I once ran a six-week course about making small sustainable changes to your lifestyle. Things like eating breakfast, parking further away form work, folding the laundry while standing up, etc. I had a wonderful group of participants and they were really vulnerable and great about helping each other on their journey.

BUT

Almost every single one thought the course was going to be a diet where they lost weight. Maybe it hadn’t been sold to them properly or something, I’m not sure. So I was plagued with questions like this:

“Lucy, I know you keep saying that this isn’t about weight, but also I just really want to know… I’ve been making all these changes, when am I going to lose weight?”

There’s nothing more frustrating than a client who is so focused on appearance they have their blinders on to all the health gains they’ve made. This particular woman was sleeping better, getting fitter week by week, cooking more, and she was coming along to the sessions with a pep that she didn’t have several weeks ago. But she didn’t truly see all that progress because her goal was to lose weight.

And I hadn’t addressed that directly with her. I hadn’t taken the time to delve into why she wanted to lose weight. Where did that desire stem from? What beliefs did she have about weight loss? And underneath the weight loss goal, what was her true motivator?

It’s a mistake I made too many times to count when I was starting out as a dietitian. These days, as soon as the dreaded w-word is mentioned I don’t hesitate. I jump in with both feet to get to the root of this desire and to draw out a goal that’s focused on health gain, not weight loss.

I know many of my regular readers work in the health and wellness arena and you face this struggle, too. So I’ve created a free 10 minute training video that takes you through two different methods I use to shift my clients’ mindset from appearance to health gain.

Click here to access it and let me know how you go!