Celebrating Food and Nutrition with Personal Training Clients
You’ve overheard the nutrition conversation. The trainer says, “How did you do this weekend with your eating?” and the client responds, “I ate so badly this weekend. I had chips at the restaurant and I had a piece of cake at my son’s birthday.” This can be followed by a frown from the trainer, a diatribe on healthy eating, or even a well-meaning explanation of nutrition science. In so many of these cases, the trainer is only trying to help the client reach the goals they came into the gym for in the first place. Despite these good intentions, we as fitness professionals can trigger a vicious cycle of restrictive eating patterns, preoccupation with “ideal nutrition”, and unsustainable lifestyle habits that contribute to weight cycling for years to come. Many believe it is as simple as learning the newest nutritional protocol or suggesting the perfect macronutrient breakdown for a client. I would venture to say that this approach has left people without the tools to nourish their bodies using their intuitive hunger signals and has helped negative relationships with food fester and lead to negative health outcomes. What if we changed our dialogue and spoke about food without morality but rather with passion and joy that celebrates its place in our life and our health?
Consider your Impact
As trainers we have a unique opportunity with our clients. If you have established a trusting relationship, they will want to share aspects of their life that contribute to their overall wellness. With that trust comes immense responsibility as your words matter. Whether you intend them to, your words can carry more weight than others in your client’s life because you have established yourself as the expert. With this responsibility in mind be sure to stop and listen before you respond. That includes non verbal communication as well; your face and body language tell a story. What do you want that story to be? In order to foster a nurturing relationship and increase your client’s autonomy you want what you say and how you say it to be empowering. When in doubt ask more questions. This allows your client to process their feelings on their own and discover their own conclusions without fear of judgment.
Take the Morality out of Choices
Nutrition, despite continued efforts of the diet industry, shouldn’t be boiled down to “good” and “bad” or “healthy” or “unhealthy”. These arbitrary labels aim to make a colorful world full of nuance and flavor into a black and white test that we are all bound to fail. Food permeates our life and has many purposes; one is to fuel our bodies while others include pleasure, socialization, cultural and religious ritual, etc. In order to allow for the dynamic role food plays in our lives we need to encourage our clients to think about what makes them feel good, what gives them energy, what makes them feel satiated, what makes them feel connected to their culture and the people around them. There are times in life when an individual body needs nutrient dense food in order to compete at peak performance, i.e. a challenging strength training workout or an amateur bike race while there are times where an individual wants to enjoy an ice cream cone with their child on a hot summer day to satisfy their taste hunger and share a common experience. These two food choices can exist in the same world and don’t need right and wrong labels. In conversations about food choices we can eliminate the idea of “good” and “bad” so they can have unconditional permission to eat and make choices that make them feel good. Imagine the kind of honest conversation you can have with your client if your client isn’t afraid to tell you what they ate.
Discuss More than Nutrient Density
Speaking to your client about nutrient density and the value some foods have for athletic performance can be useful but it can also veer quickly back to a conversation about “good’ and “bad” foods. There are so many qualities to foods that make up the eating experience and speaking more about those can help you and your client clue into what choices can be most satisfying for them as well as increase the likelihood they may try new things. For example, speak to your client about textures and colors. Fruits and vegetables come in an endless array of textures and colors that can change based on how they are prepared. While someone may not enjoy the crunchy and slightly bitter taste of some raw greens they may love the warm and soft taste of that same vegetable steamed or boiled. Salty and sweet tastes can be found in a variety of foods and you may find ways to talk about these different taste sensations that encourage your clients to try foods they haven’t tried before. Eating foods that nourish the body and provide energy doesn’t have to be a pleasure-less experience.
Ask Different Questions
When asking about eating habits try asking your client questions other than, “how did you do with food?” This can easily be interpreted as pass/fail question. Instead, consider asking questions first about how they enjoyed their meals over the weekend. Who did they get to eat with? What was their favorite part? Something is lost when we pare the entire experience down to the macronutrient breakdown. Another great way to help your client is to ask questions related to how their food makes them feel (energetic, sluggish, satisfied) Consider asking how long it takes them to finish a meal or how full they feel when they finish. Is there a time of day when they feel hungrier then other times? Are they more alert when they eat breakfast versus when they don’t? This is how you can differentiate yourself from a food tracker app. You want to know more about the individual and how food affects their lives.
Like anything that is new or foreign it takes time to adapt. The first place to start is with yourself. Observe how you speak and think about food in your everyday life. Notice when you fall into the trap of food morality or judge another for their food choice. Incorporate new ways of speaking to your client where you feel comfortable and continue to research and learn about the positive impact you can have when you speak with your client.
