The nutritional coaching cycle

Nutritional coaching is a tool capable of providing individuals with knowledge, skills and habits that increase their confidence and motivation to become active entities in the care of their eating habits and achieve extraordinary results in their quality of life.

We must be clear that the nutritional coach does not replace the nutritionist, the latter is the only one qualified to assess the nutritional status of the patient, and design the appropriate nutritional guidelines for each individual; the work of the coaching will be added to help the patient to achieve their goals.

The coach will not provide magical solutions, he will not tell them what to do, his function is to help people to think for themselves, discover their potentials, find solutions to their problems and the way to follow to reach their goals.

Nutritional coaching, like other forms of coaching, must be done following a planned process in which different stages are linked together, so that the client establishes his or her own goals and develops an action plan to achieve them.

The following chart shows a sequence of 5 stages, a very advisable way to plan nutritional coaching, especially when going through the cycle for the first time; however, in some situations, the coach must be flexible and return to previous stages, to reorient the process according to the achievement of the objectives.

Stages of nutritional coaching.

Evaluation of the current situation: The coach should evaluate the current situation by means of questions and observation. The guidelines to follow for the formulation of the questions are the following:

• The questions to be asked by the coach should make the client think, feel or react differently about the issue at hand. They should help to reconfigure the client's views about the problem. For example: People know what healthy eating habits are, yet few are able to make lasting changes. In most cases the nutritional problem is not caused by lack of information, but by the practice of inadequate patterns and habits strongly rooted, which require the client to think, examine, feel and commit to modify their behavior.

• All questions should be planned in order to obtain the necessary concrete information; for example, people who decide to undergo nutritional coaching have usually failed in previous attempts and are negatively influenced by repeated relapses. Before any coaching process it will be necessary to take these aspects into account in order to be able to make a timely intervention.

• Questions should be open-ended as they allow ideas to materialize and are more effective in generating accountability. Open-ended questions begin with adverbs or interrogative pronouns such as: When, who, what, where, which, which, for what.

• The coach should practice active listening, focusing completely on what the client is saying or trying to say, following the client's ideas, showing respect for the client's interests and needs.

• Questions should be asked to assess the client's emotions, and try to make the client aware of them. For example, most underweight or obese people are victims of prejudice and discrimination, therefore, the coach must be aware of these stigmas to communicate acceptance and security to the client, to help them understand and manage their emotions in order to achieve greater well-being and quality of life.

Goal setting: For the determination of goals in the nutritional coaching process, the following aspects should be taken into account:

• The coach should get the coachee to determine the goals by himself. To set their goals the client should ask themselves: Why do I want to achieve it? and How much time do I need?

For most people who ask for nutritional coaching, the most important thing is to lose or gain weight as quickly as possible. However, the success of the process is achieved by keeping other goals in mind. The coach, using questioning techniques, should make them reflect on the need to achieve other goals, such as the modification of certain eating habits, the practice of physical activity and a healthy lifestyle.

When setting the time needed to achieve the goal, it is normal to set deadlines that are too short, which do not allow to achieve the goals as expected; to avoid discouragement, the client should recognize all that has been done so far and focus on achieving the goal, with smaller but more secure steps.

In coaching, final goals and performance or development goals should be established. End goals: In a nutritional coaching process one of the end goals could be: Achieve a healthy relationship with food for the rest of your life. This final goal is supported by other partial or developmental goals, such as: Eat without anxiety and without being dominated by cravings.

Developmental goals: These are the goals that we believe increase the chances of reaching our final goal. They are essential tools to stimulate inspiration, motivation and performance. They also allow control and periodic evaluation of the process. A partial or developmental goal in the field of nutritional coaching could be: To stop following unhealthy nutritional patterns.

Goals should be clearly understood by all and specific; overly broad or global goals are a hindrance to the coachee's development or performance.

When some of the developmental goals are not met, the coach should keep the following principles in mind:

• The coachee does not fail intentionally, so regardless of the achievement of the goals, the value of what has been achieved should be highlighted to regain the individual's self-acceptance.
• Continuing to strive to recover from a defeat or failure to achieve a goal is a strength for the coaching process as it provides an opportunity for learning and growth for the coach and coachee.

Study and choice of available alternatives: At this point a list of possible alternatives should be created. It is more important to consider as many options as possible than the feasibility or viability.

Coaching processes can be weakened when excellent creative alternatives are rejected on the basis of often false conjectures.

To obtain a greater number of options, the following guidelines should be taken into account:

• Create a suitable environment so that the coachee can express all his ideas without fear of rejection.

• The coach should actively listen to all proposals as well as the rationale for their use.

• The coach should write down all the proposals in order of appearance without establishing hierarchies or singling out the ones he/she considers most appropriate.

• After drawing up the list of all the alternatives considered by the coachee, the advantages and disadvantages of each idea should be evaluated and their feasibility assessed. To do this, it is recommended that each option be assigned a score on a scale of one to ten.

• In case of not being able to find adequate alternatives, the coach can suggest to the coachee some option to consider; he/she can also indicate the reading or study of some material that will allow him/her to consider other alternatives or suggest to ask for the intervention of a nutrition specialist.

Elaboration of an action plan: The action plan breaks down the goals into small steps, and is the guide for making changes. Planning the action plan will help both coach and coachee to understand and define all the elements needed to achieve the goals and will facilitate prioritization and decision making. The following considerations should be taken into account when developing the action plan:

• Actions should be subdivided taking into account the goals set for the short, medium and long term. Thus, annual, monthly, weekly and daily plans can be suggested, in order to carry out daily actions that will bring you closer to your goal.

• The action plan should be carried out wit