Why Consultations Matter
HOW NUTRITION CONSULTS HELP YOU
When it comes to nutrition, all the responsibility for making and sticking with decisions is normally on you.
Consultations help unload this responsibility by assessing what changes are necessary and reasonable.
Assessing how much change is reasonable for an individual is arguably the most important part. Why?
Because like a training program, a person's adherence to a nutritional program makes or breaks the outcome.
And unlike a training program, where the coach corrects the workout real-time and in-person, nutrition programs can’t make these real-time adjustments as easily.
While a coach can design a nutrition program – caloric intake, caloric expenditure, macronutrient split, macronutrient timing, and supplements – if it is poorly executed it will come up short.
So in order to assess how ready you are to execute, it helps to clarify with this question:
“How bad do you want it?"
Everyone knows what they want. More muscle, less body fat, better health, improved performance. Etc. But few are willing to do what’s required to achieve the results. So, in order to get results, we need to be able to assess how bad someone wants it.
Thankfully we have two models in place to assess this. The first is the Readiness to Change Model. The second is the Skill-Motivation Model.
These are established and battle-tested strategies in the nutrition world.
And they enable us to determine the readiness and motivation of an individual to change.
Readiness to Change Model
The Readiness to Change Model is the way we ask, “How bad do you want this?” Beyond the obvious question, “what do you want?” , we ask “why do you want this outcome?”.
If someone hasn’t fully decided their “why”, they are in the contemplation stage.
By understanding what stage they are in, we can prescribe a realistic plan.
Going all out with counting calories, macronutrients, meal prepping, advanced supplementation isn’t be a good idea for someone in the contemplation stage. But if the person has a serious goal and specific “why”, they are further up on the model which justifies a more complex strategy.
Once we assessed readiness to change, we look at the motivation - skill model.
The Motivation - Skill Model
The Motivation - Skill Model is how we ask, “what are you willing to do for this goal? “
There are people that know a lot but are not interested in pursuing the goal. This requires a strategy that has a lot of short term immediate success. In contrast, someone with low skill and high motivation will have a greater ability to overcome inevitable setbacks – because they’re more motivated.
It is the person that has a low motivation and low skill that determines the value of a coach.
A strategy that works with their current state and patiently pursues a larger goal needs to align with what they are willing to do for the goal.
It is human nature to not value something you currently have. It is not until we lose it do we actually appreciate it. When your doctor says you have high blood pressure and need to go on statins, or you are diabetic and need to start injecting insulin. These situations force changes in your perspective.
The desire to change and your willingness to change matter a great deal. What a coach does is ask the right questions and then formulate a plan that you can have success with.
Plan The Work. Work The Plan.
Most people have a certain intuition about what is healthy and what is not. Yet people consistently make bad decisions for their health. As a result, obesity is going up, metabolic disease is going up, cardiovascular disease is going up, and mental health is declining.
Despite these negative trends, educating people about health has little effect on their follow through. In reality, action is best encouraged by concrete planning.
This means being consistent is not an understanding problem. It is a logistics problem.
Consultations find solutions to this logistic problem. Additionally, regular consultations with a coach provide follow-up and accountability.
Renowned self-help guru Bob Proctor once said,
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to result.”
Those higher on the readiness to change and motivation-skill scale can take on more aggressive strategies. Those lower on this scale will need to start more conservatively. But without a coach, people skip these steps and go straight for some unsustainable diet, fasting strategy, or juice cleanse.
And the last thing you want is to waste your time on a phony plan.
Is it worth your time?
It seems that everyday a different miracle diet plan, cleanse, supplement, or regimen pops up.
Combined with clever marketing and cherry-picked evidence, the information is hard to filter.
This is what a good coach can help with. Tell you what's legit and worth your time.
By doing a consultation, a coach can prescribe a custom strategy based on an assessment of your current physiology and psychology. Not just another cookie-cutter diet.
This resource is useful to those who know a lot already too.
It is very easy for knowledgeable people to get lost in the weeds and struggle to make objective decisions. A great example is ketogenic diets (which for the record is fat-adapted, not a high protein diet). People all over the motivation-skill scale are seduced by diets like the ketogenic diet.
People apply ketogenic diets by omitting carbohydrates, which is a huge macronutrient in most diets.
Dropping a major (and highly addictive) macronutrient means dropping a huge amount of calories. The resulting caloric deficit will always lead to decreased body mass.
But while this change may lead to a few good outcomes, how long can it last?
Traditionally ketogenic diets are used for health reasons such as epilepsy or pre-diabetes strategies to reduce symptoms. But not everyone has a severe health condition to motivate them. And this strategy might not fit their personal goals.
Bottom line: A consult provides you with a powerful tool for sustainable change by asking the right questions, assessing your lifestyle, and planning a legitimate strategy.