So why not work with a professional with years of experience coaching hundreds of individuals in sustainable body composition change and athletic development? All framed within Contextual Behavioural Science, where what matters isn’t just how you think, feel, and act, but what each does in context.
Any questions, or want to find out if coaching is right for you?
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Athletes, artists, and dancers will diet…
The question is not whether you will restrict food to try to lower your body fat, but when. What I am most interested in is your how and why.
Individuals motivated to change their body composition typically restrict energy by reducing carbohydrate intake, whilst simultaneously adopting a new training program or rehearsal schedule and increasing their intensity, volume, and frequency. Meal composition, eating patterns, and energy intake are based on the presumed calorie expenditure of training and non-training days, and heavily influenced by trends (e.g., carnivore diet, OMAD) currently circulating on social media, and community anecdotes.
There is little to no awareness of the variable physical and psychological load imposed by restriction, training, and general life (family, relationships, social events, work, travel, global events), existing health conditions, sex-based differences, and the resulting stress induced by the cumulative load relative to their changing physical and mental capacity across the week.
Because the factors influencing body weight beyond energy intake are so widely misunderstood, most will rely on changes in scale weight as their primary measure of success, inevitably driving further unhelpful eating and training patterns when the numbers don’t meet expectations.
Many will struggle emotionally with the disconnect between their efforts and their results, cycling between restriction and overeating, impacting physical health, and exacerbating poor self-image and negative self-evaluation, and increasing anxiety, depression, and self-sabotaging behaviours.
Dieting should not be casual…
Misunderstood and misapplied dietary restriction can lead to serious physical and psychological consequences, particularly in athletes, the highly active, neurodivergent individuals, and those managing high life stress or challenges to their physical and mental health.
Inadequate nutrient and energy intake delays recovery, disrupts sleep, increases injury risk, hinders physiological adaptations to training, impairs concentration, decision-making, and skill development, and exacerbates anxiety and depression.
The combined stress of restrictive eating, intense training, and sports performance can result in hormonal dysregulation, requiring prolonged recovery, substantial reduction or complete cessation of training, sport or practice, and regaining body fat, often much higher than before.
If you want to reduce body fat (commonly mislabelled “losing weight”), consult a dietitian or qualified nutritionist who actively engages with the current research and consensus guidelines for athletes, who understands Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs), and who has experience supporting people one-to-one within your context: dietary choices, sport, life stage, sex, gender identity, neurotype, and history.
Consult a professional first, to help you evaluate your current physical and mental health, athletic and life load, existing eating and nutrition behaviours, and overall capacity for managing energy intake.
Choose someone who offers regular conversation and ongoing adjustment based on your feedback, and importantly, someone you feel comfortable enough to share how you feel physically and emotionally.
A case study in context…
A female climber worked with a dietitian for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs), recovered her menstrual cycle, and gained ~18kg (~40lbs).
Years of undereating and high output led to REDs; the essential recovery brought significant body fat gain. Her social life was impacted, unable to climb her previous grades with friends, dropped 8A to 6A, V8 to V3. Significant anxiety about losing her cycle again, resulting in compulsive eating before bed, and unable to sleep if trying to break the habit. Cycle of physical and mental fatigue, runaway eating, and food restriction.
useful. coaching provides unlimited video calls and messaging: the space to explore the mental, emotional, physical, and behavioural aspects of her situation. My Adaptive Capacity Framework gave her structure: a biopsychosocial model of load, stress, strain, and capacity. Our work defined her nutritional needs across the week, relative to her variable loading of sport and life, and gave her the means to trust her body, reduce her anxiety, and let go of the pre-bed safety behaviour.
30+ hours of video calls, my ECEF loop: education, creativity, exploration, and feedback. Strategies to support training, crag days, and travel. Weight and menstrual cycle tracking. Lessons from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy that included personal recorded audio scripts.
useful. Contextual Behavioural Nutrition expanded her capacity for a demanding and unpredictable athletic life: clarifying her values, building self-efficacy, physical resilience, and psychological flexibility. Better sleep, recovery, performance, a regulated menstrual cycle, a fuller climbing social life, and a DEXA-verified healthy body composition.
What matters, and what gets in the way…
Two key coaching sessions: First, we identify and discuss your values, the words that resonate and represent who you are, and how you want to act in the world (e.g. mine are: curiosity, freedom, kindness, integrity, creativity). These are the signposts by which you determine your choices, and how you live. The next session uses the ACT Matrix and process-based network, to help you notice your internal experiences and automatic responses, who and what matters to you (values), and we map your committed actions that move you towards the life you want.
Diagram: a cross dividing four quadrants, with "self" at the centre. The vertical axis runs from external life (visible behaviour) at the top to inner life (invisible internal) at the bottom. The horizontal axis runs from "away from the life I want" on the left to "towards the life I want" on the right, with a looping arrow beside the centre labelled "hooks and loops". Top left asks: what do I visibly do when I am influenced by my unwanted internal experiences, or when I try to avoid or escape them? Top right asks: what actions am I already taking, and what more could I do in the direction of my values towards what matters to me, and what skills will help? Bottom left asks: what unwanted thoughts, memories, feelings, and physical sensations make it difficult to move towards what matters to me? Bottom right asks: who or what is important to me, what qualities and characteristics do I want to embody, and what are my values?
The core and optional coaching flow…
Diagram: a flow chart of the coaching process. Solid blue boxes are core steps, dashed boxes are optional. It begins with pre-coaching actions (complete profile, book initial call, 3-day food journal), leading to an initial 90-minute video call (discussion of profile and goals, introduction to the AC Framework, education on substrates and signals, initial strategy design, and applying that strategy), then a second 60-minute call (feedback and Q&A, education on supplements, refining the strategy). From there the flow forks: the core route is a 60-minute call on energy management, and the optional route is a 60-minute session on values. Two further optional 60-minute sessions branch off: DISC (CBHypno) and the ACT Matrix. All routes converge on a recurring 30/60-minute call (feedback and Q&A, refining the existing strategy), which is ongoing and can loop back to any optional session. A Strength and Conditioning Program sits alongside and informs that ongoing call.
Process-based, person-centred coaching…
Coaching not consultations… I have held over 3000 hours of one-to-one conversations with more than 440 clients around the world. My philosophy is to be undogmatic in my approach, to understand what you want, to identify your unique needs, and to help you build committed action.
useful. coaching is applied nutrition for sport and body-composition change, grounded in contextual behavioural science, where the change process is functional and contextual: we work with what sports nutrition does for you, in the complex and often unpredictable life you actually have.
Coaching answers your questions about how to program your energy and nutrient intake to maintain your highest performance, drive rapid recovery, lower body fat, and all without rebound eating, cravings, fatigue, and rigid rules. Life is mostly messy; consistency is about being flexible. I want to help you build your psychological flexibility and physical resilience.
Your resources through the process include: a bespoke nutrition mapping and strategy sheet, evolving documentation, a nutrition tracking app, a training calendar and logging platform, and recorded DISC audio scripts.
Coaching is £350 for 6 weeks, providing unlimited video calls and messaging, and can be extended monthly on a flexible-fee basis. The same unlimited support, but you pay what you can afford each month.
Coaching is exploring effective strategies unique to your life in context, and helping you understand more about yourself along the way. That’s useful.
Want to know more? Book a free chat today.
Let’s meet
You can message me directly @useful.coach, or email contact@useful.coach.
Looking forward to meeting you!
Tom Herbert