Guide To Keep Clients Motivated in Nutrition Counseling

While many of your clients would walk into your office, hoping to change their lifestyle. However, only a few can really stick to your treatment plan and follow it to the tee. Most of them will back out and revert back to their old habit? 

But why do you lose these other clients in the course of your treatment? 

You lose them because these clients have lost their confidence and are demotivated to continue your treatment plan. They either found it too difficult or are unsure of their potential to commit to it. 

Hence, it is extremely important that you keep an eye on your client’s motivational levels and pump up their spirit whenever needed. 

Guide to keep clients motivated

Why is it necessary to keep your clients motivated?

The motivation of your clients is directly correlated to how efficiently they will be able to follow their treatment plans and show the desired results. There are multiple other reasons why it is important that you stay on top of your client’s motivation levels:

  • It helps your clients reach their goals quickly 
  • It can increase the customer retention rate of your practice
  • It presents you as a responsible and trustworthy dietitian 
  • It can considerably increase your goodwill in the market

What causes demotivation

nutrition professionals

In order to understand the root causes that might demotivate a person, medical experts and nutrition professionals have been diligently researching to help practitioners better serve their clients. Here are the 3 major reasons that experts believe leads to demotivation:

Unrealistic Goals 

Clients often tend to overestimate their abilities to stick with their workout routines or diet plans and when they fail to meet their own expectations, they feel like a failure and lose their motivation to continue. 

No sense of progress 

When your clients are starting their new treatment plan, they want to see results quickly. They want to see some signs of progress that will provide the assurance that they will succeed. 

Negative Reinforcement 

Continuously failing to meet one’s expectations leads them to negatively reinforce themselves. No matter how great your treatment is going, one mishap or setback can make them question their ability to succeed and demotivate them from continuing the treatment plan. 

How to keep your clients motivated

keep clients motivated

Here are a few handy tips that will help you stay on top of your client’s motivation levels:

Constant communication 

It is very important to stay in contact with your clients constantly. This way you can instantly solve their queries and provide them feedback for each and every session. Constantly communicating can also help you analyze their motivation levels and allow you to take proper measures before they start to get demotivated. 

Setting personalized goals 

Each client is different, and so are their healthcare requirements. Some can handle intensive routines, some can’t. If you try to treat all your clients with the same treatment plan, then you won’t be able to get the optimum results for each of them. Hence, you should personalize the treatment plans for each client and set treatment goals accordingly. 

Send them reminders and follow-up messages 

Your clients are putting themselves completely out of their comfort zones and trying to improve their lives. So, clearly, they are at a delicate stage, prone to leave everything behind and revert back to their previous lifestyles.

However, you can help them adapt faster to your newly designed treatment plan if you stay on top of them and send them reminders for each progressing step. You can send them reminders for workouts or pre-determined meal times whenever the time for them arrives. 

Adjust the treatment to their liking 

One of the best ways to ensure that your clients stick to their treatment plan is to craft it in a manner that can be fun for them. How can you do that? By adding elements that they like and removing those that they don’t. 

Adjusting the treatment plan to your client’s liking can make it easier for them to transition into a healthier lifestyle and make sure that they stick to it. 

Provide them an analysis of their growth 

One of the best ways to motivate your clients is to show how far they have come with the help of your treatment plan. For that, you can regularly share progress reports to show them how much their hard work has paid off. 

Help them deal with frustration 

Another feeling that accompanies demotivation is frustration. Constantly failing to accomplish your target can make your clients frustrated and develop a negative attitude towards the treatment. 

Hence, it is necessary that you help them deal with this frustration. You can help them with some constructive criticism and guide them on how to improve their performance. On certain occasions, providing them with some counseling can also be helpful.

Assure them about the possibility of attaining their goals

The first question that your client will ask you is, ‘Is that possible?’, ‘Can I really have a toned figure?’, ‘Can I really fight my diabetes with this treatment?’. And even with a positive answer, the majority of them will still stay in disbelief that they can achieve their goals. 

You need to assure them that it is possible to attain their healthcare goals and live a healthier and fitter life. You can share case stories, or moreover, introduce them to your clients who have actually attained their healthcare goals. Nothing is more convincing than a live example. 

Create a wellness or fitness challenge 

Do you know what is an even more driving motivation than compassion or care? It's a competition. It is human nature that we want to prove to ourselves that we can be better than ordinary. This competitive spirit gives them a reason to improve their performance and reach past their limits. 

If you want to learn how to run a successful wellness challenge, check out our blog, titled ‘How to run online wellness challenges for your Nutrition Business’. 

Conclusion 

The success and failure of your treatment plan will be decided on the basis of how intensively your clients adhere to it. And their adherence is directly affected by their motivational levels. 

By influencing their motivation levels and making them feel more confident about themselves, you can drastically improve their performance and help them to reach their goals quickly. Successful nutrition practitioners have recorded some handy tricks that they have used over the years, and this article tries to give you a few pointers from them. 

If you follow this guide, you will get a deeper understanding of what leads your clients to demotivation and how you can help them stay motivated throughout their treatment plan. 

Ready to experience the power of zoconut?

Take our platform for a spin today! Click below to book a personalized demo and explore its capabilities first hand.