Have you ever wondered why so many people who try to lose weight simply can’t find success for very long? Or have you wondered why it’s so hard to overcome challenges like emotional eating, binge eating and constant food worry? This is where these 3 powerful tools of a Mind Body Eating Coach can help.
Most people want to feel good, look good, and live healthy lives, but feel stuck, confused, or discouraged. Even when they turn to professional help from emotional eating and weight loss coaches, they seldom reach the promised land.
That’s because most nutritionists, health coaches, fitness trainers, and other helping professionals are really only trained to offer basic advice to their clients and patients.
Don’t most people already know what they should do?
- Eat more vegetables.
- Eat out at restaurants less.
- Exercise more frequently.
- Cut back on sugar and alcohol.
- Eat nutrient dense foods.
- Stop smoking.
Most people know what to do. They just don’t know how to inspire themselves to do it.
Our client’s minds are filled with all kinds of conflicting nutrition information and advice, and adding more information on top of that simply doesn’t work. Something is clearly missing in the coaching profession. This is where the skills of a Mind Body Eating Coach can fill the gaps.
Here’s the good news:
Mind Body Eating Coaches are a completely new generation of health coaches:
- They’re trained to go beyond nutrition – to consider the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings influencing our eating behaviors.
- They get to the root cause of our unwanted eating challenges.
- They help their clients have honest breakthroughs that lead to lasting transformation.
- And they use an elegant combination of eating psychology and nutrition that takes the health coaching profession to a whole new level.
To give you an idea of this unique and revolutionary approach, let’s take a look at 3 of the most powerful tools of a Certified Mind Body Eating Coach:
Tool 1: Making a Holistic Assessment of Your Clients’ Journey
Most practitioners are wisely taught to take their client’s history. This generally looks like a lengthy list of all the foods they eat, drugs and supplements they take, a list of past medical procedures, allergies, family history, symptoms and more. The client interacts with a piece of paper, writes things down, and the history taking is largely complete.
But the practitioner hasn’t really learned about a person’s story.
- Who are they?
- What makes them tick?
- What’s important to them?
- Why are they here?
- What’s it like to be them?
Making a holistic assessment of your client’s journey certainly includes the traditional details about nutrition, health and lifestyle factors. But it goes far beyond that.
A holistic assessment is where the coach directly dialogues with their client. They listen for tone of voice, emotions, nuances, they watch for body language, and they truly listen from a place of curiosity and unconditional acceptance. They connect with their client.
This makes the process far more fascinating for everyone. It lets our clients know that we actually care, and it sets up the relationship for honesty, trust and success.
If we’re working with a weight loss client, for example, a Mind Body Eating Coach would ask about your relationship and history with dieting:
- When did you start dieting? What caused you to do this?
- Were you put on a diet at a young age?
- What was going on in your life at this time?
A Mind Body Eating Coach will ask about your relationship with your body:
- Were you fat shamed?
- Bullied about your body?
- Were your parents worried about your weight?
- Have you lost weight before? How?
- Why do you think it came back on?
- How does your weight loss journey and your feelings about your body impact your life? Your relationships? Your sexuality? Your confidence?
- And there’s so much more…
A Mind Body Eating Coach will ask about eating speed.
- Fast eating causes appetite deregulation, excess hunger even after eating a big meal, and overeating — which our clients wrongly interpret as a willpower problem.
A Mind Body Eating Coach will ask about meal timing.
- When we eat – Bio Circadian Nutrition – has a profound impact on calorie burning metabolism. Simply put, we burn calories least efficiently in the late evening and very early morning hours.
A Mind Body Eating Coach will also ask about a client’s level of stress and relaxation – especially while eating.
- Anxiety, fear, or stress while eating causes the physiologic stress response – which inhibits digestion, assimilation, appetite regulation, and calorie burning capacity. In other words, stress chemistry by itself can lead to weight gain, or weight loss resistance.
Next, a holistic assessment of your client’s journey helps you understand the brilliant reasons rooted in biology and psychology behind their unwanted eating challenges.
What does that even mean?
Well, if someone emotionally eats for example, they have a good reason for it. If we binge eat, we have a reason for it. If we’re in constant food worry, there are deeper reasons that explain these unwanted behaviors.