4 Ways to Help Your Clients Make Healthy Behavior Change

Do you ever lead a Zoom meeting with no agenda?⁣

I do this every week during the Health Mindset Certificate Coaching program and every month in the alumni group, and we have the best conversations!

Coaches share their tough client cases during these Zoom meetings, and I provide guidance and teaching.⁣

Eventually, the Health Mindset Coaching Certification grads are able to share client success stories with the group based on what they've learned throughout the program. 

In this blog post, I'm going to identify four strategies you can use to help your clients create behavior change, all of which are based on behavior change research. I'll share it through an example of a specific coaching experience to give you more insight into how you can help your client lose weight, adopt a growth mindset, and otherwise create behavior change.

This will also give you some insight into what it's like inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification and what you can learn for your coaching practice.

How to Help Clients Who Are Stuck

In a recent call, Evelyn, one of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification grads, shared a story about a client who used to be afraid to come into her office because she thought Evelyn would act like the food police and judge her. Now, this client feels empowered, like she can make the food choices she wants and is becoming the person she wants to be. 

Developing healthy behaviors can be challenging for clients, especially when they are dealing with limiting beliefs, such as thinking you will judge them or think poorly of them. Fortunately, there are effective behavioral interventions you can use when helping a client change their behavior.

Next time your client is stuck and struggling to improve their health behaviors, try these four strategies with them.

Strategy 1: Discrepancy Identification

In Evelyn's case, the client struggled between who she thinks she is and who she wants to be⁣, which is a very common discrepancy that creates discomfort and makes it difficult for a person to change their behavior. 

However, our clients don't always realize this discrepancy exists⁣, and we can't just tell our clients that that is the case⁣. That could come off as crass or mean.

Instead, Evelyn guided her client to recognize this through the reflective listening skills she learned in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. 

With that guidance, Evelyn's client was able to see the discrepancy for herself and make the necessary behavior changes to become the person she wants to be. 

These changes, of course, didn't happen overnight. It's something Evelyn and her client had to work on because behavior change and habit-building can ⁣take some time.

But once the client became aware of the discrepancy, it was easier for her to develop new behaviors and habits that were more aligned with her goals.

All of this leads us to the next strategy...

Strategy 2: ⁣Awareness Building

You can't change what you don't know needs changing.⁣

If you want to help your client change behavior patterns then they have to identify what behaviors are holding them back. Only then can they adopt health behaviors.

In this instance, Evelyn helped her client cultivate awareness around triggers⁣ using questions she got from the Health Mindset Coaching Certification.

These questions allowed her client to better understand herself and helped Evelyn be a better coach⁣. Once they figured out what the triggers were, they were able to address them by creating if-then plans for her future.

Once your client is aware of where they need to change their behavior and they have a plan for how to navigate challenges, changing behavior becomes much easier, especially when they have your support and guidance.

Strategy 3: Revealing Core Beliefs

We love behavior change research, so, in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, we touch on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and how to leverage it in your fitness coaching practice

Evelyn helped her client break negative thought patterns and discover her core beliefs about food.⁣

Discovering a client's core beliefs is such an important step when it comes to making mindset shifts and long-term change⁣s.

Coaches can help their clients create behavior change by identifying their client's core beliefs that need to change so the client stops self-sabotaging and regains control of their actions and emotions.

By revealing core beliefs and uncovering any self-sabotaging behaviors, coaches can help their clients shift the focus to changing to developing healthy behaviors.

Strategy 4: Understanding Neuroplasticity

"I feel like a broken record," said every coach ever⁣.

Behavior change takes time (and brain change does too—aka neuroplasticity), and that might mean you need to chat with your clients about the same thing more than once.

Evelyn knew this and was patient with her client, and, ultimately, patience is a super underrated coaching strategy, especially when we're aiming to create behavior change.

There's a reason that I'm always talking about things like cultivating a growth mindset on Instagram, this blog, and inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. It's because repetition is necessary for people to remember what you're saying. ⁣

Coaches, check your mindset⁣.

Just because you need to share information more than once doesn't make your clients incompetent⁣. In fact, repetition is a tool.

You can create new pathways in your brain, but effort and repetition are required.⁣

Just like you studied and reviewed and repeated new techniques you've implemented in your coaching practice, you need to repeat things to your clients when you are helping them improve their health and create behavior change.

You are there to support your clients and provide them with resources, and sometimes that means repeating yourself.

How to Improve Your Coaching Practice

These are four major lessons from just ONE client⁣.

It's so cool to see the Health Mindset Coaching Certification coaches build confidence and positively impact so many lives.⁣

The coaches who join the Health Mindset Coaching Certification benefit from more client adherence, retention, and success without pulling their hair out in the process.

They also benefit from the resources they find not just within the certification, but with one another as we have conversations like this.

If you want to do more than just help people lose weight, if you want to help people create a healthy lifestyle and healthy behaviors that will positively impact their future, then the Health Mindset Coaching Certification is right for you.

You can learn how to apply these evidence-based methods to your coaching practice by joining the next round of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. 

In this 13-week program, I'll teach you how to apply research and science to your fitness coaching so you feel more confident in your abilities to help clients with the psychological aspects of health and fitness.

If you're constantly struggling with non-adherent clients and feel unable to help those with self-sabotaging behaviors, all-or-nothing thinking, or mindset barriers, this is for you!

Click here to join the waitlist for the next round of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, and you'll receive five FREE primer lessons that you can immediately implement in your coaching practice.

See my original Instagram post here.

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IG:@coachkaseyjo @healthmindsetcert