As a gym owner, how much emphasis are you placing on nutrition at your Affiliate? Ensuring nutrition is a priority for every member will increase your retention rate and amplify the results of your program.
Understanding the Need for Nutrition
When meeting with new clients, consider how many of your clients are looking to lose weight, decrease body fat percentage or manage a disease. There is a common misconception that doing the workouts without the nutrition component will yield the results clients are looking for. The appropriate nutrition directly plays a role in each of these goals by as much as 70 to 80 percent. When the focus is on nutrition, you are more likely to see results faster and therefore, increase overall retention.
Starting to Prioritize Nutrition
The initial challenge of shifting the mindset to prioritize nutrition at an Affiliate includes: Understanding how to talk about nutrition with clients, ensuring all the Coaches can articulate the same program and starting with nutrition from the first initial client meeting. Let’s look at how we can do each one of these to kick-off your focus on nutrition.
Learn new client’s nutrition habits by asking questions during their initial meeting and on-ramp sessions. Asking questions sets the foundation for understanding the client’s lifestyle. This will also help in goal setting at a later time:
- Can you walk me through a typical day of meals?
- What do your portions look like for each component of your meal?
- What types of foods are included in each meal?
- When do you eat?
- Do you typically eat out or prepare your foods?
- Do you travel and how does that impact your eating habits?
Ensure all Coaches understand and buy into the same nutrition program. Before starting any nutrition program, every Coach at the gym should understand and believe in the program so that mixed messages are not being delivered to clients:
- Implement learning sessions with the Coaches regarding the nutrition program.
- Provide factual data and results from the nutrition program.
- Provide talking points to the Coaches regarding the program.
- Practice meal planning with the Coaches.
Understand how to talk about nutrition on a daily basis so that it becomes automatic for all Coaches and clients.
- Each client should have a unique nutrition plan based on their goals, and this should be the focus of conversations.
- Conversations should be centered around goals and action steps to reaching those goals. Examples: A client who is eating healthy but is not seeing results may need support with tracking and portion size. A client who eats out every day may need help making healthy swaps and meal preps.
Setting a Baseline
During a client’s first visit, you want to collect an appropriate baseline to track their progress. We don’t want to focus on the number on the scale, so doing biometric testing will provide a complete view of the client’s starting point. Once the testing is complete, interpret the data for the client. Most clients don’t realize where they actually are in regards to BMI and how it is impacted by nutrition.
Integrating Nutrition Into Your On-Ramp
Have you considered adding nutrition into your on-ramp or Foundations program? Here’s an example of how it would look:
- Day 1 The Plate Method: Explain to clients how to create a balanced plate.
- Day 2 Liquids: Explain to clients the importance of water and liquids to avoid.
- Day 3 Fueling for Workouts: Eating appropriately before and after workouts.
- Day 4 Eating Out: Eating out while sticking to a balanced plan.
From there, the client has a foundation to start on their nutrition journey.
Putting it All Together
Nutrition should be at the top of your priority list if you are looking to take the member experience to the next level. Once you make nutrition the foundation of your Affiliate, you will see the lifestyle changes happening in your clients. In future blog posts, we will discuss how to address nutrition with athletes and kids.
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