Helping clients who struggle with weight management requires a whole-person approach. In many cases, your clients will greatly benefit from both personal training and lifestyle and weight management coaching.
All dieting clients will make mistakes (especially in the beginning), and most of the time they won’t even realize it. As a Certified Personal Trainer, Nutrition Coach, or Lifestyle and Weight Management Specialist, you can help them get back on track and start seeing the results they want.
Only Focusing on the Numbers on the Scale
It’s very common for your clients to feel like they are not losing weight fast enough, despite faithfully sticking to their nutrition plan. Remind them that many factors can affect scale weight, including fluid fluctuations, muscle mass gain and the weight of undigested food. They may be losing body fat even if the number on the scale doesn’t drastically change. Our weight can fluctuate by up to 4 lbs over the course of a day, depending on how much food and liquid we have consumed. Measuring your clients’ waists with a tape measure and taking monthly pictures can show that they are actually losing fat.
Working Out Too Much and Too Often
Excessive exercise is unsustainable in the long term for most people and often leads to unnecessary stress. Trying to force the body to burn more calories by exercising too much is neither effective nor healthy for your clients. Weightlifting or resistance training can help boost metabolic rate, increase muscle mass and promote fat loss, including belly fat. Lifting weights is one of the most effective exercise strategies for gaining muscle and increasing metabolic rate. It also improves overall body composition and boosts belly fat loss.
Not Eating Enough Protein and Fiber
Getting enough protein is extremely important for a client trying to lose weight. Protein has been shown to help with weight loss in several ways. It can reduce appetite, increase feelings of fullness, decrease calorie intake, increase metabolic rate and protect muscle mass during weight loss. A low-fiber diet may be compromising your client’s weight loss efforts. Viscous fiber helps reduce appetite by forming a gel that holds water. This gel moves slowly through your digestive tract, making you feel full.
Eating Too Much Fat on a Low-Carb Diet
Although low-carb and ketogenic diets help reduce hunger and calorie intake, adding too much fat may slow down or prevent weight loss. Many low-carb and ketogenic diets allow unlimited amounts of fat, assuming that the resulting appetite suppression will keep calories low enough for weight loss. However, if your client is adding large amounts of fat to their food or beverages and is not losing weight, you will want to advise them to cut back on the fat.
Having Unrealistic Goals
Having weight loss and other health-related goals can help keep clients motivated, but having unrealistic expectations can actually work against them. Help your clients adjust their expectations so that they align with realistic goals. This can help prevent them from getting discouraged and improve their chances for success.
Not Tracking What You Eat in Any Way
Eating nutritious foods is a good weight loss strategy, but your clients may still be eating more calories than they need to lose weight. If your clients are not tracking what they eat, they can easily be consuming more calories than they realize. If they aren’t tracking, they are likely getting less protein and fiber than they need.
Not Reading the Nutrition Facts Labels
Food labels provide information on ingredients, calories, and nutrients. Make sure your clients understand how to accurately read the nutrition label. Failing to accurately read label information can quickly lead to the consumption of unwanted calories and unhealthy ingredients. To get to the most important information for weight control, your clients will need to make a habit of looking at the ingredients list and nutrition facts label.
Not Eating Whole Foods
One of the worst things a dieting client can do for weight loss is to eat a lot of highly processed foods. Some researchers believe this could be due to their negative effects on gut health and inflammation. Encourage all of your clients (regardless of whether they are trying to lose weight) to choose whole, single-ingredient foods that are minimally processed.
What’s Next?
If you want to help clients with food, diet, weight management and improving the results of their fitness routines, the Fitness Nutrition Coach course is for you. You will learn about optimal nutrition, including proven techniques for increasing energy, optimal health and decreased dependence on medications. Instantly increase your job and career opportunities with this popular professional credential.
Become a Lifestyle Weight Management Specialist. Help your clients achieve their weight loss or weight management goals using the latest proven strategies.
You can become a Certified Personal Fitness Chef and expand your current personal chef business, or add a new profit center for your fitness or wellness business. Many personal chefs cook and coach people in groups to help more people and earn more money per hour. Some chefs provide weekly meal prep service for health-minded customers and athletes.
Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
NESTA coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
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