And again, I think this is my bias is getting our clients to connect to the subjective experience eating food and connecting to how their body feels is the gift that keeps on giving.

The objective stuff, the data, so tracking your food, weighing it on a scale, useful as well.

This is me confronting my bias right now in real time because I don't like food tracking and I don't like giving my clients math equations to focus on.

But you might be a health coach who's very data-driven, which is amazing, and your clients would gravitate to you or do you because of your data centrism.

And that's cool.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

But either way, the incremental increase in protein, I think, is the play.

Because for somebody to go from eating inadequate protein to now having to eat so much protein, it is a leap, it is a bridge too far.

So we have the opportunity again, we have the advantage as health coaches of being in a relationship with our clients, we can walk them along the path toward adequate protein intake in tiny increments that feel doable and sustainable so they won't quit.

Adherence is the biggest factor here, which we're going to talk about in a second.

I don't want to spoil the surprise because pillar number four is micronutrient sufficiency.

Oh yeah, it's not just about macros.

Long-term health and like the vibrancy and vitality and the metabolic health we need, it requires vitamins, minerals, phytonutrition, I think fiber, I think hydration, I think all the other stuff inside of food besides just the macronutrients, carbs, fat, and protein.

So one of Peter Atiyah's perspectives, and he did run through a few different diets.

He did another podcast where he ran through a few different diet patterns.

So some restrictive diet patterns might put us at risk for certain gaps in micronutrient sufficiency, like carnivore might be a little low on fiber and vitamin C, vegan might be a little low on B12 or iron.

You know, even people who are eating kind of like clean sort of bodybuilder diets and doing a lot of rice cakes and protein powders are like, are they getting real food?

Are they getting that full food matrix that provides all the micronutrition we need?

So I think we can, we have the opportunity here to depending on what kind of coach you are, because you might be the kind of coach that works with bodybuilding clients.

And then in which case, it's a lot of protein shakes, it's a lot of very measured sort of foods on repeat, that can run the risk of micronutrient insufficiencies.

But again, a bodybuilder on a bodybuilder diet is probably going through phases of like building and cutting.

And there's potentially methods to cycle nutrition on somebody like that.

But for those of us working with just regular people, I think our opportunity is to encourage our clients to eat more real food.

Now, this is my bias, and I'm going to struggle to confront this one with myself because I do feel like something strange is happening in the diet space where it's like people are eating yogurt and cottage cheese and whey protein.

And that's where they're getting most of their protein and food from.

And it's like, well, what about meat?

What about eggs?

What about vegetables and fruit?

What about food?

What about food?

Besides supplements and dairy, what about all the food that we have access to?

So I really love my clients to eat food.

That's one of my personal crusades.

And I know it's like, obviously we eat food, but I'm talking about like meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, fermented things, dairy, breads, starchy tubers, whatever.

Food.

Because food has the full nutrient matrix in it, which includes micronutrition.

So yeah, I mean, The supplements world is a multi-dozens of billions of hundreds of billions of dollars industry.

We can supplement our way to full micronutrition, but also food has it.

Now, our modern food environment can be a little lacking in some micronutrition, totally, but I don't think we skip food and go right to supplements.

That's my bias, and I won't be confronting it today.

I just think everyone does better if they just have a little more real food on their plate.

I know that sounds very old school to say just eat real food, but man, just eat real food, jerf.

It really stands the test of time.

All right, the fifth pillar.

And I think if I had to pick a pillar that was most important, this is the one, this is the most important, adherence.

The best diet is the one that you will do for years.

Because health improvement, sustainable health improvement takes years, it takes forever.

You have to maintain the intervention.

So we have to come up with something that the person can do in the context of their life.

Great news for health coaches, we work with clients in the context of their life.

How lucky are we?

So we can customize the experience for the client.

And we deliver the client to what's known as self efficacy, which is a sense of like self accountability, personal responsibility, I have the tools, knowledge and resources to do this on my own.

And we sort of graduate them in back into their own care, but We've helped them co-create a method that fits into their life, their budget, their food preferences.

It solves the problem they came to solve.

There's got to be a ton of flexibility here.

The client is the co-leader and the co-creator of the plan so that they can adhere to it.

They might not be able to adhere to your version of your plan.

It's your version.

It works for you, but it might not work for him or her or them, right?

So we have to come up with, together with our client, the version of the program they can do consistently for years and years.

So the client trap of this is that clients do believe that they need to have this sort of rigid rules-based paradigm.

Just tell me what to do.

If you tell me what to do, I'll do it.

That's not true.

You will do it for a short period of time.

But here we are.

We are in this coaching relationship because everything you've tried or been told to do before, it didn't stick.

It wasn't sustainable because it wasn't made for you.

So we have to kind of gently explore this with our clients.

Tell me about a time when you sustainably lost weight after somebody told you exactly what to do.

And they'll say, well, I lost 40 pounds 20 years ago.

My personal trainer gave me a meal plan.

Great.

Did you keep it off?

Well, no, I gained it back.

It took, I gained it back like six or seven years later.

Okay, well, it wasn't sustainable.

Why wasn't it sustainable?

What about that wasn't sustainable to you?

We have to remind them that it wasn't sustainable.

And we'll sort of ask them questions like, what about that do you think made it hard to sustain?

They might say, well, I got bored of that meal plan or my lifestyle changed and I couldn't, I just didn't have the time to make the food anymore.

So we have to explore what livable looks like for our client.

So a really interesting discovery type question you might ask to explore this is, okay, like if you and I had to come up with a plan for the next five years, what would that look like?

What components would it have?

And what components must it not have?

Where would it break down?

Like what would break that down for you?

So for a good example, and I use this one all the time because I hear it all the time, is people have great results on keto until they go on vacation because now they're on vacation and there's carbs everywhere, I guess.

And they're like, I don't really know how to coexist with carbs.

I forgot.

So I'm just going to eat all the carbs and gain all the weight back.

And now I don't really feel incentivized to go back to keto.

Something like that.

Like try to find the little weak links in the chain.

And we have to solve for those.

You know, I've said this a million times.

I think one of the biggest roles of the health coach is to identify barriers and solve them with the client.

But the client has to tell you what the barriers are.

You don't get to decide.

So sustainably lives with the plan that the client has told you will work for them.

And they might not know what it is because they've never had success up until now.

That's the unspoken part of this is how does a client who's consistently failed at dieting know what's going to work for them?

Well, we do a lot of trial and error.

We run a lot of experiments.

This is why, again, I love a coaching relationship because it's generally a longer term thing where we're focusing on process, not outcomes.

The process of learning what's going to work for you is a process and we have to just lean into it.

But the outcome is we've created something that will work for you and will be sustainable for life.

Adherence is, to my mind, the most crucial of the five pillars.

So when you encounter a client, contemplate the diet change that they want to make from the perspective of these five pillars.

You can use the pillars as teaching tools in group programs.

You could have that in your curriculum that your clients read, your clients get enrolled in.

You could incorporate them into your intake forms.

You could build a chronology of experiments.

For the next 30 days, let's focus on protein adequacy.

For the next 30 days, let's focus on micronutrients efficiency.

For the next 30 days, we're going to double down on adherence.

And just kind of forget everything else, right?

So you can really reduce overwhelm by narrowing the focus.

So instead of fixing everything, just maybe shore up the weakest pillar.

And so this all dovetails beautifully with self-determination theory, which is one of the models that we use in health coaching.

Autonomy, clients choose their plan.

Competence, they learn the pillars and develop some confidence.

And relatedness, you're walking alongside them, guiding them to understand these pillars and run experiments to test them.

Every diet has to check these five boxes, according to Dr.

Peter Atiyah, who I think is a pretty smart dude.

Energy balance, metabolic health, protein sufficiency, micronutrient sufficiency, and adherence.

No diet is perfect on all five.

None of the pre-packaged diet plans that have gone viral are perfect on all five.

Every client will bring unique sort of call them trade-offs to the relationship, the beautiful opportunity with the health coaches because we're working with the client, we can tackle all five pillars as we co-create the personalized diet program for the client in front of us.

So our job is not to declare winner diets and loser diets.

Our job is to help clients discover where their diet breaks, what pillars are they weakest in, and then shore those up.

And this framework really, first of all, it saves you from diet debates.

It saves you from pigeonholing yourself.

And it positions you as a trusted, neutral guide, somebody who's confronted their biases.

So coaches, I want to leave you with this challenge.

How about in your next client session, introduce the five pillars.

And you can ask your client to rate their current eating approach on each one of the pillars and see what insights bubble up.

You might be amazed at how quickly it shifts the conversation away from which diet should I best or is best or what should I eat toward how do I make this more sustainable for me?

And that's the sweet spot.

That's where coaching lives.

So thanks for tuning in to Health Coach Radio.

If this episode was useful, please share with a fellow coach, tag us on Instagram, and let's help spread this framework around because the more we equip clients to think sustainably, the less we'll all be arguing amongst ourselves about diets on the internet.

So until next time.

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