How to keep clients motivated for their nutrition resolutions

From dietary recommendations to motivational strategies, here are some of the best ways to keep your clients motivated for their nutrition resolutions. 

It’s not uncommon for your clients to have certain health, wellness, and nutrition goals. Whether they want to lose some weight, drink more water, be more active, improve their diet, or get better sleep, your clients have come to you for additional guidance. But while they may have good intentions, it can be easy for these goals to fall by the wayside as time goes on. 

So how can you help keep your clients motivated? Here are some of the best strategies to motivate clients as they move towards their nutrition goals. 

Set small, achievable nutrition resolutions

If a goal is too ambitious, there is a higher likelihood that your client will give up due to a lack of motivation. So, to help your client stay motivated, you can help them understand how to set small, achievable goals. This will help you identify some smart goals that work for your clients and their lifestyle. 

While you can cover goal setting in your sessions, it’s important to have a place where you and your client can easily keep track of progress. On Nutrium, you can register short-term goals that your client wants to accomplish and monitor them throughout the weeks.

TIP: Before the first appointment, you can send a nutrition assessment form to your client to understand their goals. Learn how in this article.  

Utilize a current routine

You could create the most amazing nutrition plan and choose the best fitness challenges, but if these don’t work with your clients’ routine, all of your hard work will be pointless. 

As such, it’s best to create a nutrition plan around your client’s current routine to ensure the best chance of success. For instance, if your client wants to eat more fruits and vegetables but doesn’t have enough time in the day to cook, you can help them learn how to meal prep with healthy foods. 

TIP: Here’s the ultimate step-by-step guide to help you create meal plans that your clients will actually stick to.

The same thing goes for fitness goals. While going to the gym is an option, you can encourage your clients to incorporate more physical activity into their daily activities, like taking the stairs at work, parking farther away from their car, or walking around during a phone call. 

Focus on adding instead of subtracting

It can be easy to focus on foods to eliminate. However, you can encourage your clients to bump up the nutrition to their current meals with a few easy changes. 

• Sprinkle nuts and seeds to yogurt bowls, smoothies, or salads. 
• Incorporate green vegetables into soups, skillets, smoothies, eggs, or pasta dishes.
• Include one serving of fruit with breakfast. 
  
  

Make it fun 

Whether your client’s goal is weight loss or improving overall health, you can make nutrition fun and exciting so things don’t get monotonous. 

For example, listening to music while cooking can make this task feel like a fun activity. Or if your client has children, you can encourage them to find easy ways to get them involved in the kitchen. 

You can also give your clients new recipes or food ideas to try throughout the week. Having different flavor profiles, snack options, or dinners can help provide variety and increase client motivation.

Offer nutrition education

You can work with your clients to better understand food labels, cooking techniques, healthy eating patterns, and meal planning. By providing easy to follow strategies, your clients can start to incorporate some of your nutrition education into their lifestyle and further boost their health.

Follow-up between appointments

Your client may lose motivation in-between appointments, so follow up with them in the interim to make sure they are doing well. This also gives them the opportunity to ask questions, give an update on how things are going, and allow you to provide feedback if necessary.

TIP: Here’s how you can follow-up with your clients through Nutrium.

Plan for potential obstacles in their nutrition resolutions

While we would all prefer to have life go as planned, it doesn’t always happen that way. When obstacles arise, it can be easy to lose motivation, so in your sessions, you can work with your clients to plan for any unexpected scenario. For instance, if your client has a last-minute dinner arrangement pop up, you can work with them to make better nutrition choices based on the menu offerings. The same goes for exercise. If something comes up and your client can’t make it to the gym that day, you can encourage them to go easy on themselves and fit in a walk if possible. The main key here is to help your clients be flexible and not be too hard on themselves if an obstacle arises. 

Use Nutrium to make everything easier

With Nutrium, you can determine your client's goals together with them, and add them to their profile in the software.

This way, you can both check your goals, their progress, and have a feeling of accomplishment when a goal is met. 

Summary

As a dietitian, you can help your clients stay motivated to reach their health, wellness, and nutrition goals. Whether it’s adding more green vegetables to their diet, incorporating movement into their day, or providing new recipes, you can work with clients to establish small, achievable goals that will improve their overall health and well-being. 

We are always working toward bringing you the best nutrition content, so we welcome any suggestions or comments you might have! Feel free to write to us at info@nutrium.com.

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