Dropout to Entrepreneur: How I Started my Online Nutrition Coaching Business

What is The Nourished Path? and who the heck am I?

Hi, I’m Bonnie Campbell, an RD in Seattle WA. I started The Nourished Path in February 2020 (great timing) and we’ve been growing ever since and now are a small team. We help women lose weight without giving up their favorite foods with our Sustainable Macro System, I noticed when talking with women that most of the current methods of weight loss involve eliminating whole food groups. That’s just not a realistic or practical way to approach nutrition long-term.

So with our online nutrition coaching, we provide guidance and accountability to help women lose weight and then keep it off afterward instead of yo-yo dieting! Maintenance is a lost art, and one that is often ignored. But its the most important step out there. We believe that, in a world that’s leaning more and more into AI that personal connection is vital to providing the accountability and support that our clients need to succeed in weight loss!

How did I get started?

Like any journey worth taking, my path to becoming an RD and female business owner has been a long and winding one full of mistakes that turned into opportunities. I was the chubby kid growing up, especially from 12-16 years old. I remember going to Curves with my mom, of a classmate saying “how could you be cold with that blubber on you?”. I don’t remember where, but I learned a bit about nutrition and made some slight tweaks to my diet like having greek yogurt instead of 2 grilled cheese sandwiches for a snack after school, not adding cheese to my broccoli at dinner, etc and lost some weight. That was really eye opening for me, that small changes could really add up! I also was riding my bike a lot to friends houses before I was able to drive, which accidentally added more exercise into my life.

So my interest was already peaked, and in college I learned more about nutrition joining My Fitness Pal message boards and groups. My bachelors was in math education, but when I got to the classroom I realized that teaching was NOT for me. I was basically forced to dropout of student teaching. That was a really hard lesson, absolutely devastating at the time. I cried for days at my failure.

I still wanted to help others learn, to teach and mentor and see that “aha” moment when something clicked! That’s when I decided to lean into nutrition, and moved across the country to Seattle to get my masters in nutrition and dietetics from Bastyr. That sounds easy, but I’d never even visited Seattle, and here I was a girl from the burbs of Chicago packing up all her belongings in her car and driving across the country to start a new life where I knew no one.

Why weight loss nutrition as a focus?

After my masters and residency, I worked as an inpatient Registered Dietitian (RD) in a hospital, but I felt like I was putting a bandaid on someone’s health issues from the hospital. I realized if I could have worked with my patients 30 years ago, we could have prevented their issues at the beginning and helped them live longer, healthier, and happier lives!

But its hard to convince people to DO that before they have any health issues. What people want is weight loss, to look great in their clothes and naked, to have energy, to feel confident in their skin. All AMAZING things too, and also knowing that helping someone lose 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60+ lbs now will make that heart attack at 62 never happen, or happen at 82 instead.

Many RDs think that weight loss is “beneath” their expertise. In my opinion, that’s dead wrong. There is so much bad advice out there coming from unqualified people, that the online weight loss coaching space is EXACTLY where we as highly educated people need to be!

Why start The Nourished Path?

My first job in the industry was at Stronger U Nutrition. I was the second RD on the team that was growing rapidly (it grew from around 15 coaches when I started to over 80 when I left). After 3 years, I really wanted to do things my own way, put my own spin on nutrition coaching and have a smaller team.

I also always had that rebel streak in me, that desire to put my own twist on things and also to learn new skills. And starting and growing a business has given me the chance to do a LOT of that! By starting The Nourished Path, I was able to give more personal and deeper service to create the most change. I have loved mentoring my team and watching them grow as people and as nutrition coaches themselves!

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Determining what the best things to focus on are and not being tempted by all the shiny objects out there. It's so easy to spend a ton of time on a project that won't move the needle forward. It's usually the simple, basic stuff that makes the difference.

This actually is really helpful for creating nutrition and fitness content that’s actually approachable and realistic too - because I always think “what’s good enough for right now? does this really need to be perfect?” and I apply that to my life and my business. Because often I’ll notice business owners pour their life blood into a project no one even is interested, instead of trying a few things and seeing what sticks. Same thing with nutrition, you don’t need to make the “perfect plan” from the beginning, make something that’ll work and then see if you really need to make it better or not.

If you want to hear more about my story, you can check out this podcast from Manifesting Clarity or you can check out more about our whole team on our “about us” page here!

And if you’d like to see how I put all this into practice, grab my free (Actual) Quick & Easy cookbook!