Many diets out there focus on macronutrients, or the nutrients the body needs in larger amounts to function properly. Think fat, protein, and carbs. While sticking to prescribed macros is one way to help individuals reach their health goals, we believe that there is a better way.
Focusing on just macros means that you aren’t considering the servings of fruits and vegetables that you get in your diet. A diet should be comprehensive and consider all aspects of an individual’s health. How much iron they need, how much sodium they consume, how much added sugar they eat, etc. EatLove is a meal planning tool that provides just that! It allows wellness professionals to create meal plans for their clients that are based on macros but also include additional elements for truly balanced eating habits.
In this post, we will teach you how you can create personalized meal plans for your clients based on unique calorie, macro, and micro targets, and more using EatLove PRO Medical!
Step 1: Enter Your Client into EatLove
The process of creating a personalized meal plan based on macros, micros, and more starts with entering your client into the EatLove system. Our advanced nutrition intelligence will use the information you enter to tailor our nutrition targets to your client. You’ll need to provide basic information about your client, including:
- Birthdate
- Gender at birth
- Height
- Weight
Step 2: Determine Your Client’s Goal
Your client’s goal will help you determine their tailored nutrient profile. Their goal could be to manage their diabetes, lower their cholesterol, increase energy, or just maintain weight. EatLove has over 20 different healthy and lifestyle goals to choose from, and each goal has specific nutrition targets to meet it.
Step 3: Calculate Your Client’s Energy Needs
There are a lot of different ways to calculate your client’s energy needs. EatLove has a built-in calculator for the the following energy needs methods:
- Mifflin
- kcal/kg
- Schofield
- DRI EER
- WHO Equations
You can also set the client’s activity level and weekly weight goal (lose ½ pound each week, maintain weight, etc.) Using this information, our system will calculate the target energy needs in calories for your client. Of course, you can always use your own calculations and override the system’s energy needs recommendation.
Step 4: Review Your Client’s Nutrient Recommendation
At this point, EatLove now has all the information it needs to create a personalized nutrient recommendation for your client. And this is where the magic happens! At the root of EatLove, our nutrition intelligence is built to translate the most recent scientific studies and nutritional recommendations into an actionable nutrient recommendation for your clients. This recommendation will vary depending on the client’s goal and the information you’ve provided to our nutrition intelligence so far.
Most of our nutrient recommendations include:
- Calories
- Protein
- Total fat
- Carbs
- Servings of fruits
- Servings of veggies
- Fiber
But you can also add additional nutrients for your client to track in their diet, or adjust the nutrient amounts further. These nutrient parameters will tell our system what recipes to plan for your client so that their nutrition supports their unique goals.
Step 5: Incorporate Your Client’s Preferences
EatLove allows you to create meal plans that are based around your client’s existing lifestyle. Maybe they don’t like to eat breakfast or they want to start meal planning by focusing on just dinners each week. You can tell our nutrition intelligence what meals to include in the meal plan along with some other preferences to make it even easier to find meals your clients will love!
Here are some of the meal preferences to consider before our system goes to work creating the perfect meal recommendations.
- How many meals to include in a meal plan (1, 3, 5, or 7)
- Cooking skill level
- How long your client can spend cooking each meal
- How many servings of leftovers your client feels comfortable with
- What your client likes to eat at specific mealtimes
- Specific diet (vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, etc.)
- Food avoidances and allergies
Step 6: Customize a Meal Plan
Now, our nutrition system has all the information it needs to craft a meal plan that meets your client’s goals and nutrient requirements. In just seconds, EatLove will generate a meal plan that you can send to your client. This takes out a lot of work on your end because our system will automatically populate a meal plan for you. You don’t have to do any guess work or calculations! But, of course, you can edit the meal plan as needed before recommending it to your client.
Our meal plans take all of the information you’ve entered about your client into consideration. Plus, it also looks at average cost per meal, total number of ingredients, average prep time, and average food waste — all important factors to consider when recommending to a client.
On any meal tile, you can click “Swap” to see additional options. You can switch out meals with other recipes that meet your client’s preferences, meals from restaurants, your own recipe, and more. You can also swap out just side dishes within a recipe, or edit specific ingredients in a recipe, giving you complete control.
Step 7: Send the Meal Plan to Your Client
When you’re happy with the meal plan, you can recommend it to your client by clicking the button “Recommend to [NAME].” You can also include a message to your client to help motivate them. Your client will see the meal plan on their end of EatLove under their Nutrition Prescription.
But the best part about EatLove is that clients can also edit their meal plans — because life changes and so does your food mood! Clients can swap out meals in the recommended plan for other meals that meet their requirements, so you can feel confident that they are able to hit their nutrient targets every day. This flexibility puts your client in the driver’s seat of their nutrition and helps eliminate the excuses, “That dish didn’t sound good” “or “We didn’t have a lot of time, so I couldn’t cook dinner.”
Our adaptability helps clients remain accountable and truly incorporate EatLove into their lives as a nutrition tool, so there won’t be anymore printed meal plan PDFs stuffed away in a kitchen drawer!
And that’s how you can create awesome meal plans for your clients based on macros, micros, and MORE! To see EatLove PRO Medical in action, fill out this demo request form! We would be happy to set up a time to discuss how our nutrition intelligence can meet the needs of your business.