Why I Started Fit_OnMyOwn — and What I'd Tell My Younger Self

I built it because I was tired of the advice I was getting in my own life.

That is the truest one-line answer for why Fit_OnMyOwn exists. Everything else I have written about it for funders, for partners, for the website itself, is some version of that sentence dressed up.

In 2023 I started a small wellness practice on the side of my full-time job. I called it Fit_OnMyOwn because the working title — Cyril does private nutrition consulting in his living room — had no chance.

This is the proper origin story. Why I started it. The early mistakes. What it taught me about teaching nutrition outside a clinic. And what I would tell my younger self about all of it.

Table of Contents

• The Itch I Couldn't Scratch
• The First Six Months
• The Reset
• What It Actually Taught Me
• What I'd Tell A Younger Me
• Why I'm Telling You This

The Itch I Couldn't Scratch

For most of my mid-twenties I did clinical nutrition by day and went to a generic gym in the evenings. The gym had a "nutrition coach" — a wonderful, well-meaning man who had read three influencer accounts and an Australian diet book. The advice was: high protein, no carbs after 6 PM, three litres of water, a tub of imported whey, and a meal plan that involved foods I could not source on a normal salary.

I asked once, gently, what he thought of fortified Kenyan flour as a carb base. He had not heard of it.

I went home and started writing my own meal plans for myself. Then for two friends. Then for four friends. Within a few months I had thirteen people I was advising informally. The conversation kept being the same: clients had been told to eat almonds and quinoa at imported prices when omena and ugali, properly arranged, would have done the same job for a fifth of the budget.

I was helping in private DMs and clinic conversations. The asymmetry was uncomfortable. Friends could ask me. Strangers could not.

So I built a thing.

The First Six Months

The first version of Fit_OnMyOwn was a Google Sheet, a calendar booking link, and a free Friday consultation slot.

It was bad in the way that most first attempts are bad. I undercharged, over-delivered, and burned out within ten weeks. I was doing fifteen unpaid one-hour consultations a week on top of a 50-hour-a-week day job. By month three I was sleeping six hours and eating worse than half my clients.

I made every classic first-business-of-a-clinician mistake.

1. I underpriced.

I charged KSh 1,500 for a one-hour consultation when the going rate was KSh 4,000–6,000. The pricing was anxious — I was scared of charging "too much" for advice I was anxious about giving. The consequence: I attracted clients who weren't ready to do the work, because the price had not asked for any commitment.

2. I tried to be everything.

Weight loss, athletic nutrition, gut health, prenatal, pediatric, chronic disease. The first website listed all of them. None of them well. The clients I helped most were the ones whose problems happened to fall into my professional comfort zone — the rest got generic advice they could have got from anyone.

3. I confused content with marketing.

I wrote long, detailed Instagram posts that nobody read because the reach algorithm punishes density. I had no system for converting a reader to a client. I had no system for the client returning for a second session. I was producing content into a void.

4. I didn't track outcomes.

For the first six months I had no idea whether my clients were getting better. I assumed they were because they thanked me. Looking back at notes, about half got real results. The other half got friendly conversation and some hope.

This is embarrassing to write. It is also useful for any clinician thinking of doing the same thing.

The Reset

In month seven I stopped taking new clients for six weeks and rewrote everything.

The decisions that mattered:

1. Niche.

I decided to focus on three populations: urban Nairobi adults 25–40 with weight or energy concerns, recreational runners and gym-goers, and pregnant or postpartum women. Three. Not seven. The other potential populations got a polite "I'm not the right person for you" and a referral.

2. Pricing that respected the work.

KSh 5,000 for an initial assessment, KSh 3,000 for follow-ups, packages of three sessions for KSh 11,000. The price ratio implied: this is real work, and it costs what real work costs. Ironically, conversion rates went up, not down. People take seriously what they pay seriously for.

3. A real intake process.

A 12-question form before the first session. A 7-day food diary. A baseline measurement set. A follow-up at 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 12 weeks. Outcome tracking on a simple spreadsheet. By month twelve I could tell you with reasonable confidence what percentage of clients who completed the package hit their stated goal. (Spoiler: it is much lower than the influencer accounts claim, and much higher than my anxious early-self would have dared to hope.)

4. Content with a purpose.

I started writing fewer, longer pieces — the spiritual ancestors of articles like the one you are reading now. Each piece existed to do one thing for one type of reader. The reach algorithm cared less. The conversion-to-client rate cared more.

5. A stop time.

I capped client load at twelve active per month. Beyond that, the quality of the work fell off. I learned this the hard way. The waitlist stayed honest about my capacity.

By month fourteen, the practice was sustainable. By month eighteen, it was teaching me things I could not have learned at my day job.

What It Actually Taught Me

Three things, all of them larger than the practice itself.

1. Most nutrition advice fails because of life context, not biology.

The plate I prescribe is rarely the binding constraint. The binding constraints are: traffic that eats two evening hours, a household where the partner doesn't share goals, a job that demands food at 9 PM, financial pressure that makes "buy these eight items" hard, sleep that is two hours short.

A clinical recommendation that ignores these will fail. A clinical recommendation that engages with these often succeeds with surprisingly small adjustments. I learned to take a 30-minute history of life context before discussing food.

2. Behaviour change is mostly about removing decisions.

The biggest single intervention I prescribe in private practice is "cook one thing on Sunday for Tuesday." Not a meal plan. Not a calorie target. One pot of beans, one batch of boiled eggs, one chopped onion in a jar.

This is dull. It also works. It works because Tuesday at 7:30 PM is when willpower fails, and the move is to make Tuesday's choice easy in advance.

3. The work is sustainable when it is small.

I do not aspire to scale Fit_OnMyOwn into a national wellness brand. The math of doing one good piece of work, well, with a small group of people, over years, is a math I can stand. The math of scaling to thousands of clients with brand-extension protocols and a content team is a math I have watched other practitioners disappear into.

This is not anti-growth. It is honest about what I am good at.

What I'd Tell A Younger Me

If the version of me sitting in 2023 with a Google Sheet and a calendar link could read this, I would tell him five things:

1. Charge what the work is worth from day one. The price asks for commitment. Without commitment, the work doesn't take.
2. Pick a niche by month two. Then narrow it again by month six.
3. Track outcomes from session one. You think you'll remember. You won't. The notes are the memory.
4. The day job is not the enemy. It funds the practice, it keeps you calibrated, and the day job will outlast every Instagram trend. Don't quit it for the practice; integrate them.
5. Most of your best client work happens in months 12–24. Don't burn out in months 1–6. Pace.

Why I'm Telling You This

Because I get asked, in DMs, by other young Kenyan nutritionists, more or less every month: how did you start your practice? And the answer is rarely the romantic one. It is the one full of mistakes, resets, and one underpriced six months I would not repeat.

For the broader career picture, see becoming a dietitian in Kenya and why I left clinical work for partnerships.

Fit_OnMyOwn is small. It will probably stay small. The work it lets me do — translating the science into a Kenyan kitchen, one client at a time — is some of the most satisfying work I have ever done.

Sometimes the side practice is the side practice. Sometimes the small thing is the right size. Both are fine.

If you are thinking of starting yours: charge properly, narrow your niche, track outcomes, and pace yourself. The rest will follow.