Coaching Any Diet

• Your first session with a client
• Using *Around the World in 80 Diets*
• Six questions for any diet
• Coaching across faiths and cultures
• Faith and food
• Cultural diets and the nutrition transition
• Common supplement needs by diet
• Safety notes

The entries describe the diets. This closing chapter shows how a coach helps one person eat well within the diet they choose.

Your first session with a client

Every coaching relationship starts the same way: learn the person, agree on one goal, give one first step, and put the plan in writing. Use this model with every client, and for the capstone coaching plan in your Final Assignment.

Before the session: the intake form. Send it ahead; it takes about 15 minutes to fill in.

• Contact and household: age, and who else eats at their table.
• Goals in their own words: what they want to change, and why now.
• Health history: diagnoses, past surgeries, current symptoms (digestion, energy, sleep, mood, skin, pain), pregnancy or breastfeeding.
• Medications and supplements, with amounts. Flag anything that changes how a diet works: insulin, sulfonylureas, SGLT2 inhibitors, blood pressure pills, warfarin, thyroid hormone, acid blockers.
• Eating-disorder history, food allergies and intolerances.
• Recent lab results, if they have them.
• Faith and culture: foods they avoid, and the fasts and holidays they keep.
• A typical day of eating and drinking, and who shops and cooks.
• Budget, time and cooking skills, and what they have tried before.

The first session (about an hour):

1. Welcome and listen (about 10 minutes): their story and their goal, in their own words.
2. Review the intake (about 15 minutes): fill the gaps, and check medications, the red flags (Before the Diets: Whole Food and the Gut: Red flags: when it is not a coaching matter) and the who-should-not lists in the Intermittent Fasting, Ketogenic Diet and Carnivore Diet entries. A red flag means the client sees their doctor before you go further.
3. Look at a real day (about 10 minutes): yesterday's food, through the six questions for any diet.
4. Agree on one goal and one or two first steps (about 15 minutes): small, specific and chosen by the client, such as “eggs for breakfast five days this week.”
5. Close (about 10 minutes): what to track (the food and symptom journal from Coaching the whole-food plate), what to bring next time, and the date of the next session.

After the session: the written plan. Send it within a day, on one page:

Follow-up. Meet every one to two weeks at first. Start each session with the journal: what worked and what didn't. Keep what worked, adjust one thing, and add the next step. Every four to six weeks, look back at the goal and the 1-to-10 scores.

A sample plan: Lisa (the case study below), after her first session.

• Goal: “Energy that lasts past 3 p.m., and lose the 20 pounds I gained.”
• Where we start: no breakfast; three sweetened coffees a day; a packaged lunch; takeout three nights a week; sweet cravings at night. No medications.
• This week's steps: a protein breakfast five mornings (two eggs, or plain yogurt with nuts), and the third sweetened coffee becomes sparkling water.
• Foods to add: eggs, plain yogurt, nuts, and a roast chicken on Sunday for Monday's lunch. To reduce: sweetened coffee and packaged snacks.
• Track: breakfast eaten (yes or no), energy at 3 p.m. and night cravings (1 to 10), every day.
• Safety: nothing found. She holds off on the three-day fast she read about (the Intermittent Fasting entry explains why).
• Next session: in one week, to review the journal and add two home-cooked dinners.

Using *Around the World in 80 Diets*

Around the World in 80 Diets is Arukah's free online reference book. It is public, so you can share it with clients. It covers 80 of the world's most popular diets in eight chapters: faith and tradition; the Americas and the Pacific; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Asia; ancestral and low-carb; plant-based; healing and therapeutic; and weight loss, fasting and fads.

Every entry has the same parts:

• What it is: the rules and where the diet comes from.
• Strengths and Watch out for: the honest case for and against it, including common misunderstandings and nutrient gaps.
• Eating well within it: practical swaps that keep to the diet's own rules.
• Possible supplement needs and Who should be careful.

Use the search box on the contents page to find a diet by name. When a client tells you how they eat, read their entry before your next session.

Six questions for any diet

1. What does it include, and what does it remove? Every diet works partly by what it takes away.
2. What could run short? Removing whole food groups creates predictable gaps: B12 without animal foods, calcium without dairy, fiber without plants, iodine without fish, seaweed or iodized salt.
3. What is the evidence? Is it based on controlled trials (DASH, Mediterranean), long-term observation (Adventists, Blue Zones), tradition, or testimony? All have value; they are not the same.
4. Who is it for, and who should avoid it? Pregnancy, children, older age, medications, kidney disease, diabetes and a history of eating disorders change the answer.
5. Can this person keep it up? Cost, cooking skill, family, culture and faith matter as much as nutrition.
6. What does "healthy" look like within its rules? Almost every diet can be eaten well or badly.

A label is not a promise of health. "Kosher," "halal," "organic," "vegan," "gluten-free," "keto" and "paleo" can all be printed on soda, candy, chips and ultra-processed snacks. A label tells you what rules a food meets, not whether it nourishes. Teach clients to read the ingredients as well as the symbol.

Coaching across faiths and cultures

• Ask, don't assume. Two people of the same faith or culture may eat very differently. Ask which foods they avoid, which they love, which fasts and holidays they keep, and who cooks.
• Never ask a client to break a religious law. Work within it. If a fast or rule may endanger health, the client talks with their own religious leader (rabbi, imam, priest, pastor or granthi). Most faiths exempt the sick, the pregnant and others whose health would be at risk.
• Food is identity and love. Grandmother's recipes, holiday dishes and family meals carry memory and belonging. Offer healthier versions of beloved dishes rather than asking people to give them up.
• Change the everyday, keep the celebrations. Holiday and festival foods are a small part of the year; everyday breakfasts, lunches, drinks and snacks matter more.
• Respect the reasons. People choose diets for faith, ethics, health, culture or budget. Your job is to help them eat well for their reasons, not yours.

Faith and food

The kosher diet (kashrut). Jewish dietary law, rooted in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, permits land animals that chew the cud and have split hooves, fish with fins and scales, and traditionally accepted birds; and forbids pork, shellfish and blood. Observant Jews look for a reliable hechsher (certification) on packaged foods.

• Shechitah, kosher slaughter. A trained shochet or shochetet slaughters a healthy animal with one swift, uninterrupted cut using a chalaf, a long knife kept perfectly sharp and smooth and checked for any nick. The cut severs the windpipe, esophagus and major blood vessels, so blood pressure to the brain falls at once and the animal quickly loses consciousness. Pausing, pressing or tearing makes the meat unfit.
• Inspection and preparation. After slaughter the organs, especially the lungs, are inspected (bedikah); sick or injured animals are treif and not sold as kosher (glatt means smooth lungs, a stricter standard). The blood is removed by soaking and salting, and forbidden fats and the sciatic nerve are removed.
• The benefits, when done properly. With calm handling and a skilled shochet, shechitah is a quick and humane death carried out with reverence and responsibility toward the animal. The inspection excludes sick animals, and the careful draining of blood and the discipline of kashrut encourage mindful eating.
• "Kosher" does not always mean healthy. Kosher soda, candy and deli meats are still soda, candy and deli meats. Koshered meat and kosher deli foods are higher in sodium, pareve desserts often rely on margarine and non-dairy creamers, and Shabbat and holiday tables can be heavy every week. Read the full Kosher Diet entry in Around the World in 80 Diets.

The Maker's Diet. Jordan Rubin's The Maker's Diet is a 40-day plan built on the biblical food laws of Leviticus 11 (clean meats, fish with fins and scales, no pork or shellfish) and on traditional whole foods: grass-fed meat, wild fish, cultured dairy such as goat's-milk kefir, fermented vegetables, sprouted grains, raw honey, vegetables and healthy fats. It adds a weekly partial fast, prayer, rest and emotional health. For clients of faith it is a healthy, whole-food way to follow a biblical diet. Watch for: the cost of specialty foods and the supplements the book promotes (optional; never promises), the strictness of the early phases, and raw dairy safety.

Halal and Ramadan. Islamic law forbids pork, blood, carrion and alcohol, and asks that meat be zabiha, slaughtered with a swift cut while God's name is said, with the blood drained. During Ramadan, healthy adults fast from dawn to sunset, eating suhoor before dawn and iftar after sunset. Coach a gentle iftar (dates and water, then soup, then a balanced plate), a slow suhoor (eggs, oats, beans, yogurt), steady water through the evening, and small sweets. Clients on diabetes or blood pressure medication have their prescriber plan their doses for Ramadan before it begins; pregnant and nursing women may be exempt.

The vegetarian faiths. Many Hindus are lacto-vegetarian; Jains avoid all meat, fish and eggs and often root vegetables and eating after sunset; many Sikhs are vegetarian, and initiated Sikhs never eat ritually slaughtered (kutha) meat; many Buddhists, especially monastics in Mahayana traditions, are vegetarian. Common gaps are vitamin B12, iron, vitamin D, omega-3 and sometimes protein. South Asian diets often lean heavily on refined grains, fried snacks and sweets, and South Asians develop type 2 diabetes at lower body weights, so more dal, vegetables and yogurt and less white rice, fried food and sugar help.

Other faith traditions in the book include the Seventh-day Adventist diet (the Loma Linda Blue Zone), the Daniel Fast, Eastern Orthodox fasting (vegan-style fasting on about half the days of the year), the Rastafarian Ital diet and the Latter-day Saint Word of Wisdom.

Holy fasts and health. Yom Kippur, Ramadan, Lent, Ekadashi and other fasts are acts of faith. People on diabetes or blood pressure medication need their doses planned for the fast, and kidney disease or pregnancy can be reasons for an exemption; most traditions exempt those whose health would be harmed, and their religious leader can say how.

Cultural diets and the nutrition transition

Around the world, traditional diets built on local whole foods (corn, beans and squash in Mexico; rice, fish and vegetables in the Philippines and Japan; rye, cabbage and fermented foods in Russia) have shifted toward white rice and flour, sugar, soft drinks, fried food, processed meat and refined oils. Researchers call this the nutrition transition, and it is followed by rising obesity, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Often the healthiest step is a return toward a person's own traditional food.

The book has 28 cultural entries, from the Andean and Inuit diets to the Ethiopian, Korean and Pacific Islander diets.

Common supplement needs by diet

Before a client adds a supplement, check it against their medications, pregnancy and health conditions. From A to Zinc gives the amounts and lists the cautions.

Safety notes

• Religious law comes first for the client. Never ask a client to break it; when a fast or rule may harm health, refer them to their religious leader, and to their prescriber if medication is involved.
• Holy-day fasts (Yom Kippur, Ramadan, Lent and others): clients on diabetes medication or medications that must be taken with food need their doses planned by the prescriber; kidney disease, pregnancy and an eating disorder can be reasons for an exemption.
• Restrictive diets of every kind (faith-based, cultural or popular) are a caution for children, pregnancy, older adults and anyone with a history of eating disorders.
• Sodium: koshered meat, kosher deli foods, soy and fish sauces, bouillon cubes and salted fish add up for clients with high blood pressure or kidney disease.
• Vegetarian and vegan clients: vitamin B12 deficiency can cause permanent nerve damage; teach clients to order a B12 test, read the result, and supplement.
• Raw dairy, raw meat and raw fish (in some traditional and popular diets) carry a real risk of infection; never for pregnancy, young children, older adults or weakened immunity.
• Unproven "cure" diets (for example, Gerson therapy for cancer) never replace medical care.