Coach Change
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>> Hi.
Today, we're focusing on coaching clients through change.
Changing habits is like walking a tightrope.
On the surface, the concept is pretty simple,
just walk in a straight line or, in this case,
just pay more attention to what you put on your plate.
However, simple does not equal easy.
Walking a tightrope requires complex challenges
of motor control and perception.
Not to mention knowing
how to navigate environmental factors like wind.
Likewise, there are million factors
that can make the simplest
of eating habit changes difficult.
Most of us are pretty set in our ways.
But here we are, how to coach habit change
around emotional eating.
Guiding chain is an important part of coaching, right?
It's walking side by side with your client,
listening actively,
and figuring out what works for this particular person
based on what's not working right now.
Supporting clients through transformation
in mindsets and behaviors
because, yes, so much about change
is about attention, not just action.
It's like guiding them through a field,
while at the same time,
doing less than you might feel compelled to do.
Coaching change around emotional eating habits is,
you probably guessed it, complicated.
Clients eat emotionally and compulsively for a reason.
It serves as some form of self-protection
and adaptation to internal and external stressors.
Food has become a coping mechanism, emotional nourishment,
and a symbol of something beyond food itself.
Unpleasant emotions trigger unhelpful eating habits.
And those habits are hard to change.
They're the results of long and convoluted eating stories,
biases, and limiting beliefs,
and they're often ingrained patterns.
Change requires feeling empowered over personal choices.
And as a coach, that's a major aspect of your support.
Habit change itself is a huge area of coaching.
But today, we're going to explore six guideposts
for coaching habit change
and respecting the process
of moving out of emotional eating loops and cycles.
You might notice that these guideposts apply
to coaching in general, not just emotional eating.
But there's a reason for that, they're valuable.
We have a lot to cover today.
So let's dive in.
Grab your journal to brainstorm as we go.
Number one, take the long view.
Changing emotional eating habits, like health coaching,
isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.
It requires pacing.
It's about the journey, not just the destination.
Marathon runners don't simply get up 1 day
and decide to run 26.2 miles.
They train for months.
They have good days and bad days.
But little by little, they build up endurance
and prepare their bodies for the big event.
Throughout that event, they have to pace themselves
and tune into their bodies to avoid burning out.
Likewise, habits don't change overnight,
and coaching clients around changing emotional eating habits
means explaining what the process
will look like in the long run
and helping them respect the process
even when it's challenging.
Again, there are many possible metaphors and analogies here.
What other metaphors or analogies might be useful
when coaching clients around this?
Pause the video, and write down a few ideas.
Taking the long view
honors the bigger picture process of change.
Changing food relationships
is about more than the food itself.
It's about changing self-relationships and ways of being.
As Geneen Roth puts it,
"It's not a matter of changing what you eat.
It's a matter of changing how you live."
Taking the long view means connecting with the process.
This allows space to enjoy the process,
which leads to better results
because we're more likely to stick with it.
Connecting with the process can also lead to vulnerability,
but that's where you can provide support
through the guideposts we're covering today.
Finally, taking the long view
supports sustainable habit changes.
It's not about finding what works for you right now.
It's about finding what will work for you, well, forever.
Back to that marathon metaphor.
It requires spending your energy strategically
versus burning yourself out in a rapid change sprint
that's extreme and that exhausts you quickly.
This relates to the next point today.
Number two, nix the straight fix.
Coaching habit change is the anti quick fix approach,
which might feel very unfamiliar to your clients.
It's also a good check for you as a coach
because it reminds you
that your job isn't to fix your clients.
Your job is to guide their self-facilitation.
And the goal is sustainability.
The road there is often far from linear or even consistent.
It ebbs and flows.
Clients spend lifetimes accumulating information
about their bodies and about eating.
And now they have to unlearn all of that
and adopt new perspectives.
As a coach, you can continue to remind them
that it took them X amount of time
to get where they are right now,
and it won't go away overnight.
For example, taste buds change, but it takes time.
In her book Year of No Sugar, Eve Schaub jokes
that it took her kids less time to adapt to
and be okay with sugar substitutions than it took her.
But this makes sense, right?
She had a much longer "lifetime" of sugar than they did.
Nixing the straight fix
means not only helping clients take the long view
but also reaffirms that lag time is normal,
as is moving backward.
It's not about perfection.
Habit change requires consistency
and ongoing practice or training,
but that doesn't mean that every single day
will be better than the one before.
One last point, using the word fix implies
that there's something wrong or negative or lacking.
Many clients who struggle with food
already judge themselves.
It's so important to stay mindful of the language
you use with them.
There's nothing wrong with them,
and everyone eats emotionally sometimes, it's normal.
This relates to my next point.
Number three, keep it positive.
This is pretty straightforward.
Keeping it positive means starting sessions
by asking what's going well.
It means focusing on achievable and positive goals
that relate to larger values so that clients feel good
about the why behind any struggles
that come up along the way.
It means focusing on self-nourishment
by modeling neutral and nonjudgmental language
rather than focusing on perfection.
Keeping it positive is one great way to let clients lead
by continually asking them, "So how's that working for you?"
when they feel stuck in habits
or when they're exploring new approaches.
It's about using a strengths-based coaching approach.
Increasing clients' awareness of their strengths
and showing them that they have
all they need to get where they want to go.
Crowding out is another way of keeping it positive.
You're helping clients add in more beneficial strategies
and eating approaches
so that they don't feel deprived
with all that they have to give up.
Finally, keeping it positive
means bringing an air of lightness,
playful curiosity, and humor.
Maybe you say,
"Well, it sounds like that's not working for you."
Maybe you even have a buzzer for every time
a client uses the word diet or should.
Get creative, habit change is hard.
And the more enjoyable you can make the process,
the more you nudge clients
to keep moving through the challenges
and unstick unhelpful habits.
How else might you keep
the process of change positive for clients?
Pause the video, and write down a few ideas.
You have many tools in your tool belt, never forget that.
Number four, mobilize mindful action.
George Bernard Shaw once said,
"Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything."
A consultant is paid to give advice,
while an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach
provides the safe space needed for clients
to do their own work.
Supporting clients with emotional eating
is less about providing information
and more about guiding transformation.
As we've discussed, habit change requires changing mindsets,
the thoughts and beliefs clients have about themselves.
One question you can continually use around limiting beliefs
is this, "What would you gain by challenging these beliefs?"
Yet, ultimately, we are what we do.
Mobilizing mindful action is important
because actions can challenge beliefs
that have kept clients stuck.
Developing non-food coping strategies helps clients
realize that they don't need food to comfort them.
Focusing on developing nourishing relationships
can challenge assumptions that they aren't good enough.
Choosing to eat mindfully
can move clients out of limiting beliefs like,
"I'm weak because I have no self-control."
When it comes to habit change, procrastination is common.
This is part of why so many of us remain stuck for so long.
We just don't want to do it because we're comfortable
where we are, in the familiar,
yet putting it off decreases the odds
that we take action and make it happen.
So many clients will wait for the perfect time to dive in,
but the conditions will never be perfect.
As a coach, you can provide support
so that they feel more comfortable
starting under imperfect conditions.
Starting today increases the odds of success.
Let's keep going.
Number five, aim low.
Okay, this one might not seem so straightforward.
As a coach, isn't one of your jobs
to motivate clients to aim high,
reach for the moon, and achieve lasting transformation
beyond their wildest dreams?
Well, kind of.
But when it comes to habit change,
it's also important to keep it simple,
stick with the basics,
and move forward one step at a time.
Taking the long view
and nixing the fix often go hand in hand
with aiming low in order to feel more successful.
It's like how you learned
in your Health Coach Training Program
that when you underpromise and overdeliver,
your clients walk away feeling like
they gained more value from your work together
than if you'd promised them more value than they received.
If your client sets really lofty goals and then falls short,
he or she might feel like a failure
rather than appreciating successes.
Many clients will have developed learned helplessness.
They might feel less in control
because they've experienced continual failure,
for example, an inability
to lose weight with chronic dieting.
This is because there's no correspondence
between their actions and their outcomes.
They continually try to achieve a goal,
and they're met with the same obstacles over and over again.
So what do they do?
They eventually stop trying
because their subconscious brains attempts
to protect them from repeated pain.
As a result, clients might feel powerless to succeed
even as you coach them through obstacles.
In short, they're in a cycle of stuck,
and it requires some creativity
and aiming low to keep them moving.
Underpromising doesn't mean that you're lazy.
It just increases your chances of success.
Underpromising means that clients have opportunities
to hit their targets or even overdeliver.
Metaphors and analogies are valuable coaching tools
for framing the process of change.
As Shawn Achor describes it in The Happiness Advantage,
"Small successes can add up to major achievements.
All it takes is drawing that first circle in the sand."
Another metaphor, there's a movie with Bill Murray
called What About Bob?
One of the themes of the movie is taking baby steps.
As one character says, "All I have to do
is take one little step at a time, and I can do anything."
When clients succeed,
they feel empowered to keep moving forward
because they believe more in personal potential.
As an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach,
you can help clients aim low
by keeping it simple and making one small change at a time,
perhaps one notch below where they want to aim.
How else might you incorporate aiming low?
Pause the video, and write down a few ideas.
And finally, the last point today.
Number six, honor ongoing change.
Did you know that people with a fixed mindset,
the belief that abilities are fixed,
are less likely to flourish
than those with the growth mindset,
the belief that abilities can be developed?
Changing habits takes time.
Developing greater self-awareness is a process of unfolding,
peeling back layer by layer, and playing the detective.
Feel free to insert your own metaphors here.
The point here is that there's really no end point,
and that is a nugget of wisdom
that you can help clients understand.
Again, it's about taking the long view,
but it's also about honoring the fact
that clients continually change.
Change is constant.
We're all works in progress,
even if we think we're finished
and pretty much set for life.
What do you think about this quote,
"The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting,
and as temporary as all the people you've ever been"?
I'm going to leave you with that for now
because it's time to wrap up.
Emotional eating roots run deep.
Habits are often very difficult to change,
and there's no one-size-fits-all approach.
At the end of the day, it's bio-individual,
and no one's perfect.
That said, these six guideposts will be very useful for you.
You might even want to write them down somewhere
as a reminder of how much you can offer your clients
when you feel stuck as a coach.
Take the long view, nix the straight fix, keep it positive,
mobilize mindful action, aim low,
and honor ongoing change.
This week, you will have plenty of opportunities
to apply this material with exercises
like Weighing the Odds and Simplifying Change,
which you can find in your Learning Center.
How do you feel about change?
Use the Facebook group to share your thoughts
around this challenging topic.
That's all for today.
See you back here soon.