effective communication with your coach
Working with an online nutrition coach offers a lot of flexibility, but it also requires effective communication between both the coach (me) and the client (you).
This blog post is going to go over some best practices when it comes to communicating with your coach via messaging in the Apotheo app.
what’s good
Letting me know how you’re doing and how you’re feeling. This could be happy, glad, excited, frustrated, mad, angry, stressed…you get it. It’s ok to share this - sometimes it helps to talk it out.
Using separate paragraphs or bullet points for each thought/point. This makes it so much easier to read on my end. That can mean quicker and more efficient replies from me.
Asking me questions or suggesting things. This is a two way street. If you’re asking questions, you’re thinking. This is what we want so that you develop long-term skills to eventually do this on your own.
Here are some examples:
Example 1:
This week went well. I was able to stick to my macros pretty well, except for Saturday when we had date night - I went a little over :)
My habits for this week were challenging. I ate 2 servings of vegetables each day. I’m having a hard time eating 3 servings per day. Could we discuss any tips you have?
My hunger levels are pretty normal. I think this amount of food is good for me.
My energy and sleep have been great!
Example 2:
My energy dipped a bit this week. I know we are in a fat loss phase with less food. Is that normal?
Sleep has been good. My habit of developing a sleep routine has really made a difference in helping me fall asleep faster each night
I am having a tough time eating 55g of fat each day - I found that I’m 10-15g over most days. Any suggestions?
What’s Not
Messages that are very short and provide no specifics.
Telling me everything that happened this past week.
Example 1:
I’m so frustrated!!!
Example 2:
This week started out well, but then my boss had me stay late on Monday. That’s screwed up my whole week because then I missed my workout on Monday. That was not good. I weighed myself and I was up 2 lbs on Tuesday - I hate the scale! This reminds me that I need a new scale. I also had to add some other things to my Amazon cart as a reminder to buy paper towels and deodorant. I definitely don’t want to stink. Back to scale, it seems to be moving in the wrong direction - what am I doing wrong? I haven’t been snacking too much, except for Wednesday when I ate too many chips while making dinner. Other than that I’m doing well.
I’m hoping you can see the differences here. Too little and too much make it hard to figure out what’s going on.