Nutrition Coaching Intake Form: What to Ask New Clients

The intake form is the foundation of every plan you write. Ask too little and you'll spend the first weeks fixing a plan that didn't fit. Ask too much and new clients get stuck before they start. Here's what a good nutrition coaching intake form covers, and why each part matters.

Before you start: health screening

Start with a short health questionnaire. Its job is to identify clients you should refer to a doctor or registered dietitian before, or instead of, coaching their nutrition:

• Medical conditions, especially diabetes, heart, kidney or digestive conditions
• Medications and supplements
• Current or past eating disorders
• Pregnancy or breastfeeding
• Recent unexplained weight changes

If anything here is outside your scope, refer out. Our guide on whether personal trainers can give meal plans explains why.

1. Goals

• Main goal: fat loss, muscle gain, performance, health, or something else
• Why it matters to them now
• Timeline, and any event they're working toward
• What success looks like in their own words

The "why" is gold for motivation later.

2. Body data

• Age, sex, height, current weight
• Waist measurement, if they're comfortable sharing it
• Weight history: highest, lowest, and what happened in past diets

You need these to set targets with an equation like Mifflin-St Jeor. See how to calculate macros for clients, or use the client macro calculator.

3. Training and activity

• Type of training, days per week, session length and time of day
• Daily steps or general activity at work
• Plans to change training soon

This decides the activity factor and whether to use different targets on rest days.

4. Daily routine

• Wake-up and bedtime
• Work hours and whether they work shifts
• When they usually eat, and when they're hungriest
• Who they eat with: alone, partner, family, kids

A plan that ignores the client's day won't survive the first week.

5. Food preferences

• Foods they love and eat often
• Foods they dislike or won't eat
• Allergies and intolerances
• Dietary patterns: vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, and so on
• Favorite meals and snacks

6. Practical limits

• Cooking skill: beginner, comfortable, enjoys cooking
• Time available for cooking on weekdays and weekends
• Budget for food
• Where they shop, so foods in the plan are foods they can buy
• Eating out: how often, and where

7. Current eating

The single most useful thing you can ask for is a three-day food log: two weekdays and one weekend day, with rough portions. It shows you what "normal" looks like and gives you meals to build on instead of starting from zero.

8. Lifestyle

• Sleep: average hours and quality
• Stress level
• Alcohol: how often and how much
• Water and caffeine intake

9. Preferences for the plan

• Units: grams or ounces
• How many meals a day they'd like
• How much variety they want, or whether they're happy repeating meals
• How they'd like to receive the plan

Keep the form short to fill in

Use multiple choice wherever you can, keep free-text questions for things that need it, and tell clients it takes about ten minutes. Send it before the first call so the call can be about decisions, not data collection.

From intake to plan

With a good intake, the plan almost writes itself: targets from the body data, structure from the routine, meals from the food log and preferences. Our guide on how to create a meal plan for clients takes it from there, and the weekly check-in questions keep it on track.

In SendFit, you add the client with their targets and units once, build their days from your recipe vault, and send the plan as a branded link.