Sports nutrition just exploded past $50 billion globally. People want someone real who can explain macros without turning it into homework. Your watch measures sweat now. People hitting the gym twice weekly call themselves athletes. Everyone’s hunting for honesty but finding it is another story. The pandemic turned casual exercisers into obsessive trackers and those habits stuck harder than anyone predicted.
Here’s what actually works: creators who break down research without boring you to tears, who show their real meals instead of staged Instagram perfection, and who’ll straight-up admit when scientists haven’t figured something out yet. We’ve all seen enough videos.
Low-Investment Ways to Learn Sports Nutrition
MacroFactor App
Jeff Nippard owns MacroFactor with Greg Nuckols and three partners. They started nutrition tracking in 2021, dropped workout features in January 2026. What separates this from every MyFitnessPal clone? It learns YOUR metabolism instead of guessing based on someone else’s numbers.
Over 200,000 people pay for it now. Google handed it their Best of 2024 Award. Free trial doesn’t ask for your credit card. Nippard doesn’t just spam before-and-after photos with zero explanation. He shows you the actual math. His Body Recomposition guide that is 250+ pages co-written with researcher Chris Barakat, teaches simultaneous muscle gain and fat loss. The industry claimed that was impossible for decades. He breaks down why studies keep landing on 0.8 grams of protein per pound, how carb needs shift based on training volume, when fat actually matters for hormones. His videos show real meals with actual numbers during cuts and bulks.
Will Tennyson
Will Tennyson tricks 4.5 million YouTube subscribers into learning nutrition by disguising it as entertainment. They think they’re watching him test carnivore or compare fast food macros. They don’t realize they’re getting educated. He tears apart celebrity meal plans showing what works versus what’s garbage.
He’s not preaching clean eating. Watch him hit 180 grams of protein while eating pizza, then he’ll explain why meal timing matters less than total daily intake. It works because he treats food like regular people do, not someone weighing chicken on scales at restaurants. He tracks macros at family dinners. Guesses restaurant nutrition in real time. Shows what happens when life implodes and meal prep dies. His cookbook Bite Me has 100 high-protein recipes that don’t require eating chicken and broccoli until death. The whole point: making this work for people wanting beach bodies, not stage competitions.
Stephanie Buttermore
Stephanie Buttermore holds a PhD in pathology and cancer biology. Different background than typical fitness influencers. Her “All In” experiment started in 2019 when she documented recovering from restrictive eating by actually listening to hunger instead of obsessing over macros. She ate over 5,000 calories daily at first. Gained 35-40 pounds. Her period returned. Her metabolism fixed itself.
This contradicts everything the fitness world preaches but millions of people burned out from tracking every single bite connected with it. Her science background means citing actual research, not feelings. She shows both angles when structured macro tracking helps reach specific goals, and when it destroys mental health. She gives permission to eat intuitively while understanding how nutrition actually works. Her meal videos include calorie counts but focus more on whether food satisfies you and gives energy instead of hitting exact numbers.
Layne Norton
Layne Norton has a PhD in nutritional sciences. Also a competitive powerlifter who won gold and set a world record deadlift at the 2024 IPF World Championship. His Carbon Coach app built with registered dietitian Keith Kraker popularized flexible dieting and “IIFYM” years before Instagram turned it into a joke.
Norton destroys nutrition myths using published research but keeps explanations simple enough for regular people. He’ll explain why “metabolic damage” isn’t real like magazines claimed, then walk you through reverse dieting out of plateaus without gaining everything back. Carbon adjusts macros weekly based on what’s actually happening with your body. His podcast episodes go deep on protein timing across meals, training frequency for different goals, nutrition for endurance versus strength athletes. Years of peer-reviewed publications plus coaching thousands of actual clients gives him credibility. Norton doesn’t hold back when popular diets contradict research, which pisses people off in comments but means straight answers.
Renaissance Periodization
Dr. Mike Israetel runs Renaissance Periodization with sports scientists who’ve worked with everyone from beginners to Olympic athletes. His PhD is in Sport Physiology. He competed as an NPC bodybuilder while building one of the biggest evidence-based fitness YouTube channels. Their stuff teaches nutrition periodization, changing macro priorities based on training phase instead of eating the same way all year.
The RP Hypertrophy and RP Diet apps give meal templates for specific goals like muscle growth, fat loss, performance optimization. What makes them different: how specific they get while backing it with science. They explain why endurance athletes should structure carbs differently than powerlifters, citing studies on glycogen depletion and recovery. Their YouTube has free content that’d cost hundreds from private coaches. Teaching style’s heavy but thorough, perfect for understanding how things actually work instead of just following orders. They publish methods openly and let client transformations speak. When recommending something, they show research, explain when it applies, admit when you might need to experiment because everyone’s different.
Jordan Syatt
Jordan Syatt has 1 million Instagram followers and holds five world records in powerlifting. He was Gary Vaynerchuk’s personal strength and nutrition coach. His whole thing: making fitness fit into life instead of forcing life around fitness. He’s famous for eating a Big Mac daily for a month to prove food flexibility works.
Syatt focuses on practical problems regular people face. Not theoretical perfect scenarios. He teaches that choosing the apple over the donut once doesn’t magically change anything, you still want the donut and feel nothing from eating the apple. But walking? That gives immediate feedback. His Inner Circle program offers hundreds of home workouts. He talks openly about mental health and seeing a therapist regularly. His content strips away the complexity and gets to what actually matters for people who aren’t professional athletes. No BS, just straight talk about incorporating healthy habits without obsession.
Sohee Lee
Sohee Carpenter has a PhD in Sports Science, M.S. in Health Psychology, and 671,000 Instagram followers. She’s a certified strength and conditioning specialist and serves as fitness advisor for Women’s Health Magazine. Her whole brand: “Eat. Lift. Thrive.” She literally wrote the book on it in 2017.
Sohee overcame anorexia and bulimia as a teen, then fell into bodybuilding obsession in college at Stanford. Now she helps women escape the cycle. Her message hits different: “Stressing about the pizza is worse for you than just eating the pizza and moving on.” She focuses on reframing relationships with food and body image. Her content mixes weightlifting form explainers with skits about improving food relationships. She runs SoheeFit Systems in San Diego where she pries exhausted clients off cardio machines and puts them on free weights with balanced diets. Her approach: strength training plus realistic calorie targets, not the 1,000-calorie starvation many of her clients were doing.
Abbey Sharp
Abbey Sharp is a registered dietitian with 722,000 YouTube subscribers and 341,000 Instagram followers. She founded Abbey’s Kitchen Inc. and created the Hunger Crushing Combo™ framework. She also co-founded Neue Theory, an evidence-based gut-friendly supplement brand. Her podcast Bite Back launched in 2024.
Abbey built her reputation on “Dietitian Reacts” videos where she tears apart unhealthy habits people promote online. She debunks tips that could wreck your health. Her Hunger Crushing Combo combines protein, fiber, and healthy fats to crush cravings and restore hunger cues without deprivation. Her approach: balance and moderation, zero restrictions or guilt. She calls out diet culture with science and sass. Her new book The Hunger Crushing Combo Method translates the framework into practical tools and recipes. She’s worked with hundreds of North America’s top brands on campaigns that actually educate instead of just selling garbage.
Thomas DeLauer
Thomas DeLauer has 3.98 million YouTube subscribers and transformed from a 280-pound corporate executive to fitness magazine covers. He’s known internationally as a ketogenic diet expert, though he’s shifted toward lower-carb Mediterranean eating. He coaches professional athletes from NFL, MLB, and Special Forces.
DeLauer lost 110 pounds and turned that transformation into a platform reaching over 15 million viewers monthly. He breaks down complex biochemistry, ketogenic diet, fasting, metabolic health, into digestible insights. His strength: making science accessible without dumbing it down. He experiments publicly, like eating Big Macs daily or testing low-fat keto variations. His content covers intermittent fasting strategies, protein versus carb debates, insulin resistance solutions. He’s backed by a research team that validates everything with actual studies. His approach evolved from strict keto advocacy to more nuanced positions emphasizing unsaturated fats and fibre. He talks openly about mental health, OCD, exercise addiction. Real transformation stories, zero dogma.
Keep Exploring
Sports nutrition changes faster than anyone can track. These creators are where you start, not where you finish. Each one tackles macro tracking differently, apps doing calculations, videos making science fun, programs teaching you to think for yourself.
Don’t overthink it. Pick whoever clicks. Try their approach for a month. See what fits your actual life. The best nutrition plan isn’t the one photographing well for Instagram. It’s whichever one you can stick with.
Our directories of Fitness Influencers, Athlete Nutrition, Bodybuilding Influencers, Nutrition YouTubers and Diet Podcasts are worth checking out.