Conversations with Clients:

The following conversation is an example of how a 360 Wellness Coaching Certified Fitness Professional could address a client who are consistently tracking their food but still not seeing results.

Setting: Consultation room for the initial meeting with a potential client who is frustrated at their lack of progress despite consistent effort invested in tracking food. 

Coach: I appreciate you coming in. What can I help you with?

Client: To be honest, I’m so frustrated I could scream.

Coach: Okay. Tell me more.

Client: I have been tracking my calories for weeks now but the scale isn’t budging. I’m at 1100 to 1200 calories per day and nothing is happening.

Coach: I’m sure that’s frustrating and I appreciate your efforts. Can I share some info with you? 

Client: Absolutely! I heard you were good so I sought you out. Please help me. 

Coach:  I see you putting forth a lot of well-intentioned effort and I think we can direct that energy in a better direction. But let’s start by discussing the hiccups with calorie tracking. The labels on foods can be off by up to 20% by FDA standards. The databases for many food tracking platforms like the one you’re using are from often from user contributions, so those can be off as well. Additionally, how you cook your food dramatically impacts the amount of calories your digestive tract absorbs. And if that wasn’t enough, despite their sincere efforts, people are notoriously bad at measuring or estimating their portion size. All these issues lead to a 25% margin of error when tracking food. 

Client: Oh my goodness! I’ve wasted so much energy tracking these last few weeks. 

Coach: Not at all. Even though the number of calories you’re having may be inaccurate, your tracking gives us a ton of great information to plan our path together. 

Client: Really? 

Coach: Yes. Your food logs are a wonderful place for us to identify areas to produce results. As we work together, we may even find that food tracking isn’t a necessity for you to see those results. How does that sound? 

Client: If we can avoid that headache and still see results, I would love that.