As long as I can remember in my time as a Personal Trainer, whenever someone would ask me about nutrition, I would reply with the most confident sentence. 

“Let's check out that food log”

The damn food log. Two weekdays and one weekend day. Take your pick, I don’t even care which days. Cherry pick your best behavior, I never cared. 

Well then so-and-so would come back in with their food log. Filled out ever so promptly. Only for me to say…

“Where are the measurements...how much of this did you eat?”

And we start the process all over again. 

Woof. I sucked. The good news is, after 13 years helping people build muscle and build better habits around fitness and nutrition, I found the answer. 

I didn’t talk about nutrition metrics. It totally isn’t my place. 

BUT, as a Personal Trainer, and those who are Trainers reading this know, clients need nutrition help and we’re often the first line to help. So what do we do? 

Let's check out that food log! But here are 3 things to look at to make yourself more informed and stay well within your scope of practice. 

1) Find the 80%. 

The good ‘ol fashion 80/20 rule in effect for nutrition! Kind of. What I’ve found is that humans are total creatures of habit. My guess is that of all the things your client(s) eat, about 80% of it is all the same stuff. Yet, your client will boast about how 20% of their dietary choices are ruining their progress. 

Not so fast my friend. 

Use the food log to find those 80% consistent food choices and start there. Where can we make small adjustments? Is it swapping this for that? Is it measuring this item to further understand it’s nutritional impact? 

Find the 80% and adjust that. The 20% isn’t the problem. 

2) Was it a meal or a snack? 

I recall a brief client conversation from this past summer…

Client X comes in with her food log, color coded I might add, and hands it over. 

Me: “Was this a meal or a snack” as I point to the Monday 10am food item. 

Client X: “It was a snack”

Me: “Well then what was this?” as I point to the next item. 

Client X: “It was a snack” 

Spoiler alert. This conversation continued in that format with every item throughout the day. 

Now, as you ask yourself, what’s wrong with so many snacks as long as the calorie numbers stayed in check? 

Nothing’s wrong with it. 

The purpose of the meal or snack question is to start having a conversation of eating with intent. So many times our clients don’t associate purpose with their food. We as humans consume food for a variety of reasons. 

Food can be comforting. Food can be social. Cooking food can be fun. Oh, and we get hungry. 

Talk to your clients about their intent behind their food choices. Was it a snack? Was it a meal? What was your intent with that selection? This is a great question to start making food less intimidating.  

3) What was your favorite thing you ate?

Along the same notion of the point above, we as Personal Trainers, can 100% help our clients become less intimidated by food and making nutritional choices. My second favorite question to ask my clients is “What was your favorite item in this food log?”.

Why?

Because the answers are amazing. 

Me: “I see you ate a turkey sandwich for lunch all three days. You must love sandwiches!”

Client: “I hate sandwiches. Oof.”

Conversation ensues about why would you choose something you hate? 

Me: “I see you cooked breakfast each day. Do you like to cook?”

Client: “I LOVE to cook, I wish I had more time to cook all my meals!”

Conversation ensues about strategies to open up time in the day to cook! 

These conversations go on and on but do not start unless the question “What was your favorite thing” is asked. A HUGE conversation opener around the positives of food choices for your client. Take down the barriers, make this process less intimidating. If we can knock down the wall, we can help our client(s) take action!