Meal Planning Software: why use one in your nutrition business

When consulting with clients in the nutrition business, more often than not, they will ask you to provide them with a personalized meal plan. And that's great because it is a way for you to offer them something unique and customized to their preferences.

Creating a practical and easy to apply the meal plan is very important. That is why most professionals opt to first, assess the clients' food diary using nutrition software and make the correct adjustments from that baseline, baring in mind the daily dietary requirements for calories and macronutrients distribution.

To that, most professionals now work with nutrition software with a meal plan builder tool to be more efficient and accurate with their clients' diets.

Why is meal planning software necessary for dietitians and nutritionists?

By offering them a meal plan, you can help them reach their health goals with more guidance.

Personalization is key. And one of the best ways you can offer personalization to your client is by providing a meal plan that fits their nutritional needs, lifestyle and busy life.

The problem is that creating a meal plan for each client and keeping them updated is very time-consuming, and to add to that, clients often struggle to be compliant with recommendations. That is a meal planning tool is an excellent solution to save you time and improve their adherence.

What to consider when searching for meal planning software

First and foremost, before you start creating meal plans for your clients, you need to understand what are their dietary habits and food preferences, lifestyle, nutritional needs, and motivation.

Having a platform that allows you to easily create and update meal plans, nutritional recommendations and recipes is such a plus when you also have to chat with your clients and understand their needs.

It is essential to consider a tool for you to check all the foods available and their nutritional value, such as food composition databases, dietary reference values so you can know if your recommendations are going to be a success with clients;

It is also important to consider if your recommendations will be followed and that you can keep track of your clients' progress and struggles, so offering them a platform, such as a mobile app for them to access their meal plan, give you feedback and ask questions will be your "card up your sleeve".

What features actually matter in this type of software?

There are a lot of options when considering a meal plan.

• Meal plan creator - Creating meal plans can be extremely time-consuming for professionals so having a custom meal plan builder allows you to create and reuse meal plans as well as offering templates for you to work on, is essential;

• Food composition databases - Ensure the software you choose has integrated the latest version of the validated food composition databases by certified entities and for your population;
• Nutritional and dietary assessment - It is essential to know, without taking to much of your time, if the meal plan is compliant with nutritional requirements, make sure the software you choose can provide you DRV/RDA of macro and micronutrients personalized to each client;
• Customisation - For the sake of your business, it is vital that your name, logo, and branding get stuck on your clients head. For that is important that all the information you deliver for them has your "touch" to it;
• Security - Yours and your clients' data is the most valuable information your whole business possess. Thus you must make sure that it's kept safe. Working with a GDPR compliant platform is step one in setting up your business.

What would take your business to the next level

• Mobile app to improve compliance - This feature should be your secret weapon for standing out. Look for software which offers solutions to communicate and keep track of clients' progress;

• Recipe creation tool - Yes, if you want to stand out and retain more clients you need to keep them motivated, a great way to do it offering them brand new recipes to spice up (literally) meal plans;

   

• Templates generator - This will be your superpower as a nutrition professional. Having the ability to create several templates that can be later adapted to each client, with a few clicks will allow you to have time to focus more on them.

To sum up

Having a nutrition software to assist the growth of your nutrition business or private practice is crucial, not only for you as a freelance professional but also for your clients to see the value in your service and pricing.

Nutrium is the most up-to-date nutrition software for professionals with a mobile app to focus on clients' progress

If you haven't tried Nutrium yet, there are no more excuses not to. You can enjoy a 14-day free trial to see if all of these features will benefit your business model.