Healthy eating requires knowledge and time–knowledge about what one’s body needs in terms of nutrients and calories, and time to go grocery shopping, and select and prepare nutritious foods. Some people don’t have the time and others won’t make the time. Many are in the dark about what they should be eating or don’t know how to balance their body’s needs with their food preferences. That’s where Jackie Keller comes in. A nutrition and health coach, Keller runs a West Los Angeles-based company called NutriFit that provides gourmet food service and healthy lifestyle education programs. NutriFit’s meal programs are tailored to each client’s goals, nutritional and caloric needs, allergies, likes and dislikes, exercise regimen, family history of disease and lifestyle. The food is prepared and packaged by a 15-person crew in the company’s commercial kitchen, and delivered to a client’s home or office. “Philosophically, we feel that healthy food has to fit into your life; otherwise, it’s not going to make a long-term impact,” says Keller, who founded NutriFit in 1987 with her partner, now husband, Phil Yaney. “It’s well and good to say you’re a ‘diet company’ and you can make people lose weight, but that’s not what it’s about for me. It’s about long-term health.” For Pacific Palisades residents Jackie and Dennis Horlick, NutriFit has become a way of life. Middle-aged foodies, the Horlicks started using the service last May because they wanted to lose weight. ‘I always had that 15 pounds I couldn’t shake,” says Jackie Horlick, who had tried another nutritional program that didn’t work for her. But even before the Horlicks reached their goal weights, which took a few months on the NutriFit program, they started feeling and sleeping better. Horlick believes that what distinguishes NutriFit from similar companies is Keller’s approach and special attention to customizing meal plans. “Whereas a lot of companies claim to customize, eliminating peanut butter if you don’t like it or are allergic, NutriFit is not just about food preferences but about your personal lifestyle and physiology,” Horlick says. NutriFit offers metabolic testing and body-composition analysis in order to gauge an individual’s caloric needs. The company then calculates how many calories the person can consume and still lose weight at a safe, sustainable weight. “There are ways to cut excess calories out and not necessarily eat less volume, but just eat more intelligently and more mindfully,” Keller says. “We try to encourage people to cut out mindless eating, to be aware of what they’re putting in their mouth and try to tune into whether or not they really want to be eating at that moment or if it’s just a reflex reaction to something else that’s going on.” Keller, a native Southern Californian, was “food obsessed” as a teenager and spent the summer after her high school graduation studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. After graduating from USC with a bachelor’s degree in business in 1976, Keller began her career in the hotel and restaurant industry. She worked nine years in major hotels such as the Westin Bonaventure, the Ambassador and several Stouffer properties. Keller’s passion for health and physical fitness led her to spend an increasing amount of recreational time teaching fitness classes (she has a certificate in professional fitness instruction from UCLA Extension). So, when a female pupil approached Keller about teaching her how to cook to lower her cholesterol, Keller took the challenge. “We brought her cholesterol down from over 300 to 160 in a matter of months,” Keller says. “I trained her, cooked for her and cooked with her. We had such tremendous success that it really validated me.” While this case encouraged Keller to start NutriFit, her drive to help people live longer and healthier lives was rooted in personal tragedy–the death of her father from a heart attack at age 47. At the time, Keller was just a freshman in college. “My whole world was shattered,” she recalls. “When I did come to terms with [his death], it led me to do what I do now.” She adds, “If my mom had known what I know now, we probably could have done something about [his heart disease].” Keller encourages all of her clients to meet with her and have metabolic testing done. But she understands that that’s more than what some people want to do, and she can work with basic biometric data such as a person’s height, weight and exercise/activity level. Based on the Horlicks’ test results, Keller created two separate calorie- and portion-controlled meal plans for Jackie and Dennis. Because they are not big breakfast eaters, they chose to order lunch, an afternoon snack and dinner six days a week. NutriFit offers clients 13 weeks of nonrepeating meal plans, available up to seven days a week. The complete meal service includes breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack and dinner (dinner includes salad and dessert). NutriFit uses fresh vegetables and reduced-fat cheeses in its dishes, from portobello mushroom omelettes to rosemary-scented lamb with Moroccan couscous and Mediterranean vegetables. The company asks clients to rate their meals–“Great,” “Good,” “OK,” or “Pass”–and this data is entered into the client profiles so they do not receive a dish they didn’t like a second time. “Some people are really thrilled that they’re trying foods like collard greens,” Keller says. “We also do wonderful desserts. Personally, I feel that desserts are an important part of life. I don’t believe in eliminating entire groups or categories of foods.” That said, Keller adds, “There are a few things that don’t find a place in our kitchen. We avoid transfat. We don’t use real butter or real bacon.” While NutriFit will design meal programs that comply with various diets, such as a Mediterranean, South Beach or Zone diet, Keller will not design an Atkins-based program, which she believes is “fundamentally unhealthy.” Jackie Horlick’s plan includes “lots of pasta” because she’s “a carb person,” she says. Her favorite NutriFit food is the fudgy brownie. The Horlicks take Sundays off from the NutriFit meal plan but have found, when they dine out at restaurants, that “we’re so used to portion control now, that we just can’t eat more even if we think we can.” They also added up their pre-NutriFit grocery bills, take-out and restaurant bills, and discovered that they’re actually spending less on the program. A four-week pre-paid plan ranges from $19.50 per day (for breakfast, lunch and a morning snack) to $39.95 per day (for the complete meal service). In addition to providing the Horlicks with customized meal plans, Keller also put them in contact with a trainer who started them on an exercise program. “We push exercise,” Keller says. “That’s where the biometric data really comes in handy because we find out [how many calories] a person burns and can tell them ‘If you added exercise, here’s what else could be done.’ We have step counters and journals for our clients–simple aids to help people get into the exercise mentality and bring some level of exercise into their life.” Contacts: www.nutrifitonline.com and (800) 341-4190.
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