One of the most common objections we hear when someone considers investing in our services is:
“Why would I pay for online coaching when I could hire a personal trainer for about the same amount?”
It’s a reasonable question, and, at face value, it makes sense to think that in person training would be more valuable. As a former personal trainer myself, I can say firsthand that personal training provides tremendous value if your goal is to learn how to exercise, improve their technique, stay accountable to your workouts, or build muscle and strength. But if your primary goal is fat loss, personal training may not be the best investment because more exercise isn't going to adress the root cause of your problem.
Fat loss is primarily a nutrition problem, not an exercise problem.
I didn't fully understand how important this distinction was until I experienced it firsthand.
While working as a personal trainer, I started doing nutrition coaching for The Six Pack Dad Tribe. This gave me the opportunity to work with clients in two very different coaching environments: in-person personal training, where most of my time was spent helping people exercise, and online coaching, where the majority of my time was spent coaching on nutrition and behavior change.
The results were eye-opening.
My online clients at The Six Pack Dad Tribe were often achieving better and faster fat-loss results than my in-person clients.
I remember telling some of my personal trainer coworkers about the progress my online clients were making (consistently losing 1–2 pounds per week) and they literally didn't believe me because seeing that rate of fat loss consistently was relatively rare with our in-person clients.
The difference wasn't that we had discovered some secret formula for fat loss at The Six Pack Dad Tribe; We were simply putting more of our coaching focus on what matters most for fat loss: nutrition.
And that experience completely changed the way I viewed the role of exercise in fat loss.
You've probably heard the saying, “You can't out-exercise a bad diet.”
It's true. You can spend an hour working out and burn a few hundred calories. You can consume those same calories in a matter of minutes. That is why it is more important to focus on how many calories you are consuming rather than burning. Trying to burn off food is an uphill battle.
Another problem with an exercise first approach to fat loss is that exercise make you hungry. You work hard in the gym, burn a few hundred calories, and then find yourself hungrier, fighting more cravings, and potentially eating back the calories you just burned. This is why so many people spin their wheels in the gym for years without making noticable change.
These limitations don't mean exercise isn't beneficial. Exercise still helps you build and maintain muscle, improve your fitness, increase your energy expenditure, and improve your overall health. It still deserves a place in your fat loss journey, but it should be a smaller piece of the pie. I like to tell people that for fat loss exercise is only 20% of the equation, nutrition is the other 80%.
At this point, you might be thinking:
“I know nutrition is important, but what is a nutrition coach going to tell me that I don't already know?”
Most people already know the basics of healthy eating.
They know they should eat more protein, eat more fruits and vegetables, manage their portions, and avoid junk food. But there's a difference between knowing the broad principles of nutrition and knowing exactly what is holding you back.
This is where a nutrition coach comes in. We help you see what you're not seeing.
Someone may be doing 90% of things right, but there are often small details they haven't considered that are quietly holding back their progress. Maybe their portions are slightly larger than they realize. Or perhaps they're underestimating the calories in drinks, sauces, or snacks. Sometimes they're eating too little during the day and overeating at night. And oftentimes, their weekday nutrition is excellent, but their weekends are consistently erasing their progress.
And then there's still the challenge of navigating the chaos of real life:
A nutrition coach helps you identify the specific blind spots that are holding you back, navigate the situations that make nutrition and fat loss difficult, and gives you the accountability and support to consistently execute.
This isn't an argument that personal training is bad or that personal trainers don't provide value. They do. But the best investment depends on the problem you're trying to solve.
If you don't know how to exercise, hire a personal trainer. If you need help learning proper technique, hire a personal trainer. If you need someone physically there to hold you accountable to your workouts, a personal trainer may be exactly what you need. But if you already know how to exercise and your biggest struggle is consistently controlling your nutrition, hire a nutrition coach.
That's ultimately what I learned from working on both sides of the industry. The most valuable coach for you is the one addressing the problem that's actually preventing you from reaching your goals.
If nutrition is what's holding you back, that's exactly what we do at The Six Pack Dad Tribe. We help busy executive dads build sustainable nutrition habits to lose fat and keep it off long term.
Our mission is to be the last fat-loss program you ever do.
If you're ready to stop starting over and build an approach you can actually sustain, book a call with us today: thesixpackdadtribe.com/call
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