The 1,400-kcal Request
A 41-year-old woman has trained with you for five weeks and has lost 9 lb. She is 5 ft 6 in, currently 168 lb, and wants to lose 20 more before her sister's wedding in nine weeks. She asks you to write her a 1,400-kcal meal plan with exact macros because "the apps don't work," and she mentions that she often skips dinner and feels guilty when she eats dessert. She also asks whether she should buy a fat-burner supplement a coworker sells, and offers you a commission if you send clients his way. Her stated goal is to "look good in photos."
1. Which parts of her request fall inside and outside your scope, and how do you respond to each?
Read the worked answer
Outside: an individualized 1,400-kcal prescription with exact macros is medical nutrition therapy in most U.S. jurisdictions - that is dietitian or physician territory. Writing it also creates the appearance of a clinical prescription you are not licensed to make.
Inside: general nutrition education drawn from public guidelines, behavior and habit coaching, reviewing a food log she keeps, and coordinating training with whatever plan a dietitian sets.
Script: "I can't build you a calorie-and-macro plan - that's a dietitian's job, not mine. What I can do: look at your food log with you, work on meal timing around training, keep your strength work productive while you diet, and get you to an RD who will build the plan. I'll train around whatever she gives you."
Then address the target honestly. She has lost 9 lb in five weeks, roughly 1.8 lb/week - already faster than the commonly recommended 0.5–1% of body weight per week. Twenty more pounds in nine weeks is about 2.2 lb/week, over 1% of her current body weight weekly, with a wedding deadline she cannot move. Say that the deadline is the problem, not her effort, and offer a realistic range: roughly 8–12 lb in nine weeks with a plan she can hold after the wedding.
Document what you advised and where you referred.
2. What in this setup raises a red flag beyond scope, and what do you do about it?
Read the worked answer
Possible disordered eating patterns, not a diagnosis. The cluster that matters: skipping dinner, guilt attached to dessert, a hard external deadline, a fast rate of loss, and a goal framed entirely around appearance in photographs. Any one of these is unremarkable; together they are a reason to slow down rather than tighten the screws.
What you do:
- Do not prescribe a stricter diet, do not praise the rapid loss, and do not make the scale the centerpiece of your sessions. Reinforcing restriction in a client with guilt around food is the wrong direction.
- Use a brief validated screen if you are comfortable with it (SCOFF is five questions and easy to administer), or simply ask open questions: "How do you feel about how you're eating?" "What happens when you miss a dinner?"
- Watch for the escalation markers - bingeing, purging, laxative use, compulsive exercise, training through injury to "burn off" food. If any of those appear, stop treating this as a weight-loss case.
- Refer to a physician and an RD with eating-disorder experience, or a therapist if body image is driving the behavior. Make the referral in writing and follow up.
- Shift the training goal to strength and performance for now. It is a legitimate goal, it is measurable, and it does not require her to weigh herself weekly.
What you never do: diagnose an eating disorder, or quietly continue a plan you suspect is harming her because she is hitting her numbers.
3. How do you handle the supplement commission offer, and what do you tell her about the fat-burner?
Read the worked answer
The commission: decline, unambiguously. Taking a fee for routing clients to a supplement seller is a conflict of interest that puts your judgment up for sale, and in some jurisdictions fee-splitting or kickbacks for referrals are restricted or prohibited outright. It also exposes you if a client is harmed. Say it plainly: "I don't take referral fees from anyone, and I don't recommend supplements. If you want to know whether that product is safe for you, ask your physician or pharmacist."
The fat-burner: stay in your lane and still be useful.
- Dietary supplements are not reviewed for safety and efficacy before they reach the market the way drugs are, so "it's on the shelf" carries no assurance.
- Many fat burners are stimulant-heavy - high-dose caffeine and stimulants that raise heart rate and blood pressure - and some ingredients have been pulled from the market for cardiovascular harm. Others interact with medications or worsen anxiety, sleep, and appetite.
- She is already sleeping poorly, hungry, and skipping meals. Adding a stimulant to that stack makes the thing you are actually trying to fix worse.
- Whether a specific product is safe for her is a question for her physician or pharmacist, not you.
Document the conversation, note that she asked and you advised against it, and keep supplement sales out of your business entirely. If your gym sells products, know exactly what is in them and what your liability is.