“If you try to help everyone, people get confused,” says Ingrid Anderson, who cut her teeth as a clinical dietitian, when her job was to help everyone.

But she realized something when she struck out on her own as a nutrition business owner.

“What I found is that if you're truly passionate about a certain type of person or a certain niche, then you'll attract those people because your content will really attract those people in.”

As a Health Business Owner, Prioritizing Health is… Hard!

If you’re a nutritionist or dietitian, you might be nodding your head right now.

Because as someone who runs a business… sometimes it’s too easy to deprioritize your own health.

“Owning a business is so stressful and you tend to put your health on the back burner when you own a business. Then all of a sudden, it's three years later and you're like, holy moly, how do I go back and fix this now?”

What gives?

For Ingrid, this helped her understand what her clients really need — and how simplicity really works best.

But she also remembered what it was like to be an overweight teenager with hypothyroidism… how balance helped her achieve her health goals.

“As a teenager, you want to be thin and pretty, whatever. So you try all the diets. One of the things that caught up with me was really the emotional impact of going from diet to diet to diet and never really getting any results and not feeling good about myself.

Then once I dialed it back and started focusing really on balance, balance in terms of protein, fat, and carbs, macronutrients, and also balance in terms of it's okay to go on a date, and it's okay to drink wine once in a while, and you can fit those in. Actually when you fit those things in, you feel less compulsion to eat more of those things later.”

This idea of balance… of avoiding “deprivation”… is what helps Ingrid understand what her clients need.

“I approach nutrition from a holistic perspective where it's not just about your physical health, but it's about your mental health too. Those two things, especially in terms of weight loss, go  hand-in-hand.”

How To Work Smarter in Your Nutrition Business

For Ingrid, a huge part of staying healthy as a business owner is leveraging the tools at hand and not doing everything the hard way.

“Meal Garden was a absolute life saver for me. I'm not getting paid for saying that, anyone who's listening. Honestly, I was doing everything the hard way. I was doing a meal plan by hand in like a Word document. Then I got to this point, because I was also running the gym at the same time, I was like I need to work smarter and this is not smart.”

“I'm able to adapt the recipes so they fit seamlessly into a balanced meal guide that I've created for each one of my clients.”

And as a dietitian, nutritionist, or personal trainer, Ingrid is able to price her values more for offering more of these services to her clients.

Note to Future Self

“If I could have written a note to my future self, I would have started using Meal Garden a lot faster to save me time. I also would have invested in coaching sooner, because if you're not willing to invest in yourself, why would anybody be willing to invest in you?”

(Psst — using nutrition practice software can save time and help you connect closely with each nutrition client, offering them the personalized nutrition attention they need to get real results. Meal Garden makes it possible to create, curate, and share dietitian-approved recipes, and modify meals and collections based on each client’s unique needs. Why wait? It’s free to join.)

inspiration, Getting Started, growing your business

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