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Introduction
What You'll Learn
In this section, we're going to be talking about stress and your client's environment because ultimately, we can put together the perfect plan, but a client has to engage with people, situations, the home environment, their belief system. This can all be very stressful and as we know, stress can very quickly derail someone's progress.
Why is This Important?
We're going to be talking about stress and your client's environment because ultimately, we can put together the perfect plan, but a client has to engage with people, situations, the home environment, their belief system. This can all be very stressful and as we know, stress can very quickly derail someone's progress.
In this section, we're going to be talking about stress and your client's environment because ultimately, we can put together the perfect plan, but a client has to engage with people, situations, the home environment, their belief system. This can all be very stressful and as we know, stress can very quickly derail someone's progress.
Why is This Important?
We're going to be talking about stress and your client's environment because ultimately, we can put together the perfect plan, but a client has to engage with people, situations, the home environment, their belief system. This can all be very stressful and as we know, stress can very quickly derail someone's progress.
Our Food Environment
So let's start off with the reality of our food environment. Imagine going to your grandparent's house. It's Sunday. You think you're just going to get a nice family meal and then your grandma cooks up an amazing meal, you end up having a bit of seconds, it's really tasty. Then she brings out a pudding, and then later on she serves a tea tray with scones.
Then, I don't know, perhaps it's Easter and she gives you an Easter egg and all of a sudden that food environment of just going around to your grandparents, even though it's lots of fun family friends, it's really derails your body composition goals. Because let's be honest, if we went to our grandparent's house and had a big roast, a pudding, tea with scones, bit of Easter egg, you're probably racking up a good several thousand calories in one meal and that's going to derail things.
Now, that's not a problem in isolation, but what if that happens a lot? And what if people don't have strategies to manage that? Then it's going to be a bit of a problem. So we need to look at the reality of our food environment. What is our client seeing? What are they experiencing? What do they have available to them? Remember the food environment is the home environment.
What do they keep in their fridge, their freezer, their cupboards? What are their go-to foods? This is all part of the food environment. Then to build on top of that, people are getting adverts everyday about food. We're getting told things are good and bad, we're getting pressured into situations when we're out for dinner, we're in the office with friends. There's a lot to consider. This is the reality of our food environment and this is where coaching conversations are very powerful and an absolute must.
This is why your communication skills and your ability to be able to delve into this kind of stuff for your client is literally make and break with getting success long term with a client. So while we actually look at the food environment, the problem is decision making is actually a fatiguing exercise. There's great research on this to show that there's only so many decisions that we can make every day with conviction and certainty. And then once that kind of decision making fatigue kicks in, we're actually less able to make decisions based on our own wants and desires, and we'll just say yes because it's easy to appease the environment.
You might be out for dinner and someone says, "Do you want a glass of wine?" And you're feeling a bit tired. You can't be bothered to think. And you just say yes, you know it's going to be pleasurable. You know you like wine. This is where amongst other things like willpower, a reason to say no, assessing your goals compared to the situation in the environment, this is where a cake might come round on a Friday afternoon in an office and an individual might say, "Yeah, I want the cake." And the reality is that's not conductive towards their goals and what we're maybe trying to work towards in this coaching relationship.
So because we have to make these spirit decisions every day, there's a high chance that some of them will go off pieced depending on how much control we're putting on ourselves and on our environment to try and control this. So when we actually look a little bit further into the mind and the decision making process, we then got a look at what your subconscious mind is programmed to do. Are you more likely to say yes over no? Are you more likely to say yes in certain situations? If you're a home and you put on a film, does your subconscious mind associate the film with eating a bag of crisps or popcorn or ice cream?
Then, I don't know, perhaps it's Easter and she gives you an Easter egg and all of a sudden that food environment of just going around to your grandparents, even though it's lots of fun family friends, it's really derails your body composition goals. Because let's be honest, if we went to our grandparent's house and had a big roast, a pudding, tea with scones, bit of Easter egg, you're probably racking up a good several thousand calories in one meal and that's going to derail things.
Now, that's not a problem in isolation, but what if that happens a lot? And what if people don't have strategies to manage that? Then it's going to be a bit of a problem. So we need to look at the reality of our food environment. What is our client seeing? What are they experiencing? What do they have available to them? Remember the food environment is the home environment.
What do they keep in their fridge, their freezer, their cupboards? What are their go-to foods? This is all part of the food environment. Then to build on top of that, people are getting adverts everyday about food. We're getting told things are good and bad, we're getting pressured into situations when we're out for dinner, we're in the office with friends. There's a lot to consider. This is the reality of our food environment and this is where coaching conversations are very powerful and an absolute must.
This is why your communication skills and your ability to be able to delve into this kind of stuff for your client is literally make and break with getting success long term with a client. So while we actually look at the food environment, the problem is decision making is actually a fatiguing exercise. There's great research on this to show that there's only so many decisions that we can make every day with conviction and certainty. And then once that kind of decision making fatigue kicks in, we're actually less able to make decisions based on our own wants and desires, and we'll just say yes because it's easy to appease the environment.
You might be out for dinner and someone says, "Do you want a glass of wine?" And you're feeling a bit tired. You can't be bothered to think. And you just say yes, you know it's going to be pleasurable. You know you like wine. This is where amongst other things like willpower, a reason to say no, assessing your goals compared to the situation in the environment, this is where a cake might come round on a Friday afternoon in an office and an individual might say, "Yeah, I want the cake." And the reality is that's not conductive towards their goals and what we're maybe trying to work towards in this coaching relationship.
So because we have to make these spirit decisions every day, there's a high chance that some of them will go off pieced depending on how much control we're putting on ourselves and on our environment to try and control this. So when we actually look a little bit further into the mind and the decision making process, we then got a look at what your subconscious mind is programmed to do. Are you more likely to say yes over no? Are you more likely to say yes in certain situations? If you're a home and you put on a film, does your subconscious mind associate the film with eating a bag of crisps or popcorn or ice cream?
Why Food Diaries Don't Always Work
The reality is when a client fills out a food diary based on past recall so, "Hey, Jane, what did you eat yesterday? And Jane ate her normal meals and watched a film and they ate big bag of popcorn but didn't write down the big bag of popcorn.
She did that because her brain went into autopilot mode. Her subconscious told her that when she watches a film, she likes to enjoy popcorn and she didn't even associate that bag of popcorn with her normal food intake because she was watching a film, she was enjoying herself and it's maybe a habitual habit taken up from childhood.
So we need to be able to delve into all of this kind of stuff because that is a massive roadblock. If your clients did that a couple of nights a week, then actually that's really going to derail progress with our health and fitness, especially fat loss.
This is where food availability is really important. What people are keeping in their homes, the habits that they have around the office, what they keep on their desk, the ways they walk, the shops that they go pass up. All of this stuff contributes towards the food that we eat because the reality is, if the food isn't available, then we make different decisions.
She did that because her brain went into autopilot mode. Her subconscious told her that when she watches a film, she likes to enjoy popcorn and she didn't even associate that bag of popcorn with her normal food intake because she was watching a film, she was enjoying herself and it's maybe a habitual habit taken up from childhood.
So we need to be able to delve into all of this kind of stuff because that is a massive roadblock. If your clients did that a couple of nights a week, then actually that's really going to derail progress with our health and fitness, especially fat loss.
This is where food availability is really important. What people are keeping in their homes, the habits that they have around the office, what they keep on their desk, the ways they walk, the shops that they go pass up. All of this stuff contributes towards the food that we eat because the reality is, if the food isn't available, then we make different decisions.
Environmental Conditioning
This is where we need to look at environmental conditioning. Have you ever heard of Pavlov's dog? It's a classic. You've probably heard of it. The dog is presented with food, dogs like food. They salivate, they eat the food. We've got Pavlov's dog and we ring a bell. The dog doesn't know what a bell is, so it doesn't salivate, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't get excited. It's just a bell.
Now, when the dog's presented with food at the same time a bell is rung. It's now starting to associate food with the bell being rang. It won't do that the first time around, but if we repeat that enough, over time the dog will think, "Oh, bell, food."
Now, this might seem like a really flippant kind of example here, but this is where people go on autopilot with their food environment and consume foods without even knowing it.
I use the film example and somebody eating a bag of popcorn, this is really easily done. Film goes on, subconscious mind goes, "Film, popcorn." Goes to cupboard, gets popcorn, eats popcorn, doesn't even think about it. And there's many of these habitual food environments that happen every day that we need to delve into because this will hold your clients back with their goals.
This is what it looks like. And the reason why we keep doing this habit is because there's a reward. Tasty food releases dopamine. We enjoy it, like hands up if you enjoy eating food. Yeah, I do. Everyone does. But there has to be a limit to that.
So in the office for example, there might be certain cues, it might be, so we can see there's a clock here. It might be the at 11 o'clock every morning the person that we might be coaching goes and gets a tea break. Now, because they go and get a tea break in the office cafeteria, they make their cup of tea and in the same vicinity there's a biscuit jar and everyone, all the employees are allowed biscuits. So they always have two biscuits with their cup of tea. They might not even realize that they have those two biscuits.
So when again, we come to do a food recall, those biscuits are not on the diet plan. And then you're sitting there scratching your head thinking, "This client's telling me they're not getting results. I'm looking at their food plan, they should be getting results. I don't know what's going on." And it's because probably something like this is happening. They don't even realize they're doing it, so it's not even on their food diary. And you've got to try and find a way to break these situations down in everyone's lifestyle and routine.
Now, when the dog's presented with food at the same time a bell is rung. It's now starting to associate food with the bell being rang. It won't do that the first time around, but if we repeat that enough, over time the dog will think, "Oh, bell, food."
Now, this might seem like a really flippant kind of example here, but this is where people go on autopilot with their food environment and consume foods without even knowing it.
I use the film example and somebody eating a bag of popcorn, this is really easily done. Film goes on, subconscious mind goes, "Film, popcorn." Goes to cupboard, gets popcorn, eats popcorn, doesn't even think about it. And there's many of these habitual food environments that happen every day that we need to delve into because this will hold your clients back with their goals.
This is what it looks like. And the reason why we keep doing this habit is because there's a reward. Tasty food releases dopamine. We enjoy it, like hands up if you enjoy eating food. Yeah, I do. Everyone does. But there has to be a limit to that.
So in the office for example, there might be certain cues, it might be, so we can see there's a clock here. It might be the at 11 o'clock every morning the person that we might be coaching goes and gets a tea break. Now, because they go and get a tea break in the office cafeteria, they make their cup of tea and in the same vicinity there's a biscuit jar and everyone, all the employees are allowed biscuits. So they always have two biscuits with their cup of tea. They might not even realize that they have those two biscuits.
So when again, we come to do a food recall, those biscuits are not on the diet plan. And then you're sitting there scratching your head thinking, "This client's telling me they're not getting results. I'm looking at their food plan, they should be getting results. I don't know what's going on." And it's because probably something like this is happening. They don't even realize they're doing it, so it's not even on their food diary. And you've got to try and find a way to break these situations down in everyone's lifestyle and routine.
Improving Food Environment
So if we were to start to look at someone's food environment, because I want to be as practical as possible here today, how do we improve it? So firstly, we need to reduce food availability. So if we look at the client's home, what's in the client's home? Should we be removing some of the snacks? Should we stop buying them? What if they got kids? This is a classic. I've worked with so many clients that have gone, "Yeah, but the sweets are for the kids and this is what we give." And yada yada, yada. And then it's a wider conversation of whether this food should even be available in the house at all.
So perhaps we now need to find a way to increase the food availability for kids, but reduce it for the adults because it's now not serving the adults goals. But again, it's a conversation that you have to have with a client on an individual basis to understand their contents and implement the right kind of strategy. It's good to reduce the salience of foods. So this is where we change food choices.
Instead of keeping crisps in the cupboard, perhaps we keep dried fruit, or fruit, or just healthier snacks, so that actually we're less inclined to kind of binge and really want these foods. Because I'm not saying they're not tasty, but they're not as tasty. The reality is having a banana for a lot of people is not as tasty as having a large family share bag of popcorn.
This is similar to reduce food availability, but if we increase the effort to eat a food, the chances are you won't do it.
So perhaps we now need to find a way to increase the food availability for kids, but reduce it for the adults because it's now not serving the adults goals. But again, it's a conversation that you have to have with a client on an individual basis to understand their contents and implement the right kind of strategy. It's good to reduce the salience of foods. So this is where we change food choices.
Instead of keeping crisps in the cupboard, perhaps we keep dried fruit, or fruit, or just healthier snacks, so that actually we're less inclined to kind of binge and really want these foods. Because I'm not saying they're not tasty, but they're not as tasty. The reality is having a banana for a lot of people is not as tasty as having a large family share bag of popcorn.
This is similar to reduce food availability, but if we increase the effort to eat a food, the chances are you won't do it.
Breaking Habit Loops
There's one little trick that I often use with clients, and I use it, especially when people come in tired from work, and I say, "Right, when you come in tired from work and you dive into the fridge and you go to eat something, you're not allowed to eat it. So you've left it on your kitchen work top for 30 seconds, and all you've got to do is ask yourself, do I want to eat this?" The reason why I do this is it breaks the habit loop.
Many people have a habit loop of getting in from work and they're tired and they go and eat certain foods like a packet of crisps, or they go and open a bottle of wine or they have a beer. The beer, the crisps, the wine, whatever it is, has got to sit on the kitchen worktop and it's got to stay there for 30 seconds and they have to ask themselves, "Do I want this?" Then we can start to make a far more informed decision about whether that food or drink is conductive to the wider goal rather than just the moment they are in.
Many people have a habit loop of getting in from work and they're tired and they go and eat certain foods like a packet of crisps, or they go and open a bottle of wine or they have a beer. The beer, the crisps, the wine, whatever it is, has got to sit on the kitchen worktop and it's got to stay there for 30 seconds and they have to ask themselves, "Do I want this?" Then we can start to make a far more informed decision about whether that food or drink is conductive to the wider goal rather than just the moment they are in.
Food and Stress
Stress increases awareness of how we feel. This is why the feelings that we are usually experiencing in a stressful situation seem magnified. Your heart feels like it's pounding, your blood pressure is going up. But it also increases awareness of the stress as well. So you're really focusing on what is stressing you out. And sometimes it becomes sort of this all encompassing cycle.
This means there's a reduced attention to eating. So if you're really stressed and you're really focusing on the stressor, you can very easily mindlessly eat. The image that you can see on the screen, there's a woman, she's got some pastries, she's just sitting down and she's mindlessly in there. This is the same for kind of TV, it's the same kind of analogy. You might sit down in front of the TV with a share bag of popcorn and you just keep eating it, and eating it, and eating it. And you just don't even think about eating it because you're engrossed in the film.
Stress does exactly the same thing. It takes your mind away from what you're doing, focuses on the stressor and allows you to mindlessly eat or drink. This means you've got an increased susceptibility to habit loops, because you're focusing on the stress so intensely, you block everything else out and you go into autopilot. If you get stressed and your go-to thing is maybe wine for example, you won't even engage in how much wine you're drinking because the wine is making you feel better. So you disengage with the actual action of drinking wine and just focus on the stress relieving properties of it. And this is a problem.
It decreases our mindfulness. And the reality is stress correlates really closely to BMI, Body Mass Index. People that are very overweight are often very stressed as well. So being mindful and developing stress coping strategies is very key, because the reality is if you're stressed you'll snack to feel better, you'll drink to feel better.
This means there's a reduced attention to eating. So if you're really stressed and you're really focusing on the stressor, you can very easily mindlessly eat. The image that you can see on the screen, there's a woman, she's got some pastries, she's just sitting down and she's mindlessly in there. This is the same for kind of TV, it's the same kind of analogy. You might sit down in front of the TV with a share bag of popcorn and you just keep eating it, and eating it, and eating it. And you just don't even think about eating it because you're engrossed in the film.
Stress does exactly the same thing. It takes your mind away from what you're doing, focuses on the stressor and allows you to mindlessly eat or drink. This means you've got an increased susceptibility to habit loops, because you're focusing on the stress so intensely, you block everything else out and you go into autopilot. If you get stressed and your go-to thing is maybe wine for example, you won't even engage in how much wine you're drinking because the wine is making you feel better. So you disengage with the actual action of drinking wine and just focus on the stress relieving properties of it. And this is a problem.
It decreases our mindfulness. And the reality is stress correlates really closely to BMI, Body Mass Index. People that are very overweight are often very stressed as well. So being mindful and developing stress coping strategies is very key, because the reality is if you're stressed you'll snack to feel better, you'll drink to feel better.
Stress Scenarios
Let's look a little bit of dealing with stress scenarios. We've talked about mindfulness. Talk to your client about it. Ask them about where they feel stressed, when they feel stressed, how they usually deal with that and start to talk about engaging in those processes a little bit more. It won't be an overnight fix. People's stress doesn't go away overnight. So this is something that you've got to work on. Pick your battles with your clients. Make sure the clients are not overreacting or trying to conquer things too quickly. Go slow with this.
This is where I like to encourage diarizing and scheduling so you can write down the stress, you can write down how you feel, you can maybe journal about it, but when we are able to write it down and engage in this process, we're able to spot patterns and when we can spot patterns, we can spot habit loops and we can look to retrain these habit loops. And that's really important. If we don't retrain habit loops, no one is successfully going to change longterm. This is where as a coach, we need to pay attention to the things that clients mentioned.
So if you are in a one-to-one personal training session for example, and your client came in and said, "My car broke down today, it really annoyed me. Had to wait for the AA to come out and fix it, etc." You know that that's a stressful scenario for that person right away, and now they might be engaged in stress-relieving activities that might be negative. They might even walk into that personal training session, be thinking about going and having a glass of wine later because they feel stressed, something bad has happened today.
We have to pick up on these cues to then discuss it. Because you might ask your client, "You feel stressed today, what are you looking forward to doing later that will relieve that stress?" Then they'll probably even tell you because they'll be excited about doing that and they won't even see it as a negative behavior. This is where we can almost trick our clients into telling us things by framing it in a way that makes it exciting for them to share it to us because they are excited about going and doing it.
Then we obviously need to adjust training and nutrition according to stress. If someone's highly stressed, doing lots of changes to their lifestyle and doing lots of training is going to be a negative thing. Most people can't handle that extra added stress. So please be aware of that because ultimately we want our clients to seek flow. We want them to be empowered to flow through their day feeling strong and empowered and to have a strong mindset that's able to deal with things.
This is where I like to encourage diarizing and scheduling so you can write down the stress, you can write down how you feel, you can maybe journal about it, but when we are able to write it down and engage in this process, we're able to spot patterns and when we can spot patterns, we can spot habit loops and we can look to retrain these habit loops. And that's really important. If we don't retrain habit loops, no one is successfully going to change longterm. This is where as a coach, we need to pay attention to the things that clients mentioned.
So if you are in a one-to-one personal training session for example, and your client came in and said, "My car broke down today, it really annoyed me. Had to wait for the AA to come out and fix it, etc." You know that that's a stressful scenario for that person right away, and now they might be engaged in stress-relieving activities that might be negative. They might even walk into that personal training session, be thinking about going and having a glass of wine later because they feel stressed, something bad has happened today.
We have to pick up on these cues to then discuss it. Because you might ask your client, "You feel stressed today, what are you looking forward to doing later that will relieve that stress?" Then they'll probably even tell you because they'll be excited about doing that and they won't even see it as a negative behavior. This is where we can almost trick our clients into telling us things by framing it in a way that makes it exciting for them to share it to us because they are excited about going and doing it.
Then we obviously need to adjust training and nutrition according to stress. If someone's highly stressed, doing lots of changes to their lifestyle and doing lots of training is going to be a negative thing. Most people can't handle that extra added stress. So please be aware of that because ultimately we want our clients to seek flow. We want them to be empowered to flow through their day feeling strong and empowered and to have a strong mindset that's able to deal with things.
Bringing it all Together
How can you apply what I've spoken about today? Well, we need to talk to clients about their food environment. We need to have compassionate conversations. This image on the right, it's two people building rapport, gaining trust. When you build rapport and trust, you can talk openly about important things that might be a little bit sensitive. Help them plan, give them strategies, tips, and tools to plan their meals and snacks and just basically be more organized. Someone that's planned to eat a set amount and types of food will more likely stick to a plan.
Talk to them about snack availability, especially if they present a high incidence of misreporting. So if you keep going through their diet diary and they're not losing weight, but everything looks good on paper, the chances are there's an issue going on with like snacks and maybe stress or habit loops. So you've got to delve into that kind of stuff. It's something that we talk a lot about in our food environment modules and our motivational interview and modules on the Practical Academy.
So again, we then talk about different strategies around the snacks. We then work with our clients to manage their stress. Quite often it's our mindset towards stress and how we approach and feel about certain situations. Ultimately, this is a key part of your role when you're a nutrition coach, you're essentially a counselor as well. You're helping people break down their problems and find strategies to better their environment, to move forward, to solve problems.
Talk to them about snack availability, especially if they present a high incidence of misreporting. So if you keep going through their diet diary and they're not losing weight, but everything looks good on paper, the chances are there's an issue going on with like snacks and maybe stress or habit loops. So you've got to delve into that kind of stuff. It's something that we talk a lot about in our food environment modules and our motivational interview and modules on the Practical Academy.
So again, we then talk about different strategies around the snacks. We then work with our clients to manage their stress. Quite often it's our mindset towards stress and how we approach and feel about certain situations. Ultimately, this is a key part of your role when you're a nutrition coach, you're essentially a counselor as well. You're helping people break down their problems and find strategies to better their environment, to move forward, to solve problems.