Fit, Fueled, And Busy - a podcast for ambitious women juggling life, family, and fitness
Welcome to Fit, Fueled, and Busy — the podcast for ambitious women who are juggling life, family, and fitness! Each week, your host, Janine from Couture Fitness Coaching shares practical tips, mindset strategies, and real-life hacks to help you feel strong, energized, and confident — even when life gets crazy. Tune in every Wednesday and learn how to stay fit, fueled, and fierce — even on your busiest days.
Fit, Fueled, And Busy - a podcast for ambitious women juggling life, family, and fitness
Episode 68: How to Choose an Online Health Coach with Jen Van Dham
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What should you consider when choosing an online health coach? How do you differentiate between an authentic, knowledgeable coach and a skillfully marketed scam? Coach Allison delves into this topic with Jenn van Dahm, a nutrition coach who shares her insider experience of being recruited by an MLM. She exposes the questionable tactics, lack of training, and one-size-fits-all programs that are alarmingly common in the online coaching landscape.
Jenn also provides insights on sustainable solutions and her own approach to running a nutrition coaching company that operates with integrity and a focus on long-term results. Tune in to learn how to make informed decisions for your health.
Follow Jenn at @jennvandahm on Instagram.
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Hiring an Online Health Coach Considerations
Speaker 1Welcome everyone . Today you've got just me , allison , here , and I'm I'm interviewing a special guest , who I will introduce in just a minute . First , I want to talk about the three ways that you can work with us . You can go to our website , kutuworkfitnesscoachingcom . We have a free course . How it's ? The free course is called the real reason you can't lose weight . You can subscribe to that just from the homepage . We also have our paid do it yourself course . It's called master your metabolism and it's basically us just sharing .
Speaker 1I don't want to call them secrets it's not secret , but kind of . You know , all the secrets are things that we have taught our coaches . So if you know coaching yourself is something that you think you are interested in trying to do , maybe check out that course . And then , finally , we have our high touch one on one coaching program . With that you would be assigned to one of our fitness and nutrition coaches who would be , you know , working with you , really kind of telling you what to do , holding your hand throughout the process , checking in with you regularly , making changes if needed , and then you would also get access to our private client portal , which has lots of educational resources , as well as to group calls each week that we hope .
Speaker 1So . Check out our website . If you have any questions , you can obviously email us as well . All of this is down in the show notes , but you can email us at info at kutuworkfitnesscoachingcom . Okay , so let's get on to the topic at hand . We're going to be talking today about things you need to think about before you hire an online health or nutrition coach , and maybe some possible red flags to be aware of . So I'm going to introduce my guest . Her name is Jen van Dam . Jen , why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health and fitness industry ?
Speaker 2just to start , yes , thank you , allison , and thank you for having me on the show today . I'm excited to be here . And so , yes , my journey kind of started in 2011 . I was a stay at home mom and I ran a popular food blog which was just revealing industry secrets food industry secrets at the time and I started implementing healthier foods into my diet . As I did the more research and eliminating a lot of processed foods , and then fast forward to 2016 . My son began to gain a lot of weight , to the point of obesity , which is very unnatural for our family , and I discovered that the culprit was actually soy products , and during that time , we were also in the middle of moving cross country and I myself , during that busy time , had gained 20 pounds , wasn't following my own program at the time , and so that just kind of became this rabbit trail to dig further into the world of nutrition , and I started searching for solutions and programs specifically for weight loss so that my son and I could get back on track .
Speaker 1Okay , awesome , okay . So let's get into our topic here . I think this is going to be a really interesting and kind of juicy one . So we you know , jen , you and I both understand that this world of online coaching whether that's a health coach or a nutrition coach or a fitness coach or whatever you want to call yourself it's really not regulated . I will say I have seen people have have been that have been sued , maybe for claiming to deliver some sort of service and not following through with their promises on a very large scale . I have seen that in the health and fitness industry , but other than that , it's really just not . It's not really regulated . Essentially , anybody can call themselves a coach and start taking clients and coaching them .
Speaker 1So today we're going to talk about some of the things that you should think about before selecting a health or fitness or nutrition coach , and also maybe some things that could be possible red flag . So I'm looking forward to Jen talking about her experience . She was recruited into the world I'll say the world of MLMs , so she's she's got experience . She was a quote health coach at that time , so we're going to hear about her experience , how she got into that , why she ultimately chose to leave what she was doing and break out on her own . So let's just start from the beginning . Maybe Jen tell us a little bit about how you got recruited to be a health coach and what you were really trying to sell or promote in that role .
Speaker 2Yes , absolutely
Lack of Sustainable Solutions in MLM
Speaker 2so . In my search for the weight loss options for my son and I at the time , I had a friend on social media reach out about a program that she was doing and that had worked for her , and it came in that typical messenger hey girl message . I don't know if you've ever received one . It is a tactic that is used . It just basically is out of nowhere . Somebody you haven't talked to in a really long time will send you a message , and it always starts off with hey girl , just saw that you're posting about yada yada . And then the conversation starts from there as oh , I see you're looking for weight loss and yeah , I am . And so she , in the end , sold me on a program that encompassed daily workouts , portioned meals and protein shakes , and I was told that it would deliver quick results . She had given me pictures before and after pictures of people on her team that have had great success , and I was intrigued by that . And she put me in an online support group on a private social media page . So , right away , accountability , people cheering you on before you even got started and it left a really good feeling at the moment to be a part of something they pushed monthly products that would include protein shakes , supplements , snacks and the message really at that time was you cannot succeed in your weight loss goals without these products . These are here to help you , and being somebody who I was big into the nutrition world , but I wasn't big into how does that translate into weight loss at that time and so I fully bought in and we did see quick results .
Speaker 2We were happy at the time , but a few weeks in , because of the success we had had , I was asked by the person who recruited me to brag about it on social media , which got people friends and family who were following me curious and it got them asking what did you do ? They would see the before and after pictures of my son and I , which were impressive for the amount of time we were doing it , and I would get messages what are you doing ? That looks intriguing . And quickly . After I was recruited then to become a coach myself and start my own support team and it all felt like butterflies and bunnies . I just wow , look at this , I'm growing and I'm going to start a business . And you'd be told you're going to make . You could potentially make thousands or millions of dollars if you do this right and it was very intriguing at the time . And next thing , you know , I find myself sending my own hey girl messages because it worked .
Speaker 2It's interesting because they taught me how to post product vaguely to intrigue others . We would actually have weekly meetings via video and strategize and they encouraged you they meaning the company to always show your best life , but occasionally glimpses of struggle , because you needed to still look real to people . They would teach you how to , when you would do post a picture or a video , how to have your product subtly somewhere within the photo . So if I'm posting a picture that I'm maybe sick that day , okay , there would be a picture of my shake with the company name right next to me and saying but I'm getting my nutrition in and I'm already feeling better .
Speaker 2So everything you did in life tied right back to the products and the company and the company push incentives and how you're going to you would make the next level and then you're making more money and the more people you recruit under you as a coach , not just a consumer the more money you're going to make . And eventually , after about two years , that same friend recruited me over to a different company simply for the fact that that other company had more recurring products for the consumer to buy , which was just going to make us more money , and so it was a better business opportunity .
Speaker 1Or did you feel , oh , this is better . You know , it was better in some other way ?
Speaker 2No , at the time you get so enthralled in the money side of it that it was just a better business opportunity . More product meant more money and you started to lose the focus of what really mattered , which is helping people . So that's kind of where you know how I got recruited into it and what I started selling .
Speaker 1Interesting . How did you label yourself at that time ? Did you tell your friends I'm just a salesperson for this company , or did you say I'm a coach , I'm a health coach , or something like that ?
Speaker 2The companies will have you , for legality reasons , list yourself as independent health coach . Nobody knows what that really means . They just see the word health coach and they trust that you know what you're doing . That's how we would be listed as independent health coach through XYZ company .
Speaker 1Did you receive any training on how to coach people , or was the training more like you were mentioning here's how to sell product . Here's how to post on social media . Was it more of that ?
Speaker 2Right , yes , that's exactly right . There's absolutely no training when it comes to health or nutrition . The training you got was you have a client , these are the products you're going to push onto them . If those products don't work , here's plan B , and if that doesn't work , here's plan C . But you never really got in depth about what is nutrition and what is health look like for the client .
Speaker 1What methods did you use to coach people ?
Speaker 2The methods we would use is having the support group . Really it was a hands-off . You would put them in a support group on a social media page which had other customers of yours and if you didn't have enough customers , you would join your group with your recruiter to make it look like you had more customers . Then it was really them talking to each other and you just posting motivational things to keep them going . Who got their workout in today and who had their shake today ? Really , it was just rallying more than it was educating . You would have a few where maybe they didn't like the process and they would drop out very quickly and you just moved on to the next customer . It was just that simple .
Speaker 1When did you start to feel like maybe I'm not really helping people and maybe this isn't for me ? When did you start to get the bad feeling ? I guess ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I would say . When I started to feel more excited about the pay check or at the time , they'd give you a card . They would put money on what looked like a credit card , essentially , that you could use as cash . It wasn't even about getting free product . At that point , I was making money . When I started to feel like I was posting my life in a manner that didn't really represent who I was , it was all for show , it was all to get likes and to intrigue people to join what I was doing . It was in those moments I started to take a step back and felt like I can't even be me anymore , because all everybody knows right now is this alternative person who has everything put together just perfectly with the boat .
Speaker 1Something I find interesting about a lot of these programs is that they just assume that everybody needs the same thing in order to get fit and healthy . Most of our clients they are not the type who are just overeating and sitting on the couch all day . They have tried lots and lots of different things . They maybe have been eating super low calorie for sometimes years or decades . They need something really different than the person who truly is overeating . That's just a side note . These programs assume everybody needs the same thing and that's really not the case . People often need really different things in order to lose weight or get healthier . Just a side note . Let's talk about now why you decided to leave what you were doing . When did you start to feel like this wasn't the right thing for you ?
Speaker 2Yes . So towards the tail end of that journey I started to realize a handful of things the company I was with at the time , the MLM company . They had convinced us that without their products , without pushing those products onto clients , that success was not sustainable . And I realized we weren't giving the clients the necessary tools to actually succeed on their own . And I think back to one company that had my clients as part of the program Cleanz for two days and that Cleanz was basically a starvation mode . It was you could only consume broth and a really dry wafer if you got really hungry . And it was two days of this and it was at that moment I felt like okay , this isn't feeling right , you can't sustain that , that is not long term . And they had convinced us that that was good for the body .
Speaker 2And now , knowing what I know through actual nutrition , looking back , I guess they know that was not
Ethical Issues in Health Coaching
Speaker 2good for the body . And I noticed that the coaches , the recruiters above me and even myself , we had become more interested in recruiting people and pushing monthly product purchase than actually creating long-lasting healthy habits . And the connections to the clients had started to feel fake , they had started to feel calculated and it got to the point , towards the end , where I flat out felt unethical and deceitful . The person I had transformed into was not the person I actually am or was , and so I started to think through . There's got to be a better way . This is not the way to make money and this is not the way to reach those dreams that they promise you , and that's essentially what got me to leave the industry .
Speaker 1Yeah . So obviously you're doing something very different and I would say much , much better now , but what's the biggest differences that you see between your experiences a quote , health coach then with what you are doing now ?
Speaker 2Yeah , great question . So the term health or nutrition coach these days is used very , very loosely . Essentially it's just customers who liked their results and recruited others to purchase the same thing because it happened to work for them . And that recruitment just keeps trickling down the system and no one in the process actually has true nutritional education . And you'll see them often listed as independent health coach and they've gotten tricky lately , they'll even list it now as independent certified health coach . I would always ask , if you see that word certified again , that that term is used loosely as well ask where did you get certified ? If it's not an academy , an association , a reputable institution other than the MLM company themselves , they are not actually a certified health or nutrition coach . And so I had pursued and I became a legit certified nutrition coach through the National Academy of Sports Medicine , which is a reputable academy , and I'm in the process of furthering education through the International Sports Science Association . And as I go through that actual education it's been eye opening of how much I didn't actually know when I thought I was a health coach and it pains me the risks I was unknowingly putting clients in back then by not being properly educated . That's scary Now that I look back , the red flags .
Speaker 2For me , looking back at that , was the company never had us ask deep medical questions . You know , I think through what if I had put somebody who was who had diabetes in this cleanse for two days because I was never told to ask these questions ? That could have been detrimental , deadly to their health it could have . Or what if somebody had major food allergies ? And then I even think back to I put my 14 year old son on one of these programs and then I think back to what if it's a teen , you know a teen girl who's on this and that's the way she's learning nutrition and later forms and eating disorder because of it ? So there's just so many things that could have happened and luckily did not underneath me . But it's not a one size fits all plan . It needs to be personalized to each , to each individual need , and you know , at the end I had just done what my recruiter said , who also had no education . Those are the biggest differences I see right now between being an independent coach and a certified coach .
Speaker 1Why do you feel like these programs don't work long term ?
Speaker 2They don't work long term because they just they didn't give us the tools needed outside of their products for long term results . It's essentially it's a greedy system set up to manipulate consumers . If we're just going to put it out there candidly , they're quick fixes only . Most clients who stopped the program or the products , not only did they gain their weight back , but they gained even more back than what they had come to me with .
Speaker 1If you listen to our press very linked at time , you should understand why that happens listeners , Absolutely Now .
Speaker 2Absolutely Nine times out of 10 , the promises made to those clients ended in failure . Either they just couldn't afford the products anymore or they just couldn't stick to the program because it just wasn't a sustainable program . Essentially , they end up jumping over to another program , which happens all the time , just hoping for different results , but at the end of the day it's really just the same platform . I think that that creates an endless and frustrating cycle for individuals looking for weight loss out there . With that , I had started my own nutrition coaching company called the Nurse Misfit . The difference is we coach rebels who are tired of chasing those health beds . We don't do pills , protein shakes , no costly meal plans . Our goal is to cultivate sustainable , healthy eating habits and or weight loss using real food right from the grocery store .
Speaker 2On our website we do provide a free resource hub also to educate others , letting them know those industry secrets . They shouldn't be a secret , Right ? They should be common knowledge so people can make informed decisions . We have a resource hub with articles and videos just to educate . The goal really for the Nurse Misfit is to educate you and then you no longer need me . It's probably a really poor business model , but it's ethical and it feels good to coach people up and away . Where I can educate them , they can have sustainable results and no longer need me , unless you have that question here and there . But oddly enough , most of my clients actually come from MLM programs . Oh , that's been . My biggest client has been that . That's where we're at now and what I'm doing now .
Speaker 1Yeah , what you're doing now . I'm sure it feels good and that is what is actually helping people , like you were saying . I want to jump in with some of my thoughts on things you should look for . If you do want to hire a health coach or a nutrition coach or some sort of coach to help you with your health and fitness journey , definitely you want to look for something that shows that it can give you some long-term results . You are mentioning a lot of people who maybe failed at one company . They would move to another .
Speaker 1Chasing those quick fixes is a recipe for disaster and , honestly , doing a number on your body too . Look for clients who have gotten very long-term results that they have been able to sustain for years not weeks , but years . I think that is something to look for when you're looking for a coach Obviously this should be very clear now but not somebody who's pushing some sort of quick fix , that cleanse you mentioned . Clearly , if you don't really eat for two days , you're probably going to lose , honestly , a lot of what is just going to be water weight , just glycogen that you're going to gain back when you start inevitably eating again because you're going to be starving . Obviously , avoiding things that promote some sort of quick fix . I think , like you were saying , a big red flag for me is when somebody is trying to push a proprietary product or tell you that this is the only protein powder that's going to help you with your goals . That is not true . They are trying to push some specific product and saying that's the product that's going to help you get these results . Huge red flag for me . They probably do not have your best interest in mind . They probably have sales . They probably have dollar signs in their eyes , not your best interest , just definitely seeing lots of testimonials Obviously , I already mentioned this from clients who have been with the program for a while .
Speaker 1Jen , you talked about this too . Look for a program that's going to educate you so that you don't have to rely on it forever . You should be able to come in , stick around for as long as you need in order to get the support and the education that you need . Eventually move on and be able to do it all on your own . Incorporate the healthy habits that you learn into your lifestyle and figure out what that looks like for you . Not something that's you know . Here's this exact meal plan , and if you're not eating exactly what I tell you you're not following the program , right ? That's not sustainable . Also , you know , the coaches should be able to . They should be walking the walk , they should be living the lifestyle that they're promoting .
Speaker 1I mean , for me , I would want obviously want to coach that looks fit , but also not somebody who is fit because maybe they're working out two hours a day and eating chicken , broccoli and rice or something like that for all of their meals .
Speaker 1I want to see somebody who is fit but also has a social life , who is traveling , who's going to parties , who's , you know , who has figured out how to incorporate a healthy lifestyle into their life and his living life , and not just , you know , purely circling their life around fitness and nutrition and that's all .
Speaker 1And then also , I think they should be able to show you and you know that there is an end goal that you're going to be able to live this lifestyle all on your own and you know , not have to rely on on your coach at some point to tell you exactly what to do . And then , finally , I would say just , you know , follow , follow people for a while , you know , if you're interested in a coach , just follow them on social media , listen to their podcast . If they have one , check out their website , just see what they're all about and just kind of hang around for a while . Don't make a super quick decision on a first impression . Just kind of get to know what they're all about first . I would say before you make a decision to work with somebody , do you have anything to add to that ?
Speaker 2You know , you nailed it Do your homework . Do your homework before somebody Coat recruiters like to jump on vulnerable people who are desperate for instant gratification , and most people who are looking for weight loss fall in that category . They want the results , they want it quick and they want to do as little work as possible . Unfortunately , that's just the culture we live in . So , yes , you nailed it Doing your homework and really digging into who is this coach and do they have qualifications outside of their company ? And are they trying to push products on me just to make a dollar off me ? So that is key and , like you said , making it a true lifestyle change . Big fixes are just going to get you in that hamster wheel Very hard to get out of . Really making proper lifestyle changes through qualified , certified coaches yeah , you nailed that .
Speaker 1Awesome , okay , well , hopefully this has given you all some things to think about if you are considering working with a health or fitness or nutrition coach . Jen , let's wrap up with where can people find you if they want to learn more about you ?
Speaker 2Yeah , absolutely so . We are on nourishedmisfitcom and we label ourselves as nutrition for rebels , and I think that comes just from my past of being rebellious , of fighting the health fads and really getting back to proper nutrition and proper methods to live a sustainable , healthy life .
Speaker 1All right , Awesome . Well , thank you so much for being on . Your story was very interesting . Have a great day everyone . All right ?
Speaker 2Thank you , Alison .