BUILDING STRONG HABITS FOR LONG TERM RESULTS
Ask any of the coaches on our team and I think they will all tell you in their own words that they love the work we do as nutrition coaches here at KLN because it’s more than just working towards specific goals like fat loss, improved athletic performance or increased overall health. While we want our clients to have specific goals they’re after, as coaches, our goal is to also ensure that clients walk away with tools that ensure their results are sustainable and that they feel confident in navigating their nutrition on their own. In today’s post, I’m sharing more about some of those tools we aim to develop in our work as online nutrition coaches working one-on-one with clients, no matter what their goals are.
BUILDING A STRONG FOUNDATION OF HABITS
Something we tend to preach right from the start is the importance of consistency. Part of that is in an effort to dismantle the belief that you have to be “all in” on this process to see progress. The other part of that is because consistency is going to make our progress attainable and sustainable over time. By focusing on slowly building a strong foundation of habits that support the goals that we have, we’re not only learning how to make these habits part of our everyday lives, but we’re also ensuring that they’re here to stay.
HABITS THAT WE BUILD WHEN WORKING WITH NUTRITION CLIENTs
TRACKING MACROS
While not every single one of our clients tracks macros, it is a tool that we use most often when working one-on-one with our nutrition clients. For those who are new to tracking their food intake, it’s a really helpful way for them to simply learn more about the makeup of the food that they're eating. Many times, before we even make any changes, we encourage tracking your current intake as a way to better understand the make up of foods and our general eating habits. By bringing awareness to the food that we’re eating, tracking also helps us understand how to create more balance in our meals and align the amount that we’re eating with the goals that we have. Over time, it helps us build consistency and eventually teaches you how to eat to maintain our progress. Tracking macros isn’t something that’s meant to be done forever; it is a temporary tool that helps us build awareness and strengthen habits that we can practice long term.
LEARNING FLEXIBILITY THROUGH LIFE & NAVIGATING SOCIAL SITUATIONS
Things like meal plans, perfectly tracked macros and “checking all the boxes” aren’t things that we’re against, but they’re also not things we encourage. Food is a BIG part of life, as we need it to survive, but it’s also a way that we connect with others, celebrate, and is something to be enjoyed, too! As a nutrition coach, I get excited when clients are traveling, going out for meals and/or when holidays happen because feeling comfortable in these situations is another big part of building a strong foundation with your nutrition. The goal here is to help you see that social events, meals out, travel, and family meals have a place in your nutrition journey and don’t have to be a roadblock or stall in your progress.
TUNING INTO HUNGER & FULLNESS CUES
While it may seem like something that’s obvious, many of us are very out of touch with our hunger cues throughout the day and fullness cues following a meal. Knowing when to eat (and when to stop eating) is a big part of managing your nutrition, no matter where you are in the process or what your goals are. Sometimes that’s about working on eating more consistently throughout the day to avoid big hunger hitting later in the day or understanding how to honor our fullness cues in situations where we may feel like we “have” to keep eating. Another piece of this habit is learning about what factors can play a role in how your hunger may fluctuate, which requires you to learn about your body and most importantly, learn how to listen to your body, which isn’t something we all know how to do. By the time our clients head off on their own, our aim is for them to feel confident in knowing their body’s cues well-enough to know when to eat and how to make food choices that align with their needs, knowing our needs change often.
DAILY HABITS THAT SUPPORT YOUR NUTRITION GOALS
While the above are some bigger shifts that we work towards with our one-on-one nutrition coaching clients, we also simultaneously aim to help them tune into and improve daily habits that also support the changes they’re working towards. Some of these include things like drinking more water, increasing fiber intake (adding in more fruits and vegetables), thinking about movement throughout the day on top of daily or weekly workouts, improving sleep habits and better understanding how stress plays a role in our overall health. Again, the reason for our big focus on building habits is so that clients walk away with practical tools for not only knowing their bodies but for knowing how to optimize their nutrition and continue to look and feel their best for years to come. As an example, below is an excerpt from one of my clients’ check ins in the week before off-boarding.
FINAL CHECK IN FROM A 1:1 NUTRITION COACHING CLIENT WITH FAT LOSS GOALS
"I think having a challenging week is setting me up for a future without weekly KLN check ins, because throughout the week I could picture what you’d be saying to me during the times when I felt like doing too much and packing my schedule, guilty for eating ice cream and chips and pretzels and chocolate. I kept telling myself there are no “ruined” days, choosing what to eat doesn’t make me good or bad, strong or weak, healthy or unhealthy, and that I don’t have an endless supply of energy that I can dedicate to every single area of life at the same time. Sometimes I’ll have to back off of meal prepping and planning or working out because of other things going on - like weaning off medication and feeling like crap. Sometimes I’ll hone in on those things because the rest of my life is on cruise control. And if I’m somewhere in between or at an extreme end, I can rely on tracking or knowing what triggers cravings for me or looking at my sleep, stress, and hydration to give me clues about what to do."
It takes time to build these tools and they’re not meant to be exhaustive or all used at the same time. You would never use ALL of the tools in your tool box at the same time; but the goal is that these things are here for you when you need them in certain situations. And also a reminder that you're not expected to be "nailing" your nutrition from all aspects 100% of the time.
We are committed coaches who work with committed clients and love nothing more than helping our clients find a sustainable approach to nutrition that allows them to work towards their goals without white-knuckling their way through yo-yo diets. Learn more about our KLN team here!