MODULE 2

WEIGHT & BODY IMAGE

Section 4

Here’s a great way to do an intake with any weight loss client that will maximize your effectiveness.

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Greetings once again, my friends. This is Mark David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We are in a wonderful conversation about weight. We are diving into really this fascinating topic, this beautifully complex topic, and this topic that needs a lot of newness, needs to be freshened up. We need to approach weight and its loss with a heck of a lot more compassion, skill, understanding in depth. So now's the time to talk about how to sit down with your new weight loss client and have a conversation with them. So I'm calling this, uh, these next three parts, your intake questionnaire for weight loss clients. And when I say questionnaire, ooh, that's, that's the best term I can come up with because that's what we're used to thinking about. A questionnaire, a list of questions to ask. Really, what I want you to know is that in your first session with a client, this is far more than a questionnaire. This is a conversation. And what I am doing is presenting to you questions to ask within a conversation such that you can begin to understand your client, and your client can begin to understand you and how you work. So I'm gonna take a few moments here to build up to the questions. I'm gonna take you through each question, and I'm gonna explain to you why I ask it. So again, the following, and it's gonna be, you know, maybe 50 plus questions. The following is gonna be a sample intake questionnaire. You're using it for your weight loss clients. So I want you to know in advance before your client comes to the first session, you know, why are they coming to see you? So that's something you need to know. So hopefully somebody doesn't just set up an appointment with you, you've communicated with them by phone, by email. What's the reason you're coming to see me for what's your primary complaint? And this is a guideline for a conversation. This is not something that you print out on a sheet and ask someone to write down or fill out at all. I do not believe in most written questions. Uh, I've done every which way of working with clients. Um, people go into a different place when they are writing out a questionnaire. They like to get Through it. They access a different part of their brain. And when you ask questions in a questionnaire, you can't see a person's reaction to the question. You can't hear their tone of voice. You can't see their body language. You can't see the smile they have on their face or the fear they have on their face when you talk about dessert. You can't see when you say the word dessert, if they get all fearful or if they get all happy. So there is a ton of information that you are gleaning from your client in a conversation. So in the approach that I teach, you are never giving your client honestly, a handout to fill out. Um, yes, you might have other handouts or, uh, other questionnaires that you invent. What I am suggesting to you is that a written document gives you virtually nothing, even a dietary intake. I will never, ever in the history of humankind, there is no reason why I would ever give a person a fill out form. Tell me what you eat for breakfast. Tell me what you, for snacks, tell me what you eat for lunch. You're not gonna get the right information. You are gonna miss so much because you're not interacting with a human being. And whenever I filled out a form, uh, in any kind of doctor's office, I, um, I have filled out such lengthy forms. And then, uh, and then the practitioner looks at it for like a minute or less right in front of me. How could they possibly see anything? Yeah, they're scanning for, oh, does he have cancer or does he have heart disease? Is something jumping off a page, my friends. This is about diving into somebody's personal world, their inner world, their dietary world, their eating challenge, their complex, um, relationship with weight. You have to be talking to them. So I want you to consider avoiding most fill in forms that you've ever worked with or see, I'm gonna say to you, we can learn fantastically much more by asking the same questions in the moment. People will give you different answers when you ask them a question directly, when you're looking them in the eye, when you're being personal with them, when you're being curious with them writing down the answer to a deeply personal question on an impersonal questionnaire, what do you really think you're gonna get that's like going on a first date and instead of going on the date, uh, and, and, and you're looking, you're looking to find a life partner. And then you give the person a questionnaire. How old do you, how much money do you make? How have you been married before? What are you looking for in a partner? Really? Is that how you're gonna get to know someone? Do you really think they're gonna give you honest, straightforward answers? So yes, if you choose, you can print these questions out and refer to them in your session from a sheet or a device. You can also improvise and go off on tangents as you go along. So this questionnaire, this series of questions that I'm about to give you, I want you to feel free to tweak it however you like so it's not hard and fast. And if you're new to this, and if you're new to this work, then I highly recommend that you kind of follow this series of questions as best you can just so you can start to learn this work.
So key reminders. When you're doing your first weight loss session with a client, your job is to relax and listen and create a safe space. Create a container for your client. I want you to be conversational and friendly. You must be in a conversation. You must be friendly. You must do your best ongoingly to wipe and wash all the judgments through and from your system. Be curious. Judgments will come up your opportunity to let them go. What can be a heavy topic for your clients, my friends? So you gotta respect that. You have to remember, you're walking in sensitive territory with a lot of people. So I want you to think of keeping things light. If you're sitting there and asking them questions that you're reading from a sheet, and you're talking in a monotone voice, how long have you been trying to lose weight? When what, what kind of diets have you tried to lose weight? If that's what you're doing on a first date, say goodbye to that person. Um, your job is to create a relationship between two humans where that human can trust you and you feel like you can trust them. So you're letting your clients silently and energetically know that you unconditionally accept them for who they are right now. They don't need to lose a single pound more for you to love them, accept them, or approve of them. That's how I approach every weight loss client. I mean that you're focusing on them. You're not focusing on your fear of fixing them or your fixation on helping them lose specific amounts of pounds of body fat.
I can't tell you how important it is to set this context in your being. And, and if it's difficult for you, no worries. What I'm asking you to do here is difficult to relax and listen and create a container for your client and be conversational and friendly and nonjudgmental and curious. While the person sitting on the other side of you wants to lose their twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred fifty pounds like 10 years ago, and they're stressed and they're anxious. Yes, I'm asking you to do something difficult and this is what's gonna make you successful. This is what's gonna make you become the best practitioner you can become. This is what is going to help the relationship between you and your client. Take root, a relationship has to have roots in order to endure. So you are creating roots in your first and your second and your third sessions. You are creating a substance for the relationship to grow on and from. So the way you create an ongoing relationship is you create trust, you look a person in the eye and you treat them like a human being. I know you know this, but I'm saying it anyway because so many of us come into the professional relationship with a client or a patient, and we go into this weird headspace. We think we have to adopt this voice. Okay, Mrs. Client, um, I am here to help you. So I'm going to ask you questions. I need you to answer them accurately. Nobody wants to be talked to like that. Even if they think they do, they don't.
I'm inviting my client in and I'm talking to them like I care. Like they're a new best friend.
Don't buy into their urgency around weight loss. Don't buy into their beliefs about what should work or shouldn't work. Don't buy into their silent subtle bullying you into believing that your job is to make them lose X amount of weight. That's not your job. Your job is to not help a person lose the amount of pounds that they say they wanna lose. If you think that's your job, I suggest you don't do this job because you will be unhappy and miserable and not successful in the long term. Your job is to help your client reach their highest goal in life. You know what that is? To be the best possible version of who they could possibly be in this world to reach their potential, their God-given destiny to express the beautiful content of their acorn so they can grow into their mighty oak. And you're here to help them reach their highest goal through the vehicle of weight loss. Weight loss is the doorway. So they're coming to talk to you about weight loss because that's what's most important to them. That's what they're focused on. That's what they're worried about. And quite frankly, they've been unsuccessful. I will bet you that 95 out of a hundred clients that you ever see around weight loss, at least that amount, you are not their first rodeo. You are not their first attempt to lose weight. They've already dieted. They've already tried different things. They've already exercised. They might have seen other practitioners. They've read books, they've been online, they've done this, they've done that. You are not the first. So what I'm telling you is most of the time you are dealing with a weight loss refugee.
Somebody who's a little bit shell shocked or unclear or uncertain or upset about their journey because they are not where they wanna be. And it's probably not for lack of trying. So you are here to help them be the best possible version of who they are. They think they're coming to see you to lose a bunch of body pounds. Yes, you want to help them get where they want to go. You wanna help them lose weight, especially if they have weight to lose. And you understand that this is a whole different kind of journey than what your client thinks it is. I've told you, you always need to be willing to lose a client. Meaning you're here to be real honest and to help guide them into a higher consciousness and awareness to help move them outta toxic beliefs. Self attack, old and outdated science, self-limiting beliefs. You're here to help your clients step into the light. You're here to help them have a better relationship with your, with their body. So we are guiding our clients, we're mentoring them. We're befriending them. You're not here to overload them with all kinds of cool information and insights that you think you know. You are not here to hurl facts at them. Be careful not to overwhelm your client in any way, particularly with facts. And here's what we're gonna do. And here's all the things you have to practice. And here's everything you need to do personally, emotionally, spiritually, nutritionally. Know my friends. You gotta learn how to be patient. You have to learn how to move at a slow natural pace because no human has ever lost weight by being stressed out. And okay, what I gotta do, what I gotta eat? What do I have to, how? How should I exercise? That's what's going on in your client's head. That voice that I just said, you need to
recalibrate with them. You need to help them slow down, be present, embody, get in their body, find their natural pace, their natural appetite, a more natural way of eating for their body, a more natural way of living, such that their natural metabolism can shine forth. And from that place, our true, natural, sustainable weight becomes possible. It's as simple as that. Not easy, but that is the simplicity of the concept. Okay, a few more reminders. Working with weight is an easy, my friends, you're doing some of the most difficult and challenging work in the eating and nutritional universe. Why? Because there's so much collective pain and darkness in this realm. Why? There's so much unsuccess in this realm. Why there's so much nonsense. There's so much hurt in this realm. There's so much misleading energy in this realm. There is so much, so many false promises put forth by the experts and by the $500 billion a year worldwide weight loss industry. So first and foremost, you have to be general and kind and compassionate with yourself as a practitioner, knowing that this is not easy. And you have to be patient and trust in your client's journey, trust in your own journey as a practitioner, because for you, the practitioner, this is indeed a learning journey. Every client is the next step in your learning journey. It never stops. The learning journey with clients never stops. You'll get better and better as you practice this work. And remember that it's honorable and beautiful work. And you are stepping out to the leading edge of how to work with weight. That's what you are doing. You're a pioneer if you're doing it this way. If you're doing it the old way of eat less and exercise more, you are doing the same tired old strategy that we've been saying since the 1960s. That works for a few percent of people.
So my friends, the essence of the intake, essence of the intake. Um, again, you don't need to follow this exactly at all, but I'm suggesting to you it is a wonderful template. It's a great starting point for this work. The idea is to develop a good, logical, effective set of questions. The idea is that you are getting to know your client, your questions. Here's something I really want you to hear. Your questions by themselves are educational. They are part of the coaching, healing, transformational counseling practice.
That's why I'm not asking people to answer questions on a sheet. My questions are meant to inform my cl yes, my questions to my client. They're gonna help me gather information. You bet. I'm gathering information, gathering information. I'm listening, I'm listening. I'm gathering information. But the nature of my questions, you wanna learn about a person, listen to the kind of questions they ask. That'll tell you so much of what you need to know about a person, about the questions they ask you.
As you're asking questions of your clients, they're learning about how you work. They're learning about what's important to you. You're asking them questions that I guarantee you they've never been asked before. Especially in the context of weight loss. Why is she asking me questions about my parents, my family, my work, how fast I eat?
How come come we haven't gotten to the dietary intake yet? 'cause I always do that last. You're telling your client what's important. You're moving them in a direction. You'll see what I mean. I want you to be really, really clear. You are not, not not interviewing your client. Okay? Tell me, Mr. And Mrs. Client, what do you eat at this time of day? Tell me about your relationship with your parents, starting with your mother first and then second your father. Ah, no,
you're not merely asking them a bunch of questions so you can collect in information. You having a getting to know you, conversation between two people. I want you to drop into your humanity. I want you to pretend you're in a coffee shop. Be personable, be real. Be human, be you. Be humble and yeah, be in your coaching role all at once.
I want you to be able to communicate to your client, I am your friend. I am befriending you. I'm on your side, I'm on your team. I'm your advocate. I'm your cheerleader. You have to act like that again. You have to pretend you are talking to what looks like and feels like your potential new best friend. You're curious. You got a smile on your face. You're serious when you need to be. And you know in your back of your mind, Hey, this person's paying me and I'm here to coach them.
One more thing, before I launch into these questions, before the first session, I want you to know why your client's coming in. So you have to know in advance what is your client's reason to see you. I usually like to have them answer a few questions by email. I'm just suggesting this to you. I don't want a lot of information, quite frankly, about my client before they come in. Now, if you are a very specific kind of practitioner or healer, um, or professional already, yes, of course it's fine to ask them for all kinds of medical testing and nutritional tests and blood tests that they've had. So I'm not telling you not to do that. So when I'm saying this, I'm talking to first time coaches. But if you are already some type of existing professional and you're in this training, of course I want you to ask for the things that you need to know in advance. But I'm also telling you, I will never ask for a client's diet in advance. I will never ask them to write that down on a piece of paper before or during my time with them. I'm always gonna be asking those questions. But, um, in advance, I just wanna know from my client, are you under a physician's care? Are you on any medications? And if, if so, what? The medication piece to me is important. You need to educate yourself. Whatever medications your client lists, you need to go look them up. You need to understand what they're for. And you need to understand, does this medication have as a side effect weight gain or weight loss resistance? Very important because you might get a client who's on a medication that is moving them towards weight loss, or I mean weight gain or weight loss resistance. That's information for you. I'll also just give a couple of small questions. Hey, you know, in a few sentences, what do you think is getting in your way
of weight loss, of getting to the weight you want? What do you think is getting in your way? And I'm also gonna ask, what tends to be helpful for you in getting where you want to go? You know, something that this just,
this just gives me a ever so slight sense of my client. I just wanna see what they say. I just wanna see what shows up. I just wanna have a slight connection with them. Just get to know them just a tiny bit. Just feel them out. That's all. I don't want any one page answer to this. 2, 3, 4, 5 sentences.
Just say, Hey, briefly, what do you think is in your way of getting to the weight you want? Briefly, what tends to be helpful for you in getting where you want to go? It's just get your client thinking. It gets the juices flowing. Okay, so here comes my client. They're in the office or we're on the phone. So I'm always starting out. I'm always trying to break the ice, you know, Hey, thanks for coming. I'm so glad you're here. Okay, here's my favorite question. If you could wave your magic wand, Mr. And Mrs. Client, and get whatever you want in our work together. So this is just you waving your magic wand. This is not being in your logical brain. You have a magic wand and you got all the wishes you want. If you can get whatever you want in our work together, what would that be? So when you ask the magic wand question, you take the person out of their left brain, yeah, they're gonna go a little bit into their left brain, but they're also, you're gonna just see what they say. You're just learning about your client. What do they say when you ask them magic wand question. I want to hear what their biggest dream is. I want to hear what their biggest goal is. I want to hear what's gonna make their life magical for them. If you could wave your magic wand and get whatever you want in our work together, what would that be?
It's a wonderful question. I ask it with a smile on my face. It's a great way to break the ice. I also want you to be aware, if you don't already know this, that it's okay to schmooze a little bit and be light and connect. Uh, you know, I I'll, I'll always look to make my clients smile. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if there were just some kind of magic pill to take so we can all get where we wanna go and lose weight? Or, you know, Hey, how are you feeling about doing this session with me? Are you nervous? Are you excited? Did you find the place? Okay? Did you get lot? Just whatever you have to ask to help break the ice a little bit with your client.
Sometimes that first question breaks the ice. Sometimes you're breaking the ice before they sit down. But can you get your client to smile and relax just a little and feel comfortable and let them know that you're not the big bad food police. 'cause that's what they're afraid of oftentimes, that you're gonna be the big bad food police. So how do you relax your client? Okay? You know, Mr. And Ms. Client, the most important thing I really want you to know is that I really wanna help you get where you wanna go. And I'm gonna do everything in my bag of tricks to help get you there. So this is letting my client know in the big picture, here's me. I really wanna help you get where you wanna go. 'cause I do, and I'll do everything in my bag of tricks to help get you there. So you're, you're setting a context.
I'm gonna say to them something like, Hey, I'm gonna spend some time asking you questions. And you know something, sometimes that question may not seem sequential or they might not seem perfectly relevant to weight loss. But trust me, there's a method here to all of this. So let's just trust the journey, trust the process.
You know, after I'm finished asking you these questions, and after we go through all the information that I, you know, I'd like to gather at least at the beginning here, towards the end of the session, I'm gonna give you some feedback and I'm gonna give you my thoughts about where I think you are at and how I would likely proceed if we're gonna continue working together. Does that sound good for you, Mr. And Mrs. Client? Okay, now let's pause for a second here. I'm telling them what's gonna happen. I'm helping relieve them of, okay, what's the session gonna be like? How's it gonna end? Are we gonna finish working? Like what's gonna go on? I wanna let them know the truth. This is my truth. And this is what I'm suggesting to you that you adopt as your professional strategy. This is the first session, this is the first date. There might be something that comes out in the first date where you realize, oh my God, wait a second. You know, I want to have 15 kids, and you don't wanna have any, huh? This relationship's not gonna work. So I'm letting my client know again, hey, you know, after we finish, you know, talking, getting to know each other, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions so I can understand you better, your body, better, your journey better. Towards the end of the session, I'm gonna give you my feedback and thoughts about where I think you're at and how I would likely proceed if we're going to continue working together. Does that sound good for you? Of course it sounds good for them. Of course, they're gonna say yes and indeed that's what you're doing. So, in the back of your mind, my friends, what's happening here is that the first session, you are asking questions so you can get a sense of your client and you can get a sense, is this a good client for me? Am I the right person for them? Huh? Let me, let me assess where I think they're at
and let me give them some thoughts, some thoughts about how the work will proceed at the end of the session so we could decide if we're gonna move forward together.
That creates a context for the session. It helps your client feel safe. They know what their job is, which is they just wanna answer all the questions so you can get to know them. And then you're gonna be saying, okay, here's what I think at the end of a session. Here's what it, here's what the work might look like. Are we gonna continue? That's honest, that's real. And I think it's the rightful way to proceed.
Okay? First question I'm gonna ask my client, okay, how much, how much weight do you wanna lose?
They might have already told you already. Um, at some point I'm gonna ask it again. So tell me again. How much weight would you like to lose? I want to hear them say the number. So I just want you to know that numbers to your client, your weight loss client are often very important.
I want you to understand their relationship with the numbers. Some clients might say, ah, I just wanna lose weight. Ah, it doesn't really matter. Ah, you know, something I want to hear my client tell me. Usually people have a number. I don't always believe people when they say, oh, I just, I I just want to be healthier. I just, how much weight would you like to lose? So I'm looking for, if they truly don't have an answer, that's fine, I'm gonna bookmark that. How much weight would you like to lose Mr. And Mrs. Client? Okay, how much do you weigh right now?
Now that might seem like a throwaway question to you. It's not, to me. The answer to this question tells me a lot. A lot of people are gonna look at you and say, I don't know. I'm not really sure. I haven't weighed myself in a while. That's fine with me. I don't care what my client says. Or my client might say, okay, I wanna lose 30 pounds and how much do I weigh right now? I weigh 180. Got it. So now I know my client's weighing themselves. That's all I know that my, my client's weighing themselves. I know that they're keeping track and I know that they're on and about the numbers a little bit. So the weight you wanna get to is,
now notice what I just did. I started out with how much weight do you wanna lose? That's where I started. How much do you weigh now? So the weight you wanna get to is, so I just wanna make sure that that person's math is correct. I'm gonna say that about one or two out of every 10 clients isn't really clear in their own mind and the math is fuzzy for them, and they'll give you a different target weight than the amount of weight they wanna lose. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. So my whole point is I want to get the math right, because I've noticed over the years that people aren't always clear and the weight that they want to get to and the amount of weight that they think they wanna lose are two different numbers. So I just wanna make sure that the math gets corrected and we get on the same page. You know, this is super important. So in other words, the person might have told me, um, you know, they wanna lose 30 pounds. And then I said, how much do you weigh right now? And they say, 180. So then I say, oh, so the weight you wanna get to is, is, is, well let me do the math. 180 minus 30 is one 50. Well, no, actually I wanna get to one 40. Oh, so you wanna lose 40 pounds? Okay. So I just, so I just wanna say, okay, well, well let, let's just decide what it is. I just wanna be clear with you. So I'm helping my client get clear. I'm seeing how confused they are or not. I'm seeing how waffley they are or not. That's all we're doing. Here's an important question that I want you to ask your client. When was the last time you weighed this amount? So they wanna get down to 150. When was the last time you weighed 150? Oh, I don't know. Well take a guess. This is important. Roughly when do you think was the last time you weighed 150? Oh, I, I can't even remember. Try to remember. I'm sorry, my friends, you gotta get an answer. There are certain questions I do not let my client get away with not answering. They have to guesstimate. Why? Because for a lot of people, they wanna lose an amount of weight that the last time they weighed that amount was when they were 15 years old and now they're 55 years old. And they don't wanna tell you the last time they weighed that amount because they know how silly that's gonna sound once they say it. They don't even want to go there, or they unconsciously don't want to know the last time they weighed that amount because unconsciously they know they're shooting for an impossible task. So right then and there, I I'm telling you that there is a subset of human beings.
How many there are, I don't know what percentage of weight loss people these are, I don't know, but I meet a lot of them who they're looking for a target weight that is unattainable. Simply put plain and simple. So right up to here in a handful of questions,
I'm helping my clients see first things first. Is this even a, is this a reasonable goal? Really? That's kind of what I'm moving to. When was the last time you weighed this amount? Oh, okay. When you were 15 years old. Got it. So, and, and tell me how old you said you were again, you're 55. Hmm. So you see what I'm saying? My friends, I need to catch that person. I need to call that out. I am not going to try to help a human get to a weight that they were at when they were a teenager. If they are now in their hmm, forties, fifties and up, even in their thirties, I'm a little skeptical, especially because a lot of people when they were teenagers, they might have been thin, they might have been unduly thin, they might not have filled out yet. And they have a false notion in their mind that they need to have the body of a young prince or a young princess. And I'm sorry, but yeah, there's some people that are gonna maintain that weight that they had when they were 18 years old for the rest of their life. Um, that's not a large percentage of human beings. So I wanna know when was the last time my client weighed that amount? And this is gonna tell me something depending on the age of my client. So I'm listening. If it's a 25-year-old client, the last time they weighed that amount was two or three years ago. Got it. Okay. So that tells me, huh, this might be doable. Um, if they last weighed that amount 20 years ago. Okay. Wow. Just taking note. I'm just listening.
So then I'm gonna ask my client straight up, do you feel this is an honest and reasonable and doable goal for you?
I always ask that and I ask it just like that. So, uh, you know, do you feel that this is an honest and reasonable and doable goal for you? I will tell you, I've had many, many, many clients over the years where when I just asked them these simple questions, yes, I wanna lose 50 pounds, when was the last time you weighed 50 pounds less? That would put you at 120. Got it. When was the last time you weighed 120? And then they think, and they think, and they start giggling nervously. Oh, I was like 16 years old or 17 years old. And then I'm gonna say, okay, do you feel this is an honest and reasonable and doable goal for you? And the person might laugh right in front of me and say, no, it's really not. And I'll go, great. What's a more honest and doable goal for you? So if not, okay, so if they say no, what would be a more reasonable and doable goal for you? I'm, I'm, don't, don't satisfy me, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I really want you to tap into your wisdom and you tell me because I wanna help you get where you wanna go. So already you're gonna catch someone and save yourself a huge amount of wasted time and energy. You're gonna catch someone and they're gonna catch themselves just based on your questioning. You know, when you ask them, when was the last time you weighed this amount? And if you see that they laugh and they're seeing the impossibility of what they're asking for, and you say, okay, so is this really doable and honest? Is this a real reasonable goal for you? And if not, okay, no. So what would be more reasonable and doable goals? I've had clients who in the first, less than 10 minutes of a session, they changed their goal from losing 40 pounds to losing 20 pounds. 'cause now they're being honest. And you might have been the first person, chances are to ask them this question. Make sense? Okay. Hey, are you in any kind of weight loss program right now?
So I wanna know the answer to that question. Um, and I want to hear what they have to say. You know, sometimes people are gonna come to you and they're seeing somebody else for weight loss and they're on a diet and they're taking supplements and they're coming to see me. People will do that. That's very confusing. By the way, I'm just going to tell you that is very, very difficult for me personally to do my job with a weight loss client if they are seeing another person who is giving them specific advice on what to do.
Because their specific advice might not be in line with my specific advice, which is gonna make my work difficult, which is gonna make me bang my head against the wall. So what I want you to know is, in general for me, I will not see a client for weight loss if they are seeing somebody else in a very diligent way who is guiding them in weight loss. People do this. There are some people that just, you know, I don't know, they're sitting down eating their meal and then they want to eat your meal too. 'cause it looks good. Oh, this guy sounds interesting. Let me see him as well. So people do that. So I'm helping you catch these people. Um, I'm gonna let my client know. Listen, I, I can't, I'm gonna, I'll lose a client right there if, if they're under a very strong kind of supervision, unless I think I can be an addition to their work and unless I decide I really wanna work with this client. Has that happened before? Yeah, probably a handful of times over the years, but it's not my preference. Now, yes, the client's doctor might have said, Hey, you need to lose weight. Okay? So I'm not talking like, oh, that's working with someone else. I'm talking like, are they working with another practitioner with a very specific system, with a very specific diet, with very specific recommendations. They might also be following a certain kind of weight loss program on their own. I wanna know about that. That's all. Um, so this is just useful information you're learning about your client, my friend. And by the way, with any of these questions, yeah, you know, are you on any kind of weight loss program, right, right now? Oh yeah, I'm on Weight Watchers now. I'm not gonna just go to the next question. Yeah, I'm on Weight Watchers. So then, okay, how's that going for you? How's that working out? Ah, eh, well tell me what you like about it. Well, this, this, this and this. What don't you like about it? Well, that, that, that and that. Okay, you've just learned about your client. Don't just write down yes person's on Weight Watchers. No. Ask a few questions. So I need you to be inventive here. I need you to be conversational. I'm giving you a template. You are going to bounce off these questions. Sometimes your client's gonna say something and both of you end up laughing and great. Go on a little bit of a comedy tangent and, and just have a little fun. Um, so this is not just, you need to get through these sets of questions. Next, next, next. I want you to be improvising. So when the person answers your question, when they tell you what kind of weight loss program they're on, if you've never heard about it, ask what the, ask what it is. Don't spend a ton of time on it. Don't spend 20 minutes talking about their weight loss program. You've just wasted your time. Spend a minute or two, just just get a sense what they're doing. Um, and just understand what they're doing so you can learn more about them. Don't get lost in details like that.
How long have you been trying to lose weight? Mr. And Mrs. Client, this is an important number. Whatever number they say, I really want you to remember that because you're gonna be feeding it back to them. So, oh, I'm not sure. Well just, just try to think, try to remember. Gimme a rough guesstimate. How long you've been trying to lose weight. When did you start dieting? When did you start thinking about losing weight? Most people will be able to answer your question. It's a good number to hear because it's humbling oftentimes for the person and, uh, oh, I've been dieting for 30 years, 40 years, 20 years, 10 years. Important number because you are gonna use that. I use that number. Oftentimes when my client objects to something that I recommend, I'm gonna say to them, Hey, I just wanna remind you, Mr. Mr. Client, I know you're resistant to slow eating. I know you've said you've tried to eat slow once before and it didn't work, but you've been try. You told me you've been trying to lose weight for 25 years. So all I wanna say is your way hasn't worked. And it's not your fault because you've been trying what's out there, but you strategies and the strategies you've been shown have not worked for 25 years. So if something doesn't work for 25 years, you do something different. You are here to see me because I work differently than how you've been working before. And that's gonna give you a better probability to get where you want go because you're not gonna be doing the same ineffective strategies. So I'm gonna use that number to come back to my client and spank them a little, if that's what I need to do when my client is being resistant or objecting, how long you've been trying to lose weight. And it's also useful for your client to hear you ask that question and to hear them answer it out loud.
It's humbling. It connects us. And you know, sometimes people will say to me, yeah, I've been trying to lose weight for 40 years, and if I'm sitting there talking to a queen or a a a king, I might say to them, you know, I just want to tell you something. I don't want you to be doing this another 40 years. In fact, I don't want you to be doing this another year. We're gonna shorten, my goal is to shorten that time span with you because 40 years are you trying to do something and not where, not you getting where you want to go. That's not okay with me, um, into a different kind of outcome for you. So I'm letting my client know, wow, that's a big number and I want to change that. So you see how I'm bouncing off the question. I'm always gonna look to see if there's a positive moment or statement that I can include in the conversation. Maybe yes, maybe no, but I'll react to somebody's large number because it deserves that. And then I'll say, we're gonna look to change that in our work together. Okay? How have you tried to lose weight in the past? Just, just gimme some quick details about some of the diets you followed and, and just tell me how, how that journey's been for you. Okay, I'm gonna repeat that. How have you tried to lose weight in the past? Can you gimme some details about what diets you followed and how that whole journey has been for you? Okay, common things you might hear. Oh, you know, I've tried every diet. You name it, I've done it, you know, something. And if, if A person says that I don't need to hear anything more, I'm not gonna ask them to gimme specific details about specific diets. Oh yeah, I've tried everything. You know, the only thing that really worked for me was, you know, high protein and like, okay, so that tells me something. So I've just got some information. I don't necessarily need to ask them specifically what they did. I may or may not circle back to that another time. Um, but I just want to ask that question just to see the little tidbits that they share. How's that whole journey been for you? You know, ouch. You know, nothing's worked. It doesn't stay off. I'm frustrated. I, you know, I don't even wanna be on a diet anymore. I just want to hear what my client says. How's that whole journey been for you? Of course, it hasn't been good for them. Of course, they're not sitting here celebrating and jumping up and down, but I want to hear them say it because when they're saying it, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm just really frustrated. Great. They're being honest with you. They should be saying that they're frustrated 'cause they are frustrated and they ought to feel frustrated for trying something for so long that hasn't worked. They're very right to be frustrated. And I might say that, you know, if I was you, I'd be frustrated too. You have every right to be frustrated. 'cause these are the diets we've been given and taught. And if they don't work, then ouch. That's not fun.
I'm always letting my client know I'm with you. I'm on your side, I'm making them right,
and they're verbalizing in front of me. They're testifying, they're letting me know, yeah, I've tried this, I've tried that, I've tried this, I've tried that. I want them to say, yeah, I've tried a ton of things that didn't work. 'cause once again, whenever I say something that's out of the box for them or I'm making a suggestion for them that seems a little odd, strange or different. And if they're resistant, I'm gonna feed back to them. Hey, just wanna remind you, you've been dieting for 22 years, as you said, and none of your strategies have worked. This is a different strategy and my strategy doesn't work. You can feel free to go back to your old strategy that didn't work. But you're here to have success. I'm here to have success with you. I like to be successful. Quite frankly, that's the kind of practitioner I am. And I like to do the kinds of things that I know from my training have the best probability of working.
I speak like that to my clients. I don't mess around. I don't let people bully me. Now when I say bully, people have expectations that they're pushing at us, understandably. So, I'm paying you money. Make me lose this weight internally. I don't buy that internally, yes, I'm gonna help you with something far better than you just losing a bunch of body pounds. I'm gonna help you step into
your greatest gifts, your greatest power. I'm gonna do my best to help you be a better person in this life.
And of course, that's gonna also include how you nourish yourself and how you nutrify yourself. But as I help you become the best person you need to be, that's gonna give your body the best chance to become what it's meant to be. So I'm not saying that right off the bat, but damn well I'm thinking that and I'm knowing that.
So I wanna make sure my client understands that their way hasn't worked.
So yeah, I will ask. What diet's been most successful for you? Oh, that high protein diet. Oh, so you did hit your target weight before? Yeah, I did. Uh, yeah, it happened. Uh, yeah, it happened once. Great. Why do you think the weight came back from that successful diet? And, and, and there's no right or wrong here. Like, I'm not expecting you to know the right or wrong answer. I just wanna know what you think. Now, by the way, that's an honest question.
Wow, you did hit your target weight. Why do you think the weight came back? Why do I ask that question? A couple of reasons. Usually, most of the time my client's not going to give me an answer that actually helps me understand truly why the weight came back. It's not why I'm asking the question. Um, I am letting them know that, huh? You hit your target weight, huh? The weight came back. Isn't that interesting? See, most people, they they, they just gloss over that, oh, the weight came back. Oh, lemme try to lose weight again. Oh, the weight came back. Lemme try to lose weight again. Something's up there. There's a black hole of just unconsciousness, of a sleepness of information that we don't have, that the client doesn't have, that person doesn't have about their life. Why do you think the weight came back on? So I'm wanting them to ponder for a moment that they have lost the weight and it did come back. So I want them to just give me a shot at why they think it might have came back. And usually your client's gonna fumble for an answer. And that's why I say, Hey, this isn't about right or wrong. I don't expect you to know right or wrong. I don't expect that we're gonna figure that out, but I just wanna know your thoughts about that. 'cause chances are the person hasn't thought about it. So I'm getting them to think about it. I'm getting them to imprint in their brain that they've hit their target weight because they told me and it didn't stick. So what I'm really letting them know is your way wasn't Sustainable. I'm not gonna say that to them because the questioning process is teaching them.
My client is learning simply by my questions.
Because the question is emphasizing the fact whether they know it or not, that their way was not sustainable.
And whenever they try to sneak in, oh, I wanna do it this way or this way or this way, I'm gonna let them know, remember, that way was not sustainable for you. I want you to lose weight, but I want you to lose it sustainably. If I can't help you lose it sustainably, then it's not gonna be sustainable and we won't be successful. And I'll just be another notch on your belt of failures. I'm not interested in that. I hope this is making sense so far, my friends. Okay, Mr. And Mr. Client, can you just make any general guesses as to why you think you have a challenge with weight? You know, why do you think this is something you have in your life? Again, there's no right or wrong answers here. I just would love to know what goes on in your mind when you think about this. Because I want to know what, what people think. Oh, I just eat too much. Oh, it's, it's because I overeat. Um, oh yeah. Well it's because I'm an emotional eater. Um, oh, well, you know, I I think it's just because, you know, I, I, I don't exercise enough and I just don't have any willpower. I want to hear their beliefs.
I just want to hear them and I want to hear them say it out loud. And if my client truly looks at me and says, I don't know, I don't know, I, I'll tell 'em. Like, take a guess. Like really? What do you think to yourself?
Usually if a person drops in deeper, it's, it's a difficult place that they drop into. They feel they have no control
or they feel like they're a victim. People are not gonna necessarily say that, but I'm pushing the edge just a little bit because I'm letting my client know what this question you are gonna be doing. Just a little bit of work here. So yeah, I'm asking good questions. How much weight do you wanna lose? What's, what target weight would that put you at? Okay, got it. Now what kind of diets have you followed? When was the last time you weighed that amount? So yeah, I'm asking them questions and they hear me gathering information and all of a sudden I'm peppering it with, Hey, what do you think you have this challenge with weight?
So this is my way, my friends, and I've found this to be effective. I am making sure that in the course of the conversation, I'm taking my client in and out of their left brain when I ask them, how much weight do you wanna lose? 50 pounds? What weight would that put you at 130? When was the last time you weighed that amount? Thinking, thinking, thinking, oh, eight years ago, what kind of diets have been successful? Or, oh, this one. Okay. So those are, those are questions that the logical, linear, masculine, left brain mind could answer. Great. But then I'm gonna ask questions that take them to a different place. 'cause that's gonna be the nature of our work together is going to be, you know, informational, it's gonna be scientific, it's gonna be logical and linear, but it's also, we're gonna be in the realm of emotion. We're gonna be in the realm of human growth and personal development, which doesn't follow the laws of physics and mathematics for goodness sake, and doesn't follow the laws of thermodynamics and calories in equals calories out. Human body doesn't function like that. So I'm just, it, it's, it's, it's almost a throwaway question. I'm not gonna spend much time on it a minute.
So I'm interested to know what do you honestly think will help you lose weight and keep it off?
That's a follow up to the last question I'm asking. Can you make any general guesses as to why you think you have this challenge with weight? Hey, just, just, there's no right or wrong answers. So this is kind of restating the question, but in the positive, and it's really saying, what do you think will help you lose the weight and keep it off? I just wanna hear what people say that, oh, if I can just control my appetite better. If I could just eat less, if I could just exercise more. If I can just stick to my diet. So I'm, I'm gathering up this information, this is all good information that my client is telling me. I don't know what's gonna help me keep this weight off. I have no idea. And sometimes people say that and I look at their, look at their face and I'm like, yep, I agree. You have no idea. I get it. Actually, I don't know either right now. Uh, but we're gonna figure that out. Um, but I want to hear, because a lot of people have beliefs and in my clients saying, well, I just need to have more willpower than I already know. Okay, that's a place I'm gonna be coming back to. I'm bookmarking that 'cause they think their issue is willpower. Nobody has a willpower issue. No one, I'm always gonna at some point return to that. So I'm gathering information about how, what their toxic beliefs might be.
So Mr. And Mrs. Client, did your weight gain occur at a specific time in your life? Like, like when did the weight come on the weight that you wanna lose? When did it come on?
This is a pretty important question to me because a, there's all kind of different people here. There are some people who have a one time kind of weight gain. Oh god, you know, the weight came On. I remember it was, you know, 2012 and great. Okay, so the all, so that 40 pounds came on in 2012, that weight came on in this short amount of time in such and such a year. Oh, you know, it just, you know, the weight just kind of crept up on me. Some people say that, so some people are, the weight crept up on me and some people are, yeah, I gained a bunch of weight in a specific amount of time that they can clearly identify. We could usually put people into one of those two buckets. So I hope you're listening to that, that's important information for me. Um, so if the person is able to say, yeah, you know, the weight came on at such and such a time, you know, the weight came on when I went to college. The weight came on when I moved outta my parents' house, the weight came on When I got divorced, the weight came on. So what I'm gonna ask if they know when the weight came on. So tell me more like what else was going on at that time? This is important. This is gonna give me information and my client can identify a time frame on the calendar when the weight came on. I'm always gonna ask, you know, they might say, oh yeah, it was five years ago. Okay, what was going on at that time? Or if they told me they were, they got divorced. So tell me about that. What was going on exactly. Anything else going on at that time? So I wanna know, essentially what was going on at that time in work, in relationship? Was it a divorce? Was it a death in the family, something going on with the kids? Was there a health issue? Was there a breakup? Was there a financial thing going on? Did you break a leg? Um, just find out the information surrounding the time that the waking happened because that can be important for many, many people because oftentimes we will gain weight during a stressful life event. Many people gain x amount of weight in response to a one-time stressful life event.
Or many people gain weight in a stressful life period where there's a number of stressors going on. We moved and the relationship was on the rocks.
I quit my job and my kid was having a lot of problems in school, whatever. So I just wanna bookmark that because that gives me information that helps me know, oh wow, this sounds like, hmm, it might be a a, a life stress induced weight gain.
So I'm always wanting to know what went on around that time. If the weight crept on gradually, I'm gonna ask, ask like gradually over what amount of time would you say a year, two years, three years, four years? Some people the weight creeps up on them over a period of four or five years. Okay. It just gives me information because sometimes you're gonna make connections where the connections aren't obvious at first. So you're bookmarking this information if you need to write it down, you jot notes quickly. Oh, let's stop and talk about notes for a second. Um, I wanna make sure,
I generally try not to take a lot of notes in a session. After a session, I will always take copious amounts of notes. I will try to take the minimum amount of notes possible so I can be in eye contact with my client so my first date can feel comfortable and feel connected and feel a little sweeter. And the first date is the first date you're connecting with the person. If you're on a first date with somebody and they're looking at their cell phone, ouchies. So I wanna make sure that even if you have to write something down, then you put the pen down and then you're back to connecting. Sometimes if I wanna take like 15 seconds to write something down, oh, Mr. Miller Klein, just hang on. This is so important. I just wanna make sure I write this down so I don't forget this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I write it down. Okay, great. I'm back with you. And I'm looking at person in the eye. So I want you to think as much eye contact as is humanly possible. This is one of the reasons why I do the dietary intake last, because when you do the dietary intake, you will be writing it down and at that point, yes, you're just gathering information. It's very informational. But here I'm asking questions. Wow, what else was going on for you at that time? I want you to be able to remember if the person says, yeah, I was, I was going through a divorce.
If you have to then drop your eyes, go to your paper and write down, oh, my client was going through a divorce when she gained the weight. Isn't that interesting? Well note to self come back to that. No, somebody just shared a very sweet revealing, um, piece of information with you. They just shared something very, um, sensitive with you. So respond to them accordingly. Like, wow, that makes total sense. I can completely understand how that could happen. If you've been through a divorce, say, Hey, I've been there. I understand the stress of breaking up to find, to say something like that. Always looking to connect with your client. Make them right, let them know that you're asking these questions. You're getting to know the person. This is a schmoozing conversation.
Okay, I'm gonna bounce somewhere else. If you haven't gathered this information previously. Are you on any kind of medications? Yes. So tell me what they are. Let me just write those down. Okay. Um huh. I'm not familiar with that one. What's that one for? Not familiar with that one. What's that one for? Okay, great. Thank you. Don't hang on the medications. I just want you to be able to write down the name of the medication so you can research it later on. Specifically A, so you could just understand what the medication's for and b, most important so you can know. Okay. Is a side effect of this medication weight gain or weight loss resistance? Very important, my friends. Okay. Mr. Mr. Klein, just question for you. Have, have there been any experts or practitioners who've like diagnosed you, you know, when it comes to weight, um, what did they think? What did they say? What was their diagnosis and, and how did your work with them pan out for you?
I don't want to hear about the 20 different people that they've seen. I want to hear about what was most important for them and if anybody said something compelling because that might be useful for me. Yes. I was seeing this acupuncturist for many years and she said oomph. So I wanna collect that information. Okay, great. Yes, my doctor told me that I'm pre-diabetic. Got it. My fitness person told me that running is no good for me and I've been running. Okay, got it. I just want to hear if any people have diagnosed them with anything. My doctor told me I'm low thyroid. Ah, did you tell me, are you on any medications for that? Well, I went on thyroid medication, but then I came off because my thyroid, um, you know, levels of thyroid hormone got better. Okay. So I just want to gather that information. How did your work with them pan out for you? Obviously it didn't work because they're here to see you, but I just want a, I just, I just wanna hear what they have to say. And again, these kinds of questions, I don't want to go into a long story at all, A minute or less, literally. So you have to keep the questioning process moving. Don't let your client get lost and oh my God, I saw this one nutritionist, you're not gonna believe what this person had me do. Can I tell you the diet she put me on? I'm like, Hmm. Actually no. And the only reason is because it didn't work, because you're still here. And I just wanna make sure that we're using our time effectively. 'cause I really want to help you get you where you want to go and have a bunch of questions to ask you. So let's just, let's just say check next to that person didn't work for you. Put you on a crazy diet. So that's how I'll handle that.
Okay, Mr. Ms. Client, it's, it's, I know this may sound like an obvious question to you, but I just love to ask it because, you know, different people say different things. Why do you wanna lose the weight? Like, like what's the most important reason for you?
I wanna say that question again. You know, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I love to ask this question, and I know it might sound obvious, but maybe not because different people have different answers. Why do you wanna lose weight? Like, like what's, what's some of the most important reasons for you? The most important reason for you? So notice the conversational tone in my voice. Why do you wanna lose weight? What's the most important reason for you? Don't ever talk to someone like that. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Who's gonna want to answer that question? Honestly, who's gonna, you, you don't want to be best friends with a person who speaks to you like that about your weight. When I'm asking the question, I'm asking it of their heart, their soul, their deeper self. That's who I'm talking to now. People give you all kinds of answers and that's what you're listening for. What their answer is, oh, I just wanna be healthy. Now when somebody says, I just wanna be healthy nine times outta 10, I don't fully believe that.
Of course people wanna be healthy. I get it. Um, somebody says, I just wanna feel lighter. I just wanna feel better about myself. Um, I just wanna be able to fit into my clothes. I just want to hear their answer and I want them to say it out loud. That's all.
But I'm gonna play off that question. Okay, what do you imagine? Let me, let me just, let me just take this question in, in, in, in another direction. What do you imagine will be different about your life when the weight is off and you have the body that you want? Like, like just if you futurize for a moment and here you are, you've lost the weight, it's permanently off it, have the body you want, how's your life gonna be different?
Mm. Oftentimes people haven't thought this one out. This is a compelling question. I'm just gonna tell you that my friends, oh, I don't know. I'm, I'm just gonna feel lighter. So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna walk around going, I'm lighter, I'm lighter? Like, like what? Like, just get like, imagine how is life gonna be different? Just put yourself in that future place. You've got what you want. Just try to be specific. How's life gonna be different? My friends, this is a difficult question for many people because they haven't gone there, they haven't thought it out. I wanna see them work a little bit to answer the question. I don't let my client give an answer like, oh, I don't know. That's not important. I just wanna hit my target weight. If somebody gives me that answer, I'm gonna go, Hey, you gotta gimme more Than that. Um, you just want to hit your target weight. Nah. If you really wanna lose weight, you have a reason why you wanna lose weight. 'cause chances are you imagine something about your life's gonna be different. Otherwise, why would you have put all this energy for years into weight loss? Why would you be paying money to see me? There's, there's something or some things that you, me, everybody imagines that their life is gonna be different. I, I just like, just, just, it's okay to be honest about that. It's okay to try to explore that a little bit. Sometimes we don't even know what that is. It's just kind of somewhere deep in the back of our mind. I don't let my client get away with lazy answers. I don't like lazy answers. Um, otherwise you're letting your client, you're establishing that you are willing to let your client be lazy. If you let your client be lazy, they will not do work and you will not have success in the relationship because your client will have to do work. They're gonna have to do personal work, inner work, work with their diet, work with this, work with that, work with slowing down. They might have to work with looking at food allergies. They might have to work with meal timing. It's gonna be work. I'm sorry, you want to shape shift your freaking body. There's gonna be some work involved. Now everybody thinks the work has starved myself and exercise my brains out. I'm sorry I keep saying that, but it's true. Nope. Chances are that's not gonna be the work for you. And a lot of people who think that that's the work they truly don't want do that work. So they don't wanna do any kind of work because they think that's the work and they're allergic to that kind of work and understandably so. Understandably so. And chances are they've tried that and it didn't work. So all I'm saying is no lazy answers. I'm establishing here's part of the questioning process. I'm establishing with my client how I work.
So when my client gives me an answer, what do you imagine would be different about your life when the weight is off? When you have your body that you want? Oh, I don't know. You know, I wanna hit my target weight. That's gonna make me feel like, like I've accomplished something. I'm like, okay, that makes sense to me. You've accomplished something, but there's all kinds of things to accomplish in life.
Tell me more. There's gotta be a more compelling reason than you've accomplished something. Come on, be real with me. Dive a little deeper Mr. And Mrs. Client, I'm letting them know I ain't letting you off the hook. You're gonna see me, you're gonna be working in some way, shape or form, and you're gonna be doing the right work. You're gonna be doing the good work. 'cause if you are not growing as a person, if you're not expanding your mind, if you're not seeing where you're locked in toxic beliefs, if you're not seeing, if you're Not willing to see where you are creating a tremendous amount of self-chosen stress that is likely impacting your metabolism. If you're not willing to do that kind of work, weak chances aren't gonna get anywhere.
So I'm training my client. I hope that, I hope that makes sense to you. I hope you're seeing that the questioning process, that getting to know you process here. It's multidimensional.
I'm establishing a relationship with my client. I'm letting them know I'm your best friend, but at the same time, I'm the kind of best friend that's not gonna let you wiggle away.
So I'm gonna ask them, be more specific here. Just let's get into the details, you know, because to me this is pretty fascinating and I'd love to understand your thinking.
What's life gonna be like when you lose the weight? Now my friends, just so you know and you remember, um, the ultimate reason, this is between you and I right now. The ultimate reason why people wanna lose weight so they could be happier no matter what they say to you. It is some version truly of I'm gonna be happier. I am going to love myself more
for many people what they think is, and I'm going to be the real me and I'm not the real me now because the real me only happens when I'm at this weight. So up until the point, I lose the real weight. I'm not the real me, I'm not lovable. I can't be who I truly am. I can't really express myself because loving myself, being who I truly am and expressing the real me can only happen at a very specific weight. Once that number appears on the scale and as soon as that number appears on the scale, then the wisdom of the universe and God and the creator of everything we see and the forces of evolution in the universe, then it all comes into alignment. Because apparently now I'm just kind of joking with you here, but, but, but this is the crazy thinking in people's minds. This is the crazy thinking in your client's mind. This is the crazy thinking in your mind, in my mind, in our mind. When we think we need to hit a certain number of anything so that we could be the real me.
But this process, this questioning is slowly revealing things.
You know, your client might say, I'm gonna feel lighter. Um, I'm gonna be more confident. I'm gonna be more out there. I'm gonna just, I'm gonna just be more willing. I'm gonna take more risks. So I'm gonna bookmark all that. I'm not gonna say anything now, but at some point when I'm doing the work With them and I'm inspiring them to be the real me, now I'm gonna reference that. You know, when I was asking you questions about what's gonna happen for you when you finally lose the weight, you said you're gonna be the real me. Here's the thing. Mr. And Mrs. Client now, now this is a later conversation I'm having with them. At some point I'm gonna come back to that. I'm gonna let them know part of our journey with you getting to the body that you want and the weight that you want and the metabolism that you want sustainably, the goal is to be the real you. I get that. But you know something, we're gonna do things differently. Why are we doing things differently? Because previously your way of losing weight hasn't worked and or it hasn't worked sustainably. So what we're gonna focus on is you being the real you now and from that place we're gonna work on weight loss. So you told me the real you is gonna be more confident, it's gonna be more out there. You're gonna take more risks. Well, you know something, you could be more confident now. You could take more risks. Now you could be a little bit more outrageous. Now you can step into being more sassy. Now you don't have to wait. Do you know anybody who weighs what you weigh? Who has the same body type you have? And they're the real them. They're out there. They're self-expressed.
I've met a lot of women who've got a lot bigger body than you have Mrs. Client. And they're being the real them Now. It's not stopping them, it's not a function of weight. You being the real you. I get that you wanna have a different body. I get that you wanna shape shift, I'm all for it. But the way you've been going about it hasn't worked because you're holding back from being the real you, which is very stressful. And here's what happens in a stress response. So at some point I'm, I'm cataloging information. I'm bookmarking it because I know I'm going to get back to it. Chances are, okay, so when you did lose the weight in the past and you had the body you wanted, so this is me dropping in a little bit deeper. Sometimes I'll ask this question, sometimes I won't. Um, it's kind of up to you. So when you did lose the weight in the past and you had the body you wanted, was your life indeed as you imagined it would be? 'cause you're telling me now when I lose the weight, I'm gonna be the real me. I'm gonna be out there. And before I asked you, have you ever hit your target weight? And you said yes. So I'm saying okay, got it. You told me just now that when you hit this target weight, here's who you're gonna be. But you hit that target weight five years ago. 'cause you told me that. So were you that person?
My friends, when you ask this question, you're gonna blow somebody's mind in a good way. 'cause they've just spoken from their heart and they've told you, okay. 'cause I push my client a little bit. Who are you gonna be? How's life gonna be different? I'm gonna be more out there. I'm gonna be more confident. I'm gonna start dating. I'm gonna hang out with women, with men, with whoever. I'm gonna be sexy. Got it. I'm on board with that. Great. Love it. Love it. Okay, so when you did lose the weight in the past, so they've just told me who they're gonna be when they lose weight. And then I'm remembering from 10 minutes ago, huh? I asked you the question, have you ever hit your target weight? And you said yes. So did you become that person? And what are they gonna tell you? No, they're gonna be caught like a deer in headlights when you ask them that question. Or they're gonna say, oh yeah, well I was really happy I was. I was. Yeah, I was amazing. It was great. I'm like, okay, then what happened?
And there's gonna be silence there because whatever happened, what really happened, even if it was amazing for them, which for many people they'll tell you it was amazing. They had a state addiction, they had a temporary high. Chances are they went on an extreme diet. Chances are they were doing extreme exercising. Chances are it was a combination of both. And chances are, if they truly felt great that they had a temporary high.
Now I might tell them this in the moment, but I'm probably gonna bookmark it.
Yeah, well I was really high. Got it. So why do you think the weight came back on?
And even if they go, I'm not sure, I'll say, okay, we're gonna come back to that 'cause my client's still not ready to. 'cause that's gonna be some deeper information.
But your client's gonna be wondering. Hmm. 'cause you're starting to circle around them and you're closing off the escape hatches. You're letting them know, oh, you think you're gonna be this new person when you lose the weight? Huh? You did lose the weight because you told me you did. And huh? You either didn't become that person or you were that person temporarily. So something didn't work either way. If you didn't become that person, that didn't work. Or if you became that person temporarily, that didn't work.
So basically you are letting them know based on their honest answers that their way didn't work.
They're also slowly learning that you know what you are doing.
They're also getting a little concerned because you are drilling a little deeper with them and you're slowly taking them into the kind of work that you do without hitting them over the head.
So again, I'm not gonna focus if my client has a perplexed look on their face. Oh my god, I don't know. Um, God, yeah. The way did come back. I was all happy in the way it came back. Or oh my goodness, I did lose the weight and I was still worried about weight. A lot of people say, yeah, I lost the weight, but I was worried I was gonna gain it back and nothing changed. Oh my God, you're right. Oh my God.
So I'm not gonna harp on that. But when they realized that they didn't become the person that they thought they were gonna be, really what they're starting to learn is that the false belief that they have in their mind, that weight is going to make them a number on the scale, is going to change their life profoundly. They're starting to learn that that's not true. And they have to start changing their life profoundly from the inside out.
If you want to shift somebody's weight sustainably, most often, not all the time, most often there has to be internal shifts, internal change inside out changes.
Yep. There's some people you could just get 'em off of poor quality food and get 'em off of food allergies and yes, all of a sudden they lose weight and they lose weight sustainably. Okay, great. If you got some of those clients and it's just nutrition, fine. But it's not always so simple. In fact that, I'm gonna say probably for about at least 80% of humans is never that simple. It's a factor for sure. But in terms of sustainable meaning it's not gonna come back.
How do you work with a client so they don't go back to their old ways? Because a lot of people do lose their weight and they do gain it back 98 to 99% of them. So people could do it. But there's something about the sustainable piece, which means changing from the inside out. That's really what that points to. Okay, now I'm gonna take a different direction. I'm gonna make it a little bit somewhat lighter for them though. Maybe not. So tell, just tell me about the weight situation in your family. Like just parents, brothers and sisters. Do they or did they have weight issues? Is there diabetes in the family? You know, I gotta spend a lot of time on that. Oh God, my mother, she is so fat. Oh my god, my mother's been dieting forever. Oh yeah, me and my sisters we're all dealing with weight issues. That's just information. You're bookmarking that information. You're listening and it's, and it's not just somebody saying, yes, my mother is obese, my father is obese, my mother weighs this. My father weighs that. I could, I could care less. It's not what I'm listening for. I'm listening for how the person talks about their mother and father. Is there love there? Is there conflict there? Is there both there? Is there confusion there?
I'm learning about how their relationship is because that might have a lot of bearing on things.
Are you married? Are you in a relationship? How long? How's it going? What's good about the, you know, a person. I say, oh, relationship's. Great, great. What's great about it? Um, what would you say is challenging about it? Um, no, I'm not in a relationship. Are you interested in being in a relationship? Oh yeah. You know, I'm definitely looking to date. I definitely wanna get married. Definitely wanna have kids. So I'm gonna ask questions around that. I wanna know about my client's life. We're on a date. Are you married? How's that going? Are you in a relationship? How's that going? You're not in a relationship. How's that going? So they're curiosity questions. I want you to get a sense of your client. I want you to notice what happens when they talk about their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife. What do you see? Are you picking up something beneath their words? Do you notice how they tighten up when they start talking about their marriage? Do you notice how they feel a lot of sadness when they're telling you that they're not in a relationship? Because maybe they're a person who is longing for a relationship and they don't have one. And that for me is potentially useful information. All of it potentially when I'm thinking about a weight loss client and what might be impacting their inability to find their true sustainable weight.
Aha, here we are. This isn't the end, but this is the end of weight loss intake part one. I got more questions coming up, but let me say this, my friends, I wanna remind you again that these are questions that you follow and to use as a template. And I want you to be conversational and I want you to eventually have all these questions really in the back of your mind and you will soon enough. It's not memorizing them, it's knowing. It's some point you're gonna ask about family. At some point, you're gonna ask about relationship. At some point you're going to be asking about their diet later on. You'll see when we get to that, you're gonna be asking about their weight loss history. You're gonna be asking about. Yeah. Okay, so why do you wanna lose weight? What's gonna happen? Who are you gonna be gonna be? What's life gonna look like? Have you ever hit your target weight? So you know, you might end up mixing and matching these questions and they're gonna come at different times as long as you get them down and as long as you ask them, that's okay. I don't want you to get caught up in the order of things. However, I do want you to make sure that at the beginning of a session, you help make your client feel comfortable. At the beginning of this session, you ask a big juicy, expansive question. Like, if you could wave your magic wand and get everything you wanted out of our work together, it's a hundred percent successful. Your wildest dream comes true. What would that be? Trust me, you ask that question. People are always gonna smile. They're always gonna like that. There's always gonna be a little laugh in there and you know what their wildest dream is because that's important. We do wanna know what our dreams are. Um, 'cause I do want my client to be happy. I do want them to expand. And you and I have to learn how to ask questions in a way where we can get honest answers. We have to learn to ask questions in a way where we're not only gathering information, but we're also establishing a relationship. Where're, letting our client know how we work. We're bringing them into our inner world and we're educating them about our approach because they see, yeah, this person's asking a lot of personal questions, but also asking me specific questions about food, about diet, about weight. Okay, got it. About, am I under a doctor's care? So they're seeing that you work not only nutritionally, but also emotionally. So they're getting that. Okay, my friends, I can't wait to finish out this conversation. I'll see you hopefully real quick on the other side in the weight loss intake, part two. Thanks.

PART 2

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Greetings once again, my friends. This is Mark David bound of the institute. Here we are continuing our conversation about weight loss intake questionnaire. We are in part two and we are continuing the questions that we are asking of our weight loss client in a first session. So our next question that we're gonna be asking, I wanna know if my client has kids and if they don't, do you want kids? And if they do have kids, I might ask, Hey, what's their relationship with their bodies like? What do you want for them when it comes to food and body and weight? Now, again, this is an interesting question just from the standpoint of, hey, if I meet anyone that I want to get to know better for sure, I wanna know if they have kids. Parenting is a big thing, it's a huge part of life. And gives me a sense of, okay, is this person a full-time parent? Are they a stay at home parent? How much time and energy gets devoted to their kids? Because you might meet a lot of clients. I particularly meet a lot of moms. I particularly meet a lot of single moms who they have a few full-time jobs. One is their job and one is their job as a parent. And that is certainly going to impact oftentimes their relationship with food, with body, with nourishment, with the amount of time and energy that they can put into themselves when it comes into nourishing themselves. So another piece of the puzzle is what do you want for your kids when it comes to food and body and weight? What's their relationship to their bodies like? That is often important because many of my weight loss clients remember the four questions. What's stressing you? Um, what's stressing my client? What's their biggest stress or fear and what's important to them? For many people, their kids are what's most important to them, raising healthy good children or is important to them. And even if it's not the most important thing to them, it's certainly high up on the list. So you will hear me, oftentimes I will feed back to a client. I'm going to say to them at some point as I'm listening to their, oh, self attacking language around food and body. Because a lot of my clients when it comes to weight loss have very self attacking language. They have very, um, self-harming, self hating thoughts. I can't always hear those thoughts. But when it comes out in language, when it comes out in subtle digs at their own body, I'm going to point that out to them in a session. I'm also going to use the fact that they're a parent and they really care about their kids having a healthy relationship with their own body. Many mothers will tell me, I don't want my children to have, or I don't want my child to have the same relationship with food and body that I have. IEI don't want them obsessing about their body, hating their body, worrying about food dieting all the time, dealing with what I deal with and I think great good for you. And I'm gonna point out to them when they're not modeling good behavior, I'm gonna point out to them in a session when we're speaking, Hey, you know, whenever you subtly insult yourself or not so subtly insult yourself like that, there's a darn good chance your children are hearing that. They're noticing that and they're picking up on that. They're picking up on that on unconsciously. And as we all know, our children will model off of us, the parents. It's just what children do. We are their role models, whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not. They're picking up on our subtle cues and they're absorbing our ways. So I'm letting my parent know at some point my client, my weight loss client who happens to be a parent who expressed their love and concern for their own child. I said, Hey, remember you told me you want your kids to have a healthy, happy relationship with food and body. You gotta model that for them just a little better. And particularly with your language. These are baby steps, my friends. So I'm bookmarking this information. I'm not saying, haha, you have kids. Well, you need to, no, I'm asking questions and I'm collating the information and I will potentially come back to it and use it at a time when my client can hear me. Does that make sense? My friends? Next. Hey Mr. And Mr. Client, how does your husband white partner feel about your weight? Are they still attracted to you? Is it an issue for them? What advice do they give you around food and body? My friends, this is a juicy question because if my client is in a partnership, is in a marriage, then that's the most important, if not one of the most important relationships in their life. And everything is connected to everything. I want to understand how my client is being supported or not in their partnership. I will say it is a small percentage of clients that I've had in the past. It's a small percentage of women clients, women, weight loss clients who will tell me, my husband is really upset. My husband wants me to lose weight. My husband doesn't like me at this weight, my husband doesn't like this body where it is right now. I would say on average for my women weight loss clients, I only hear them telling me the husband's protest, ah, no more than 10 or 15% of the time. By far and away, the most common story that I hear is, my husband's fine with my weight. My husband loves me for who I am. I can't believe it. So that's what I commonly hear in terms of my heterosexual women clients. For my men clients, I would say it's, hmm, it's probably a little bit the flip side. My men clients who are in relationship, uh, who have weight to lose their partners, their wives want them to be taking better care of themselves. And it's usually framed like that, that their partners, their wives, girlfriends aren't happy that I'm not taking care of myself. It's usually around health and taking care of myself is what is being communicated to me from my client. So I'm just taking notice of that. Not sure how to read into that quite honestly. I'm just observing that bottom line is we influence each other when we're in significant relationship. I wanna know, is my client's partner supporting them? And if so, how are they holding them back? And if so, how? So if my client tells me, yeah, my husband, wife, they have no issue with my weight and my client is constantly hating on their body, uh, you know, something, sometimes it's okay to have a little help loving our body from the person next to us. Meaning I might ask my client to enlist their partner a little more in supporting them, in giving them positive messages, in reminding them more like, Hey, you're okay. You don't need to be self attacking to really enlist their partner in stepping up to support them in a positive relationship to their body.
Because oftentimes, and I've noticed this with my women clients who are married and in a significant who are married in a significant relationship and their partner is loving on their body at the weight they're at right now, you know, I'm gonna ask them, okay, you're so attached to this weight loss, who are you gonna please? Got it. It's pleasing you. I totally understand you wanna feel good, but at the same time, you know, of course I'm gonna eventually ask about my client's love life, their sex life. And oftentimes it's pretty predictable. If a person does not love their own body and or is hating on their own body, then they will not feel good about their body in the presence of their partner. In the experience of pleasure, sensuality, sexuality, your is not gonna feel good and it's not going to be the best experience for them that it could be for either partner.
So it's just a useful piece of information that some clients,
it's a very helpful conversation. It's a very helpful conversation when I'm inviting my client, and you'll hear me do this in, in different case studies, perhaps when we get to body image of clients who, you know, focus on embodiment more and in learning to love their body more, just using the vehicle of their partnership, of their relationship and using their loving partner to help them love themselves more. Hey, let your partner love on you. Hey, here's some little tricks or tips that you guys might wanna use in the bedroom, in your relationship, in your foreplay, in your language, in your dating on date night to help you more feel good about your body. Because ultimately that's what we're looking to do. We're looking to help you, Mr. And Mrs. Client love yourself into weight loss.
Now, for my clients who have a partner that is judging them around their body, and this happens, I've had women clients and men clients, um, who come forth with this, that my partner is not happy with my body and he wants me to lose weight. And he's very clear, I'm not attracted to you when you're not at this weight. Um, honestly, when that happens, I am looking to support my client in empowering herself. I am looking to support my client in creating boundaries around what works for them and what doesn't in terms of the words and the language that's coming to them from their partner. That's a hard thing to hear from your significant other. And oftentimes when that's happening from a significant other and it's an issue for my client, then really what we're working on is, and it's challenging, is how do you empower yourself in relationship to your partner? Where do you draw the line? How do you let your partner know that's not okay for me? That harms me, that hurts me. The way you communicate to me about how you Feel about my looks. Do you want me to start getting real specific about how I feel about you honey, and how I feel about you in the bedroom? Do you want me to get as intense as you do towards you, as you do with me? So I'm gonna look for inroads to help my client empower herself slash himself. Yeah, you know, our partners have their Particulars. They have what they like, they have what they don't like, people like what they like and like what they don't like. There's also a way to be in relationship with your partner where you are inspiring them and you are supporting them as opposed to Judging And harming them with words and thoughts. So that's what I'm gonna track. That's what I'm gonna keep my eye on. It's not easy. It doesn't mean I'm looking for a happy Solution because really What I'm looking for is how can I support my client being in a healthy relationship? And I even had one client where her boyfriend was extremely particular about her body and her weight and her fitness. He was also very particular about the same thing for himself. And at some point my advice to her because he was so judgmental towards her and so perfectionist, my advice to her was, you gotta really think about if this is a person you wanna move forward with. Because every session you show up, you're in a little bit of shell shock, um, because the man you're loving on is not even close to loving on you. And I know that's gotta be hard and it makes me question the relationship and it makes me question, are you with the right person? So I'm fine putting that on the line. I think it's a great question to ask. Okay. You wanna know about your client's partner and what environment they're living in? Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client. So now we're go in a different direction. Do you enjoy food? What's your favorite foods favorite restaurant to go to? If you had only one day to live, what would be your last meal? Here I am, I'm in a playful question. I wanna see what my client says. I wanna look at the look on their face when I say, do you enjoy food? You know, some people who have weight issues and challenges really love food. Like they love food and they're clear that they love food. And when I ask them what's their favorite foods? Boom, they'll whip it out. Favorite restaurant, boom. They'll tell me last meal. What would you choose? They love that question. There are some people who are so caught up in food is the enemy. They're so caught up in their fear of food that when I ask, do you enjoy food? And I have a smile on my face, uh, they're shell shocked by the question. They don't know what to say. It's hard for them to answer. They almost feel embarrassed. So that tells me something. That tells me in the back of my mind, oh, okay, I have a client who has a certain fear of food, a certain fear that food is the enemy. I'm gonna have to work on that at some point. Truth be told, it's a little easier for me to work with a client who naturally loves food and who's trying to lose weight.
'cause they're already in a place where they're receiving pleasure from food. They already have a relationship with food that has some kind of connection to it, to the food. Loving food is a great thing to do
if you're trying to lose weight.
As strange as that sounds, loving food doesn't mean you have to eat it all the time. Loving food is that you simply know how to love it. Uh, yeah, people get attached to it. Yeah, people get hooked by it. Yeah, people will go to it to get all the love and enjoyment and use it as a symbolic substitute. I understand that. But I need to know who my client is when it comes to their toxic nutritional beliefs about food. This is the kind of question that helps me determine, that gives me information about my client's deeper beliefs about food. So a person who has extreme difficulty answering this question, who feels tongue tied? Who has a shock look on their face? Who has a fearful look on their face? You can pretty much assume when I ask the question, do you enjoy food? And they get all up in a tizzy, uh, that they have the toxic nutritional belief. Food is the enemy and how it shows up for them is a fear of food. So that's helpful because I know I'm gonna come back to that at some point because as you've heard me say before, I'm going to remind you again. Ultimately, ultimately my friends with any weight loss client,
if they have the toxic nutritional belief, food is the enemy, which many, many, many people do. It's an unconscious belief. Unless that is handled, unless that toxic belief is made conscious meaning we shine the light on it, we let our client know they have it. They understand that they have it, they see that they have it. And until they understand the implications of that toxic belief and how powerful it is and how that affects their behavior and how that is most likely affecting their metabolism and how that holding them back dramatically,
I can't help that person sustainably lose weight. I can't help that person sustainably shapeshift their body until they begin to begin to let go of the toxic nutritional belief. Food is the enemy. Having that belief and reaching your sustainable natural weight is mutually exclusive, in my opinion. And I'm absolutely convinced about that. That's a darn strong opinion. So anyway, this question, Hey, do you enjoy food? What's your favorite foods? I'm playing with my client. I wanna hear what they love. You know, because then when I ask them for a dietary intake and they've told me some of their favorite foods and I find out that they're never eating their favorite foods because they're afraid of food because they're afraid if they eat their favorite food, they're gonna keep eating it and eating it and eating it. And they're never gonna stop. I'm now understanding something about their inner world and relationship with food. Ah, they're fearing pleasure. Ah, they don't trust their body. So I'm bookmarking that because I will come back to work in that realm at some point. So this one question, can you see how much information it can give us just by chitchatting? I could chitchat on this question for less than a minute and learn so much about my client based on their facial expression, their body language, their intonation, and how they answer the question. Can you see that?
Ah, okay. If I could ask only three questions of my client, this is one of them. Are you a fast eater, moderat eater, or a slow eater? This tells me a lot.
Now I'm gonna guess about 70 to 80% of people that I pull. Sometimes it's 85% in a room. Consider themselves a fast eater. If your client is a fast eater, I will say it again. And they're here to see you for weight loss. You will never be able to take them where they want to go. Sustainably shapeshifting their body to their natural weight. If they're a fast eater, those two are mutually exclusive. Even if they say, ah, you know, I consider myself more moderate, they're fast, or they're moderate. Their ultimate goal is to become a slow eater. And remember, slow means relaxed, pleasured, sensuous, present, aware, having a good time, feeling good about the food. Savoring slow does not mean mindful. Even though slow includes mindful. I believe the term mindful is a little bit limited. 'cause people think that it's all about the mind. And this is all about emotions. It's about senses, it's about heart and soul and gusto. So, so a slow eater is pleasured, sensuous, nourish, aware, hear, sexy, sensual, enjoying, savoring the experience. That's what I'm calling slow. And that's the ultimate expression of slow. And for your average client, they first need to literally slow down the speed from 80 miles an hour, eating to 20 miles or 30 or 40 miles an hour eating just to begin to see
the impact that's gonna have on their body and their psyche. You cannot help a person who is truly trying to lose weight and who truly has weight to lose. You cannot help them deal with overeating, binge eating, emotional eating until they are able to get on board with training themselves, retraining themselves to lose the automatic unconscious habit that they've absorbed from the world called being a fast eater. Why? Because if they're a fast eater, they will very naturally be an appetite dysregulation, plain and simple. They will not be accurately registering cephalic phase, digestive response, taste, pleasure, aroma satisfaction, visuals of a meal. I'm not gonna be registering that. Therefore, they can eat a big meal. Their belly could be full and their mouth will be hungry because the brain in the head says, I don't remember. Taste, pleasure, aroma, et cetera. And they will be driven to eat. And then they think they have a willpower problem and they simply have a speed problem.
Fast eating is a stressor. Stressor means sympathetic nervous system dominance. That means increased insulin, cortisol, which can for many people, signal the body to store weight, store fat, not build muscle, the opposite of what your weight loss client wants.
Furthermore, many people eat fast because they fear food. Why? Because they have the toxic nutritional belief. Food is the enemy. Why? Because they're trying to lose weight and they got body fat.
Why are they trying, trying to lose weight? Because they have body fat? Because fat is evil. Fat is bad. If I have this fat on my body, the world is gonna hate me. I'm gonna hate me. No one's gonna love me. I'll never find true love. I'll never be okay with myself. Nobody's gonna love me. I'm not gonna love me. Life is gonna suck. So you wanna get rid of that fat, but the fat is caused by food. Therefore food is the enemy.
Now, some people actually have that conscious belief a little bit actually, that that belief is in their mind. Other people, it's, it's just very confused and it's convoluted. And they're not really clear that they're actually walking around with that belief until you break it down for them and point it out to them because they're in a stress response around food. Whenever you encounter the enemy, you are in a stress response.
And because this is an artificial construct, it's not a real enemy. It's a bunch of food on a plate that is putting a person into a stress response. It creates a very confused psychology.
Oddly enough, you can help unwind all that simply by you working on retraining your client to become a slow eater. So I'm asking, Hey, Mr. Mrs. Client, just simple question. Would you consider yourself a fast eater, moderate eater, slow eater?
And I'm gonna listen to the answer and I'm gonna bookmark it. I'm gonna go, great, thank you. Fast eater. Got it. I'm not gonna even spend any time on that. Um, but I'm collating all this information in my mind that I'm learning from my client because then at the end of a session when I'm, I'm putting all the information together in my head and I've remembered, or I've written down, yeah, client's a fast eater and I'm noticing other pieces of the puzzle and I will likely feed that back to them. By the way, Mrs. Client, Mr. And Mrs. Client, you told me that you're a fast eater. You also told me that you are overeating and binge eating in the late afternoon, in the early evening. You know something, we're gonna work on that because what I believe is that you're actually not overeating. What's really happening is your brain hasn't registered food in the first place. And let me explain why. Here's what happens when you eat fast, and I'll talk about cephalic phase digestive response. I'll talk about fast eating being a stressor. I'll give them all the scientific mind cookies. But this at the end when I put all the information together and I'm delivering to my client my
mild assessment of them and how I'm, how I see myself working with them. So I'm bookmarking the information. Tell me about work. Mr. And Mrs. Client, what do you do? Scale one to 10, how much would you say you enjoy your job? One being the worst job in the world. 10 is like the biggest job. Orgasm talk to me. So I wanna know about work plain and simple, their relationship to work that's gonna tell me something. I'm gonna notice their body language. I'm gonna notice their facial expression. For many people, a person's relationship with work tells us a lot. It's gonna tell me, is this a minor stress for you? Is it a major stress for you? Is it not a stress for you at all? Oh, you love your work better than you love being at home with your family? Whoops. Okay, that's a good piece of information that I'm gonna bookmark in the back of my mind. So I'm just learning about a person, my friend. We're on a date. Think of it as being on a date with your client and asking questions so you can just get to know them and you can get to know their inner world. Your client might be talking to you about all the challenges that they have on their job relative to their future, relative to how much money they wanna make. And all of a sudden you're realizing, wow, there's only a work stress, there's actually a money stress here.
Previously I've asked questions about their relationship. You know, there might be information there that came forward about their partner and their partner's work. So I'm, so everything is kind of dropping together and I'm starting to form pieces of a puzzle about the person sitting in front of me. How many days of work are you working full time? Oh, you're a stay at home parent. How long you've been doing that? How's that for you? How's that for you not being in a job? Oh wow, you have a master's degree in education and you love to teach and you're not teaching anymore. How's that for you? Oh, it's really, it's, it's really hard for me. You know, I wanna be a stay at home parent, but I really wanna work. And honestly, like, I think about it a lot and I get really frustrated and I blame it on my partner. And I get mad at my kid. I've heard these things. So that's telling me about what's stressing them. It's helping me understand my client better. It's helping me understand the human who's sitting in front of me much better. And it helps me make potential connections where there are indeed connections. Because oftentimes my client, who overeats or binge eats or emotionally eats, is doing that. So they could alleviate themselves of stress, anger, anxiety, fear. So I wanna know what their stress angers and anxieties and fears are, because then I'm gonna work with those at some point and massage those a little bit more and make the connection for my clients so they could see, oh wow, those are connected for me. And then lights come on. And then all of a sudden I'm doing a little bit of personal and life coaching and job coaching with my client. Can you see where I'm going with that?
So sometimes a little piece of information that you're bookmarking is actually a bigger piece of information. It's a useful piece of information. Uh, I don't take anything for granted when I'm sitting with a client asking them questions. 'cause I'm gonna be working intimately with this person. We are talking about intimate things with our clients. You gotta know your client intimately. If you wanna help them shape, shift their body. Ultimately, think about you're working with a client's body. You are trying to help your client take their physical form and shrink it. Why? Because they told you they wanna shrink it. It's not easy. Can't just shrink a body sustainably.
It takes smarts, takes listening, it takes making connections. It takes a knowledge of the body of nutrition.
It takes a knowledge of our inner world, how the mind works, how emotions work. It takes a knowledge of how mind, emotions, body metabolism, and nutrition are connected.
Yes, sometimes it's just nutrition. Yes, sometimes it's just a lot of personal inner work to do. Sometimes it's a swirl of both. Sometimes it's a little bit of this and a lot of that is different for every human being. So that's why I'm trying to clear my mind. I'm trying to be open and I'm trying to get to know the person sitting in front of me on their terms
so I can gather as much information about a snapshot of their day and their week and their life. So then I can look at tho those snapshots and see what I can tell and determine and discern about my client. I might ask this question, Hey, if you had all the money in the world, what kind of work would you be doing? What would be different about your life?
Really what I'm asking is, what are your passions?
So if you had all the money in the world, what kind of work would you be doing? How would you be spending your time? What would be different about your life? That's gonna tell me something about their passions. And you know, something, if they don't like their job and you know something, if life is a little bit sour for them, and you know something, if I'm noticing that they turn to food because, hey, life is not so great.
I can't take away food from someone because life is not so great. Because if somebody's turning to food to help them feel as a symbolic substitute to help them feel more love, more pleasure, more connection, more goodies, that that's a good reason to turn to food. Because for many of us, many people don't like their job. They don't like their work. It's not a nourishing experience for them. It's hard to find good work that lights you up even a little bit. It's not easy to do that in this life.
So when I ask, if you had all the money in the world, what would you be doing? What that person's really gonna be telling me is, here's what I'm passionate about. Here's what lights me up. Here's what's fun. So I'm gonna bookmark that. I'm gonna take note of that. Oh, I would be just kind of working with children. Oh, I would be doing art. Oh, I would be making music. Oh, I would spend more time outdoors. Oh, I would be, you know, working with, with the elderly. I don't know, whatever it is, because I might return to that later on at some point when I'm asking my client not to stop using food as a symbolic substitute, but to start including more of what they're passionate about in their life. Because there might be ways to work in even a little bit once a week doing what you're passionate about, doing what you love.
Can you see how this question helps me understand what they're passionate about is different from asking. So tell me what you're passionate about. For a lot of people, that's a little bit harder to answer. Ask the question like this, if you had all the money in the world, you didn't have to work, what would you be doing? What would be different about your life? Yeah, some people might say, okay, I would just be, you know, sitting on a beach all day, huh? I don't know that I really believe that. After a while you get bored sitting on a beach. Um, so I'm just looking for information. And if my client doesn't wanna play with me there, I'm not going to push them for any of these questions. I'm not gonna let my client be lazy. But I'm also, at the end of the day, if, if it's really clear to me my client doesn't want to answer a question, doesn't know how to answer a question, or it's just the question's not going anywhere for them, for whatever reason, let it go. Let it go, let it go. Let it go. It doesn't matter. Okay, so did you catch that? You don't have to be rigid here. In fact, I want you to be more smooth and flowing as opposed to rigid.
I'm just wondering in, does your challenge around weight, does your weight in any way affect your work life, social life, love, life? How does it affect your life? Now I'm gonna ask this question. If I haven't heard any of this so far, if we're just dealing in a lot of facts and a lot of details, and I'm not really hearing yet how my clients weight, how they see it affecting their life, because as you've already heard, there are some clients who feel that my weight is holding me back in my career. That if I don't lose weight, I will not get promoted, I will not be professionally considered because everybody hates a fat person. So who wants to promote a fat person, give them a better job to skinny guy gets the better job? Might be true for certain people
and might not. But either way, I wanna know what's going on in my client's mind around all that. You know, some people are dealing with their weight challenge and honestly it doesn't affect their social life. In fact, it's part of their, of their social life. In fact, they have friends who are trying to lose weight or they talk to their friends about it and, and they're still social human beings. Some people isolate because of their weight. Some people will isolate because of their weight around their love life, around their social life. So I wanna know about that. If I haven't been hearing any of these things yet. This question is an optional question to help me start to notice that, think about that, determine that.
Next question I wanna know about my client. Where do you live? Do you enjoy living there? How long you been there? What would be your ideal place to live? Okay, that sounds like a nice getting to know you question. You know, sometimes this question is, ends up being nothing and it doesn't matter. And it's no different than asking a person. Do you have any blue shirts? I don't know. It's just, it's not relevant for some people. It ends up, it's really relevant. Um, you know, the person might tell me, oh, okay, I I live in New York City. Wow, how long you been there? Just a year. Um, you know, what would your ideal place be? Oh, you know something. I'm just here because of my job, but honestly I hate living in the city. All my relatives are back in, in Iowa and I really miss them. Understand? Yeah. Now I'm collating in my mind when I asked before, when did the weight gain come on? And it came on a year ago and all of a sudden, boom, I just made a connection, huh? The weight came on when you moved to New York City. A lot of people don't even realize that. Some do, some don't. A lot of people literally don't make that connection. I have had so many clients over the years who they move somewhere. But moving somewhere new doesn't just mean moving somewhere new. You might be young and leaving your family, leaving the nest, leaving everyone that you know, that's a big deal. Or you might be whatever age you are, and you make a move because of a relationship, a marriage, a job because of economic reasons. It's cheaper for us to live here than it was to live there. And I've had clients who move for economic reasons and they're upset about it. And it was the choice that they made to do and they don't like it and it's causing them a lot of stress. And or the waking is, again, concomitant happen around the same time that they made the move or they've moved to a new place and they haven't fully made friends yet there. And they haven't really figured out where their place is in this new place and how to make their new living environment. So there's all different possibilities here. So I'm just taking note, you know, if my, if my client tells me, yeah, you know, I'm, I, a lot of times I'll get something about city living where people who move to a city and they've never lived in a city before. And perhaps that's because, gosh, I lived in New York City and had a lot of clients when I lived in New York City. And so I'm seeing city clients and I'll hear their complaints about living in the city. I've lived in the country and I'll have clients in the country and then there's a whole other set of issues there. So I am just listening for that, listening to see is there a connection be between my clients' sense of place and what they're going through when it comes to their weight challenge. Yeah, I really miss my family. You know, here I am on the east coast and all my family lives on the West coast,
and that's a stressor for them. There might be little tweaks we can make there, there might not be, but now I'm understanding better what my client is contending with. So I see them more.
One simple question for some clients can give you a lot of information. You know, it also helps me understand a client as well. And some people are living in an environment where they're not around healthy food, quite honestly. Um, it might be living in a part of middle America where no, there's not a lot of healthy food around. There's not a lot of great fresh foods in certain countries in different places. There's just a lot of poor quality food around. So I'm taking notice of that. I'm taking notice of where I might have to inspire my client to branch out and go shop at a farmer's market to get some high quality food.
I've had city clients who so miss the country and so miss that kind of living. And then when we determine that there's a farmer's market in such and such place every, every Saturday, wow. You know, why don't, why don't you get to the farmer's market Now? That's a little thing, but for some people, they start going to a farmer's market and all of a sudden they get inspired. They get inspired about food, they get inspired about cooking, they get inspired about fresh food, they get inspired about health. Some people could care less about a farmer's market. Um, but these are little things that you and I do with a client to help inspire them that can make a difference. All about the little baby steps.
I'm gonna cycle back to parents here. Um, I really wanna know about my client's relationship with their parents. I gotta tell you that. Um, so Mr. And Mr. Client, your parents still alive. Oh, great. Where do they live? How's your relationship with mom? How's your relationship with pop?
I'm going to ask questions based on their answers. This one I might spend a few minutes on. 'cause I really wanna know my client's relationship with their parents. What I'm gonna tell you, let me, let me turbocharge psychology for you for a minute. The field of psychology, um, I have studied psychology very deeply and I love it. Therefore, I will assert to you that I'm qualified to criticize it and critique it. Um, I'm frustrated with the field of psychology because I find that it can be very dissociated and erudite and not useful to the average person. That's why we have so many pop or popular psychology books out there because people really don't learn about the contents of their own mind and heart and emotions and, and how to be in this world and, and how the mind works, how life works. So what I wanna say to you is you can tell a lot about a person's psychology today in this moment if you start to get insights into their relationship with their parents as it is right now.
Now, if when I ask, are parents still alive? The person says no. Wow. How long ago? So I'm gonna say, how long ago did they pass? I'm gonna be listening to my clients. I'm gonna be listening. Is there a little sadness there? Wow. Were you close with your parents? Yeah, I was super close with both my parents. Wow. How is that for you? You're kind of an orphan. I totally relate. You know, both my parents died when they were in their late fifties. Um, so I just want to hear, I wanna feel, oftentimes you'll hear your client, they'll start to say, yeah, my parents are alive. Oh yeah, they're divorced. My dad lives here. My mom lives there. Well, are you close with your parents? Um, not really close with my mom. You know, pretty close with my dad, or, Hey, I'm estranged from my mom, not estranged. It's, you're gonna hear every possible permutation. And all of that gives me information. And all of that is something that I'm going to remember. I'm going to bookmark in the back of my mind. Why? Because what I know is that a woman's relationship with food and body will often, often, often track her relationship with her mother. You show me a woman who's angry at her mother. I'll show you a woman who's angry at her body. You show me a woman who has a confused relationship with food. I'll show you a woman that chances are, has a confused relationship with her body. Is this a hundred percent mapping one-to-one? No, but it probably works about a good 90% of the time. So I'm just tracking that because a lot of times I'm able to help my female client with her relationship with food and body when I help her first in a lot of ways with a relationship with her mom.
When one starts to heal, the other starts to heal. When one starts to transform, the other one can start to transform. That's what I've noticed with men. I haven't, it's, it's just not as compelling in terms of man's relationship with his body, man's relationship with his father. Yes, a man's relationship with his body will oftentimes track his dad's relationship to his body. But I just, it's, it's haven't always found it just so useful to work in. It just hasn't been as, as compelling. And that could be my shortsightedness because I just can't see clearly here. Or it could be the fact that I believe that a woman's relationship with food just has a little bit more oomph to it overall in general. And a man's relationship with food. I think a woman's relationship with food, the rabbit hole goes deeper than a man's can. A man's go deep. Absolutely. I just think the women tend to go deeper and wider and be a little more complex. That's just my experience. Um, and again, that's not knocking men. It's just saying, here's where I'm working with the parent thing.
Hey, I might learn that, you know, the client's parent or parents are living with them 'cause they're old and there's a stressor, there's a challenge. It might mean I find out that my client's parent is going through a dis-ease and it looks like they're dying. And now I have an understanding of what's stressing my client more. So it's information.
I'm looking to gather information. So remember I told you if I could just ask three questions of a client to really get to know them. When it comes to anything in, in eating psychology slash nutrition slash personal growth practice, I'm gonna ask the questions you have asked you to moderate eat or slow eater. That's one of the most important three questions I could ask a client. The other important question I would ask a client is, have you forgiven your parents? It's an unexpected question. Have you forgiven your parents? And I I'm gonna tell you, if the person doesn't have a yes right away, then the answer is likely no. Have you forgiven your parents to the person says, yeah, of course, yes.
Then they have, if they haven't, which usually means they hesitate on the question or they have to think about it, then there's a place where they haven't fully stepped outta their parents' house. Forgiveness of a parent doesn't mean you approve of everything that they are or were or did. You, you could dislike or disapprove of the fact that mom and or dad did this. That the other thing to me, to somebody else, to each other. I don't care what it is. Forgiving your parents means you are no longer holding them account for what happened.
And you are now in responsibility for your life. You are now driving your life. You are no longer living in their house emotionally or physically or energetically. It means you've understood. Forgiving your parents means you've understood that just like you, they are human beings who came from their parents, who had their issues, their challenges, their hardships, their upbringing that you and I don't even know what they went through. And that their fallible human beings, they were one's kids, they were ones teenagers, and they're a product of their times. And yeah, there was plenty of places where they just didn't measure up as parents. Got it. Okay, that's life. I understand that was hard. That was a hard upbringing. I get it forgiven. You've let them go. That is a weight lifted. It is one of the things I'm just saying to you from where I sit and, and I, I just, this, I just learned about this. Just learning about life and learning about, oh my God, you know, I'm in this unconscious relationship where my parents, where I'm still holding 'em hostage for this, that the other thing. Then all of a sudden, because I'm noticing that in myself, I'm noticing that in my clients and I start to notice the connections. Because when we're holding a parent as Unforgiven,
oftentimes we can trace that to our eating challenge, our food challenge, our body challenge.
I've just noticed that. I've seen that
when you can start to see your parents as in a lot of ways, uh, you know, in, in just about every traditional culture around the globe, at some point the kids are taking care of the parents. When the parents age, somebody takes care of them. It's the kids, it's the grandkids, it's the kids of the parents end up taking care of them. So at some point, the children, me and you become the parents of the parents.
We have to do that energetically and emotionally. If you think you are smarter or more conscious than your parent, then you have to act like that.
So this is a long-winded way of saying that. I think this is a damn important question. So I'm just bookmarking it. I'm noticing my client's relationship with mother and father. What they have to say, their facial expression, their body language. 'cause I'm gonna bookmark that and come back to it because I'm gonna tell you, if I have a woman who has a very complex relationship with her mother, angry at her mother, my mother's constantly criticizing me about this, that the other thing, if that's my woman client, you bet we're gonna work on that. I have had women clients who we've had a focus on the relationship with the father because the father was the one who was criticizing the weight, criticizing her body. And that's the relationship we have to work on for men. Yep. I've also had to work on their relationship with their dad. High expectations. Dad wasn't there, dad wasn't emotional, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. That might be a place to work. We're just noticing and listening because as you're listening to these questions and the answers, if you're being open, you know what happens. My friends, the wisdom of the universe is gonna start to talk to us. As you're collating this information and you're relaxing in these questions, you don't have to sit there going, oh my God, she hasn't forgiven her mother. Oh my God, she has a complex relationship with her mother. I think Mark said that I should do this and that and the other thing. And it could be this and it could be that, no, don't go there. Just note it, feel it, catalog it in your brain. Jot a quick two words on a piece of paper so you're still focusing on your client. Try to remember this information and not start to write down as soon as your client is starting to complain about their parents. If you're taking copious notes in that moment, uh, they're gonna feel a little bit insecure and a little bit weird is my guess. That's why I want you to really learn how to not rely on extensive notes during a session. Take notes after the session, bookmark things in your brain as best you can. Hey, if you want to, you can record a session with your client's permission at the beginning. Go back to the recording. That's what you need to do. Especially if you're a newcomer, uh, this is your first time as a practitioner and you really wanna learn this and you really wanna get this down, that's fine to do. I know practitioners who record their sessions always with your client's permission, always letting them know it's a hundred percent confidential. You will never share it with anyone else, and you do never share it with anyone else. You must not do that. So we're cataloging this information and then we're gonna let life kind of bring things together for us.
Okay. Mr. And Mrs. Client, um, let me ask you this question. You know, I I, of course, you're here to see me to lose weight. Any other health issues or symptoms that you experience that are worth sharing? And, and this is important to me because it's really gonna help me understand you, your body, your metabolism. Anything else? Um, what do you mean?
Oh, like you have digestive issues? Oh yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. You're gonna take notice? Well, um, yeah, yeah, I do have digestive issues. Um, what does that mean for you? What does digestive issues mean? Oh, well, usually, you know, after I eat, well, sometimes I have heartburn or sometimes I just like, oh, the food just feels so heavy in my stomach. I get really tired after I eat. So you wanna know about, so let me tell you, basically you wanna know about a person's digestion and you could ask any other health issues or symptoms. Mr. And Mrs. Client? No, not really. Okay, but just let me ask, how about your digestion? Oh yeah, right. All right. Sleep. Ask them about sleep. How's the quality of your sleep in general? How's your energy level in general? Do you, do you have the energy you want? Do you get fatigue during the day, during the week? Yeah, you know, I do deal with fatigue, but tell me a little bit more. When do you deal with fatigue? So if somebody starts talking to you about digestion, find out what their digestive issues mean to them. How often, how intense you wanna ask them about their elimination. How's your elimination? Do you get constipated? You get diarrhea? Oh, you do get constipated. How often? How often do you go? How often is your bowel movement? Get that information from them if they are low energy. When are you low energy? Is there certain times during the day, huh? Yeah. You know. Oh gosh, yeah, it's usually right around two, three o'clock. Okay. Got it. These are things you could write down, you know, how's your mood during the day? How's your brain power? What do you mean? Well do, do you, do you feel like your brain is sharp? Does it get a little muddled, a little foggy? Do you know if you have any food allergies or sensitivity?
If you noted that your client was taking a medication for depression, hey, you know, you mentioned that you're taking, you know, such and such a medication for depression. How long have you been taking that uhhuh? And are you, who prescribed that for you? Got it. Has it helped you? How does it feel these days? You know, a few questions for your woman client. Tell me, how's your monthly cycle? What happens when you're on your period? Any symptoms? How is that experience for you?
Are you satisfied with the quality of your hair and skin? Oh yeah, my skin gets really dry. So these are some of the main places to ask about, but I'm always gonna ask anything else you can think of, even if it's minor nagging health issue. The reason why I say that, my friends, is a lot of people adapt to their health challenge as normal. I have had clients who have chronic headaches, they get a headache every day sometimes. And when I say, do you have any other health issues or symptoms that I should be aware of? No. Are you sure? Yes. It turns out they forgot to say headache every day because it's so normal for them that they wouldn't even think to say it. Are they happy about it? No. Does it irritate them? Yes. But literally it's become such a part of their life. So, ooh,
I question my client. Anything else you can think of? Anything else that you think of? I want you to write these down. Whatever your client tells you, I want you to be able to make sure you catch what your client says about what their minor or not so minor additional complaints are. And you know why? And I'm going to remind you why this is so, so, so, so, so, so, so important, my friends, because this is money in the bank for you because you will not help your client necessarily lose 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 pounds in a week. But you can help improve potentially their digestion. You can help potentially improve their mood swings, their brain fog, their energy level,
even their elimination. If they're constipated by tweaks that you make as a homework assignment at the end of the first session. And when your client, when you pick out a few homework assignments or strategies that can potentially yield a win, then we're off to the races. Then that's good news. For all the reasons your client's gonna like you, you are gonna, like you, there's a success to celebrate. There's a confidence that you're gonna have, there's a confidence that your client's gonna have. Life is good. So that's why you're asking this question. So when your client comes back the next week, hey, how did things go for you? What happened last week? Remember we worked on learning how to eat more slowly, putting yourself in more of a parasympathetic dominance, relaxation state. Like how was that for you? Oh gosh. You know, it was really hard for me to eat slow, but I, you know, I noticed my digestion just felt a lot better. Um, and I was also eating less. I wasn't even trying to eat lash. Bing, bing, bing. Great news, Mr. Mr. Klein. I'm so glad to hear that. You know what that means? No. That means we're on the right track. That means we are gonna celebrate this small success because oftentimes, most oftentimes when we're looking to have sustainable long-term weight loss, where you reach your natural weight takes a while to shape shift the body takes a while to lose a bunch of pounds of body weight. But when we're on the right track, little nagging things begin slowly to clear up when we're making the right moves. When it comes to weight loss, it just means your body is becoming healthier. It means your style of living is becoming healthier. It means we're doing something right. So I'm really glad to hear that you're gonna pump up your client, you've gotta make sure to celebrate that stuff, my friends. Um, so write down all their secondary health complaints and you need to know those. So when your client says, yes, I'm getting better sleep, you're gonna correlate that with the fact that, oh, we stopped eating so late at night and we shifted you to an earlier breakfast, an earlier lunch and an earlier dinner, and your sleep got better. Haha, isn't that a good piece of information for us? It means we're on the right track. That will often happen for a client. Okay, next question. Are you under a doctor's care? I just wanna know that one of my clients under a doctor's care. I might ask who I might ask. You know, how's that relationship? It's a good piece of information to know specifically, I'm then gonna ask, you know, have you had any thyroid issues in the past or tests? Have you been tested for diabetes, pre-diabetes, insulin resistance? So I wanna hear what my client has to say about that because a weight loss client, oftentimes who has had so, so these are probably, if I can pick out the two most common
identifiable by traditional medical science metabolic challenges that a human could have that would cause weight gain or inability to lose it. It would be thyroid issues and diabetes or pre-diabetes.
Are there other health issues that will cause weight gain or inability to lose it? Yes. But I'm gonna say these are the two most common ones that most doctors can easily test for and give their, give their patient information. Okay, here's what's going on for you. I will say that if there's any naturopaths, functional medicine doctors, functional nutritionist, chiropractors listening in, you will likely be saying to yourself, you know something traditional medical doctors don't really do the right test for thyroid health. That's probably true. Which is why I'm always wanting my client, if they can, to be under the care of a medical professional who is more trained in natural medicine and or functional medicine and or functional nutrition. I'm gonna just leave it at that. That is my preference for a client because it means that if they are getting medical testing and blood testing, they're getting the kinds of tests and the kinds of interpretations from those tests that are a little bit more leading edge, quite frankly. So just so you know, my bias, my personal bias, I am a huge believer in natural medicine and in functional medicine, natural nutrition, functional nutrition, and the practitioners who understand how to test for that and interpret those tests. This is not to say that every functional medicine doctor is perfect and that the field of functional medicine doesn't have its issues and its challenges. What I'm saying is, to me, it's an advancement over what's been happening in the mass market when it comes to mass market medicine. So those are the two questions I'm gonna ask a client, because if I'm dealing with a client who's hypo, I-E-H-Y-P-O, thyroid or low thyroid, you could be doing everything right with them and they're not gonna lose weight because they have a glandular issue. They have an issue with hormones, um, which can be connected to a lot of different things. Um, thyroid issues can be a result of, uh, a plethora of outside forces. Um, outside toxins, stress is a big one anyway. Um, diabetes, pre-diabetes, that's yet another reason. You could be doing everything right with your client just about. And if I knew that my client's diabetic or pre-diabetic, I know this is good information. So I'm gonna really look to let go of as much of the poor quality, high carbohydrates as I can let go of sugar as best as possible. Make sure my client, my diabetic or pre-diabetic client has good macronutrient balance. I'm gonna make sure they have enough fiber in their diet, enough essential fatty acids in their diet, and we're removing all the inflammatory substances, which for many people can be excess alcohol, excess caffeine, excess junk food, excess sugar, excess pork quality meat. Those can be inflammatory for people if they have a gluten sensitivity that can be highly inflammatory. So anyway, I'm gonna ask these questions of a client and if they say, no, I haven't been tested for any of these, um, I, I might say, Hey, you know, it might be a good idea to ask your doctor to do that, for you to run those tests. And if that's really not what your doctor kind of understands or specialize in, and if you can afford it, find a good functional medicine doctor in your neighborhood. Next, are you taking any supplements for weight loss or supplements in general? Now, careful about this question. I just want to, I, I just want this to be 30 seconds or less. I wanna know if my client's taking supplements for weight loss. Why? Um, 'cause I just wanna know,
it's gonna help me understand, are they supplement takers in general? Um, are you taking any supplements for weight loss or supplements in general? Oh God, no. I hate taking pills. So right there, I know that chances are I am not gonna ask my client to take any pills. Why could they just told me they hate taking pills? Why would I give my clients seven different supplements if they hate taking pills? Unless, uh, something is so important, unless you are the kind of practitioner who is licensed to prescribe supplements, recommends supplements. Unless you're that kind of person who uses a lot of supplements in your practice, if you are, you wanna know, like how resistant is your client to taking supplements? One simple question. Hey, Mr. And Mr. Client, you're taking supplements for weight loss or in general? No. Why should I be? No, not necessarily. Just wondering. Oh God, yeah, I take a long list of supplements. Um, unless you are a very specific practitioner who understands supplements, don't waste your time taking somebody's long list of supplements and looking at it. Um, uh, supplements, just let me tell you, are the wild west. When I say supplements, I mean going to the health food store or the vitamin store in every bottle that you see in a vitamin store, in a health food store. It could be vitamins, it could be minerals, it could be herbs, it could be all the new interesting strange ancillary nutrients that constantly are coming out. There's a gazillion of them. And that field, the, the use of supplements is truly the wild west. And I say that affectionately, just so you know my bias. I've worked in the supplement industry. I've made a ton of money in the supplement industry. Um, I love supplements and I got a cabinet full of them and I experiment with them. Um, I used to use a lot of supplements in my practice in the early days. These days, I generally, um, will not work with a lot of supplements. I will only recommend, you know, a handful of things. And in general, they will be the more food-based supplements. So for the average practitioner who doesn't know too much, what I'm going to tell you is if you want to work with supplements and you don't have training and you want to learn more, you're gonna have to educate yourself. But what I'm gonna suggest to you is that the no, some of the no-brainer kinds of supplements are the ones that are food in a supplement. So that means an essential fatty acid supplement, it's fat in a pill. That means a probiotic supplement. It is little organisms that will people your gut in a pill that you would normally get from the environment that you would normally get from certain foods, particularly fermented foods. So those are honestly two really easy ones for a client who's dealing with insulin resistance. Pre-diabetes. Diabetes, I might give them a fiber pill. Why? Because that can have a big impact on regulating insulin and blood sugar. And it can have a big impact on weight and it's loss. It's a food supplement. Worse comes to worse. It makes somebody a little bloated and they hate it and they don't wanna do it, and then you don't do it anymore. Um, so those are three that, that tend to be easy ones. Um, but in general, I just want you to get a sense. So if you are a person and you already are a practicing professional and you do work with supplements, you wanna know if your client's gonna be complying. That's why you wanna know, are you taking any supplements for weight loss? And generally speaking, if my client is taking some weird thing that they bought online in the newspaper and they're taking it for weight loss, um, y you know, honestly, uh, pretty much every supplement that I've ever seen that's touted for weight loss, that's sold as a weight loss supplement is relatively useless. Yes, every once in a while you will hear a story. Yes, I took chromium and, and I lost all this weight. Yeah, well, okay, well that one person had a chromium deficiency. They were insulin resistant, they took chromium. That was the one little lock and key, and they shed some weight. Does that mean chromium is a weight loss supplement? No. It means somebody got lucky. Um, what I wanna say to you in general is that weight loss supplements, I'm sorry, I haven't seen it. I haven't seen this works. Um, and it pulls people away from what is useful. So a person tells me, yeah, I'm taking these 11 different supplements for weight loss. I'm gonna bookmark that and potentially come back to it because my client is likely focusing in the wrong neighborhood when it comes to weight loss. Supplements by themselves are not going to make a human lose weight. They can support the process of health and healing. They can support the process of creating a healthier digestion. They can support the process of repleting a body that has been deficient, especially when it comes to essential fatty acids.
Other than that, when it comes to weight loss, if we have to work in all the other neighborhoods. Okay, enough of that question. Um, just wanna know, Mr. Mr. Client, have you been treated for any condition with steroid hormones? Why do I ask this question? Because there are different health conditions where somebody might have been treated with steroid hormones, if they've been on a long course of steroid hormones, if they were overprescribed steroid hormones and their weight gain coincided with getting those hormones
than then I'm gonna just take notice of that then, then that's just helpful information to know, um, to make that correlation. Because some people, that's what they're weight gain. If they had a spontaneous weight gain, it could be con common and it could be happening at the same time as this. What to do with that? Um, unless you are more of a trained medical professional or health professional, you're not gonna know what to do with that because it's a hard place to work. Um, but I just at least would want you to have that information to know it. Especially for those of you who are a little bit more advanced. I also want you to ask your weight loss client, um, who has been trying to lose weight? Have you had chemotherapy before? Why do I wanna know that? Um, because there are certain people who have had cancer, and I've noticed this is particularly for breast cancer, and I've noticed that some people who have been treated for breast cancer with certain kinds of chemotherapy will end up having a weight gain that is virtually impossible to get rid of. So this is actually fairly well documented. Um, and it's, I probably worked with, you know, in the course of my career, maybe seven or eight women who were treated for breast cancer with chemotherapy who their weight gain happened during and or shortly after the chemotherapy. Uh, and they try everything and they've done everything. Uh, quite honestly, I've not been successful, uh, in this area because I think there is for some people, um, just some interesting, we haven't figured it out yet. Metabolic change that happens. Um, I haven't had a client like this in years, but I want you to know that because if you can make the connection with your client, yeah, I did have breast cancer. Yeah, that's when the weight came on. Yes, I did receive chemotherapy. Great. Find out what kind of chemotherapy, great. Google that chemotherapy and weight gain and start to see what you learn and just know you're dealing with a challenge that might not be the right client for you if you aren't willing to go on a journey with them and try all different kinds of things, quite frankly. So for the average person, for this kind of client, yeah, you might be able to help them eat healthier food. Yeah. You might be able to help them slow down. You might be able to help them do all kinds of great things, and they don't lose weight and you did everything right and they're doing everything right. It's a frustrating one. I wish I had an answer for you here.
Tell me, Mr. Mr. Alein, what kind of exercise do you do, if any?
Big question I'm noticing I'm just not listening to their answer and writing it down. I'm looking at their face, I'm looking what they say. Oh God, I love my aerobics class. I do aerobics five times a week. Great. I just learned you love your aerobics class and you do it five times a week. You love it. I love people who love what they do for exercise. I love people who don't love what they do for their exercise. I just don't love the exercise that they're doing, if that makes sense. Uh, so my person answers me, my client answers me if I'm not sure if they like it or not. Um, do you enjoy that? Do you enjoy your dance class? Do you enjoy yoga class? Do you enjoy jogging? Do you enjoy working out at the gym? Oh yeah, sure. Okay. What do you enjoy about it? A lot of people are gonna tell you they enjoy it and they don't. So you need to, you need to be your smart self. You oftentimes know when somebody's not giving you the real deal. You know, you know when somebody's saying, oh yeah, oh yeah, I love going to the gym. Really? It doesn't sound like it. Um, lemme ask you this question, Mr. And Mr. Client. If everything burned the same amount of calories and a lot of them, no matter what you did, even if it just took a two minute walk, if everything burned the same amount of calories and a lot of them, what kind of movement or exercise would you do? That's a big question, my friends. Big question. You wanna get your weight loss client embodied. You wanna get them celebrated in their body. You wanna get them having a win with their body. Many people have a challenging, dysfunctional, unfortunate relationship with movement and their body because of how they've been brought up, how they've been taught, their early experience of exercise and how the world has drilled into their head that you have to do this nasty exercise in order to lose weight. And if you don't do this nasty exercise, I I am, I'm still blown away to this day. How many people exercise for punishment? Yeah, they like exercise, but the majority of them is exercising as a punishment for having body fat, having body weight, having eaten a meal.
And that needs to be handled at some point. So I'm taking note. I'm just noticing what my client says. I don't say to them, aha, I asked you if you enjoy that. And you said Yes, but I see that you are really not telling me the truth. No, I don't say that. I just take notice. I ask more questions. Everything burned the same amount of calories. What movement or exercise would you do? By the way, whatever answer they're giving me, that's what I'm gonna come back to at a later time. Maybe the second or the third session. Remember when I asked you, Mr. And Mr. Client, everything burned the same amount of calories, what would you do? And you told me you would be walking, biking, dancing, hiking instead of jogging on the road. No more jogging on the road. We're gonna have you completely change how you move and how you exercise. We're gonna pretend that everything burns the same amount of calories as an experiment and see what happens. We are gonna switch you to all the ways of moving that you say you like to do. We're gonna get rid of all the ways that you don't like to move and we'll see what happens. It's an experiment. And I'm gonna tell you, every time I've done this, I've always gotten a positive result. I mean that I have never not gotten a positive result at the end of the day, ever. It's a slam dunk. A, the person is happier, your client's gonna be happier. B, they're gonna be happier. C, they're gonna be happier. So they're just happier. They're doing what they wanna do and they're not doing what they don't wanna do. And from that place, they become more embodied. And when you help your client become more embodied and celebrate their body more, they're gonna step more into relaxation response. They're stepping more into their own vehicle. When you inhabit the body and occupy the body, then and only then do you actually have a chance to, in a long-term, sustainable way to shapeshift the body, to move the body in the direction that you want to go because you're inside the body. It's like a car. If you're not in the car, car ain't gonna go anywhere. Gotta get in the car, gotta inhabit the car in the way a car needs to be inhabited. You get in, you sit down, close the door, put the seatbelt on, push the button, you turn the key, whatever it is. Great. That's how you embody inside a car.
We have to land in a body in a way where we go as adults, this feels good. You have to inspire your client to love themselves, to like themselves into weight loss, to embody themselves into their natural weight. Not to do stupid nonsense that they don't wanna do. That doesn't make any sense. That stresses them out even more. That doesn't actually help them embody really what your weight loss client is saying on one level is, I wanna be in my body in a different way. This body doesn't work for me. I want a different body. Okay, I can go with that. So you want your body experience to be different. Got it. So why would you be doing things to your body that you truly don't enjoy? Let's be in your body in a different way, starting now. When you lose all this weight, you're gonna love being in your body. Great. Let's start loving being in your body now because then we're modeling the exact thing that you want. We're creating an energetic blueprint for what you want. When you create the energetic blueprint for what you want, it's easier to get what you want. You wanna have a body that you enjoy. IE. When you lose the 60 pounds, you're gonna enjoy your body. Great start to enjoy your body now and then you are slowly taking steps in the direction where you wanna go.
This is magic in the way that it works. You gotta let go of this strange belief that I have to do exercise in a certain way in order to stimulate weight loss. Yeah, maybe there are certain kinds of movement that might be more thermogenic, but the first move with a client is to get them doing the kind of movement movement that invites them into their body. That is step number one.
Then from there, okay, you like doing yoga. Maybe we'll experiment with a hot yoga class or a power yoga class. That'll be thermogenic. That'll get you to burn some calories. But if you don't enjoy yoga, it's not gonna work. So let's start with a class that feels enjoyable first. That actually works for you. See what I'm saying? You get somebody dancing and celebrating their body. 'cause that's what they love to do. For a lot of people, women and men, whoof, it's a huge victory 'cause they're learning to love their embodiment. And when you start to love your embodiment, it is easier to shapeshift your body. Don't believe me. Try it for yourself.
Aha, aha, aha. That's the end. But before we end, I wanna say a few words because it's not technically the end. There's actually more questions and there's more conversation that I'm gonna have with you about all these questions that I just asked. So really to be continued in part three for our weight loss intake. I hope you are seeing my friends that the little questions are oftentimes the big questions and sometimes little questions that they turn out, not to give us much information and sometimes a little question that you ask actually is important and reveals a lot. So again, we're still in the process of we're questioning our client and we're just absorbing you are taking note in your mind. You're taking a few notes on your paper and you're starting to see if a picture is coming into place. Great job, my friends. Thanks for, thanks for absorbing this all. Thanks for being a good digester and a good assimilator of information. I can't wait to have a conversation with you about part three of our weight loss intake. We're gonna start to wrap things up in this realm. I'll see you soon on the other side.

PART 3

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Greetings. Once again, my friends, Mark David here, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Here we are in the last part, three of three for the intake experience. First session for a weight loss client. So here we are coming into the tail end of the questions you're going to be asking a client. And indeed, the last handful of questions that I'm going to cover with you right now are all optional. Optional meaning if you have the time, if it feels right, and they're also also questions to bookmark for yourself to maybe come back to at a future time when the relationship is a little more deeper and established. So let's jump right in. An optional question to ask a client is, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, for interest's sake. Do you know any people who you would consider overweight, like friends, relatives, partners, anyone? And yet they're truly fine about their weight with no need to change or fix themselves, and they're totally happy who they are and they're expressing themselves and they're good to go. Do you know anyone like that?
Now, here's why I might ask this question in a first session. You know, there are some people who are very, very, very deeply ingrained in the belief that when I lose this weight, then everything's gonna change. But until I lose the weight, I'm actually not enough. I'm not okay. And you know, sometimes my first time client, their language is so consistent about this, they will constantly make comments about how awful their weight is, how awful their looks are, and how, you know, they just have to lose this weight in order for them to have their life. So if to me it's a little bit too much, I might ask the question, Hey, just for interest's sake, do you know any people you know that you would consider overweight, maybe overweight, quote unquote. Like you people, you've met people, you've seen people, you've worked with anyone, and they're truly fine with themselves and they're happy and they're okay. Now, I gotta tell you, I've asked this question hundreds and hundreds of times of human beings, I consistently ask this question in any live event that I do. When we get to the conversation about wait, and if I ask a room full of a hundred people, how many of you know someone who most humans would typically consider overweight or fat? You know, someone like that. And that person loves Themselves. They love their body, they're sexy, they're expressed, they're sensual, they're happy with who they are, and their weight's not holding them back. You know, if I ask that room, if I ask them a hundred people at least 95 raise their hand, they met that person, or they know that person. So the only reason I say this is I wanna just spank my client a little bit with some consciousness. I wanna introduce the concept of, Hey, you just might be barking up the wrong tree just a little.
Now, I always ask this question from a place of curiosity. I'm not trying to corner my client, I'm not trying to pin them against the wall. I'm not trying to show them that you shouldn't want to lose weight. No. What I am trying to demonstrate to them is that based on their experience, not mine, and this is not me saying this, this is me asking you the question, do you know someone like that? And I'm, and if the person sitting in front of me says, oh yeah, I go, interesting, isn't it? And I just might leave it at that. Or I might say something like, goes to show you. Sometimes we just have these beliefs about what weight loss is gonna do for us and us being happy and out there and confident. And sensual isn't necessarily dependent on a number on the scale, is it? That's it. I wanna plant that seed in my client's mind because in many ways, with my weight loss client, that is the essence of the work. Once again, I am more than happy to help my client lose weight if they have weight to lose and they wanna lose it.
But I have to help my client get good with life, get good with the universe, get good with reality, and wipe the slate as clean as possible of toxic beliefs that are actually holding them back from getting where they want to go. Because if you're trying to lose weight and you are truly convinced that unless I lose this weight, I cannot be the real fully expressed me, then you are living in a factually incorrect reality. You're going against the wisdom of life. You are hating or disliking yourself into weight loss. And that strategy hasn't worked. 'cause that's why my client's sitting before me and they're creating a biological biochemical milieu of stress chemistry, which ultimately doesn't take them where they want to go.
So we gotta get our minds right, my friends, our clients have to get their mind, heart, and soul aligned with the soul's compass of how life works. So I'm dropping this question as almost a throwaway line, and I gotta smile on my face when I ask this, but I ask it seriously. And I'm not gonna look to pummel my client with you. See, no, I just want them to notice that I wanna plant that seed because that's the essence of the work, and we're gonna come back to that at some point. So I'm calling this question optional, pull it out if you wanna use it, try it out. And again, this is especially useful if you are hearing your client locked into the deep belief that their weight is so dramatically holding them back, like dramatically. Like if they're on it about my weight is holding me back from being the real me. And some clients will present that way.
You know, here's another optional question,
and this might not be for a first session. I'll occasionally ask it. You know, I might say to my client, other than losing weight, other than losing weight, what do you think could help you love your body just as it is right now? So I get that you're gonna love your body more when you lose weight. Understandable. You know, if I could shapeshift my body in this way, and if I could make it about five inches taller and put another 20 pounds of muscle on, yeah, I'd even be more in love with myself, I think. Um, but other than that, other than you losing weight, what do you think could help you love your body? Just like right now
that gets people thinking they might not have an answer. I might say, take a few guesses.
That question might be a later homework assignment. Now, again, you have to gauge, is my client ready to go there with a slightly deeper question like this? Um, that's up for you to decide, but this is a question that I'll definitely come to, you know, at some point by session three or four. So I'm gonna say, when in doubt, don't ask the question. And if you're inspired, it's an interesting question to play with, and you don't have to spend a lot of time on it. But really the question itself, see, the point of the question itself is educational client doesn't even need an answer, huh? The person's gonna be thinking, you mean there's other ways for me to love my body other than losing weight? No. Wait a second. All I need to lose weight, then I'll love my body. Well, that's actually not true. There's a hundred ways to love your body other than weight loss. So it introduces a new concept to your client's mind. Here's another optional question, and this is, you know, I'll ask it in a first session because I'm comfortable with this. Um, if I'm listening to my client, if it is not abundantly clear to me, oh yeah, it sounds like your weight came on when this work stress started happening when you got divorced. Um, oh, it sounds like things fell apart when you started binge eating because you know, your mother died, whatever it was. If I'm not seeing connections, I'm always gonna be wondering in the back of my mind, is there a connection between my client, their sexuality, their sexual history and their eating habits, their relationship with food, and they're challenged with weight. So I'm not gonna be wondering that. So this is something I want to know for most clients at some point. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I'm gonna ask you a personal question. Feel free to not answer it or just answer it to whatever degree you're comfortable with. Like, what's going on in your sex life? How is that for you? Um, do you have what you want? And in an ideal universe, what would be different?
Now, there's a lot of people that just launch right into the answer. I'm always surprised about how willing people are to go there. And I'm just listening. I'm just gauging, you know, if the person's really nervous, I'm like, okay, this is a personal question for them. And or there's some energy there. And or I might learn that, you know, my client has shut off pleasure. They've shut off touch, they've shut off sensuality or intimacy or sexuality because they don't like their body. I wanna know about that. I wanna know about how they're experiencing their own body sim in this, in this realm. Simply because the amount of humans who are trying to lose weight, for whom there is a connection, it might not be the most important connection, but there's at least a connection between, oh, when I lose this weight, then I will finally be sexually desirable, then I will be worthy of intimacy, then I will be worthy of pleasure, then I will be the worthy of touch, touch. Until then, I ain't no good. I'm not enough. I'm not lovable as I am. That's what a lot of people are walking around with. Furthermore, there's a percentage of people, I don't know what it is, there's a percentage of people who have had a not good experience in the past around their sexuality, around sex. It could be simply that they have confusion around it. What the world taught them was not helpful. It could be that they've just never felt safe in this realm. They've never felt comfortable in this realm. It could be that they have a history of sexual abuse, a one-time abuse, a continuous abuse. It could have been a date, rape could have been a lot of things. And oftentimes those experiences
a challenging past experience around my sexuality, whether it's direct, physical, sexual abuse, or whether it's just an emotional challenge around that, which a lot of people have. It's hard to figure out who am I as a sexual being and what is a healthy relationship with my sexuality. We don't, we're not taught that at all for most of us. And that can lead to all kinds of strange, distorted behaviors around food. Because, well, if I'm gonna be loved for who I am physically, if my body is a sex object, because that's what it seems like the media and the movies are telling me, and all the beautiful people are the ones that have the fun. And I look in the mirror and my body doesn't look like their body. Well, how am I gonna get there? How am I gonna be lovable and have all the fun and the sex and the pleasure and and the love? Oh, diet and exercise. So that's where people go in their minds. So at some point, I want the answer to this question. If you're inspired to ask and in a first session, go there. If not, don't You gotta feel a little comfortable and you have to feel it's the right moment for that. And I'll especially ask it if I've got a suspicion,
if I've got a hunch, if I've got an intuition. But at some point I want to know about my client's relationship with sensuality, sexuality, physical intimacy, and touch, pleasure. It's all connected because it's so often connected to food. My friends, you've heard me talk about this and you'll hear me talk about it more.
Another optional question, what would your ideal relationship with food look like? And what would it feel like? Like if you can have the perfect relationship with food, what would that look and feel like?
You know, a lot of times people don't even think about that. They just think they wanna stop overeating. They just think they wanna stop binge eating. They think they wanna have more control. So what would your ideal relationship with food and with food look and feel like? Oh, I wouldn't binge eat anything, anything else she would just not bingey. Like what else? What would make your relationship with food feel great and wonderful?
You spend a minute or two, it's just an exploration. It's just, it's just getting the juices flowing with your client. It's getting them to think in a positive direction because they've been spending most of their time trying to get rid of body fat attack, body fat attack my weight
control, my overeating control, my binge eating control food, limit my food. Okay, that's a lot of fighting. Now let's expand a bit. Let's look at it from a positive perspective. What would your ideal relationship with food look and feel like? Here's another optional question. What would your ideal relationship with your body look and feel like? It's a little different. A lot of people love these questions. They don't have answers, but the question, it stops 'em in their tracks a little bit. It captures their imagination a little bit.
So I just wanna open up the question, if it feels right, if it doesn't feel rushed, and it's a way to create a little bit more spaciousness in the conversation. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, there's no right or wrong answer here. And it's true. There's no right or wrong answer. You're in a conversation, you are learning about the person. You know, here's, let me jump ahead. Another optional question.
And this is the last optional question and the last question to ask, really. So this is it. Um,
if it feels right, you know, explain to your client the concept of the divinity of symptoms, especially if you notice that your client is the kind of person who's maybe more religious, more spiritual, more cosmic. You know, something I learned, something I heard that really was meaningful for me is that all of our symptoms, all of our unwanted behaviors, unwanted anything, and in this case, unwanted weight, um, that our symptoms have a divine meaning. They have a deeper purpose. They're kind of like a whispering from our guardian angel. They're trying to tell us something. So in other words, there's a gift in this very thing that's challenging us. So if there was a gift in your excess weight, like a gift for you, if there was a whispering from your guardian angel or from the divine, what would that be for you? Just this is, there's, there's no right or wrong answer. We're just playing. Now again, I'm only gonna ask this question in a first session. If, you know I've established in some way, shape, or form that yeah, my client has a spiritual or or religious orientation and that they're playful in this way, if I'm dealing with a very left brain nuts and bolts person, I'm not gonna ask this question in a first session. So you have to sniff out, you have to vibe out who you are talking to and who you are dealing with. Now, once I've asked all my questions, the last thing I'm gonna do is a dietary intake. That's the last thing I'm doing. Again, I wanna let you know that I'm doing the dietary intake last because I'm letting my client know they don't know I'm doing this. I'm letting them know food is not the reason you are fat. Food is not the enemy. Food is not the number one thing we're going to be focusing on. Will we focus on food? Sure, we're gonna focus on food in only the ways we need to focus on food. Most human beings who are dealing with a weight issue think it's a food issue. They think they have a food issue. People deal with old reading bingeing emotionally, and they think it's a food issue. Anorexia, bulimia, and they think it's a food issue. It is not a food issue. It is a life issue. Are there places we need to tweak people's food? You bet.
Do we need to make shifts in the food? You bet. But even if somebody's on a nasty, awful, terrible diet in a lot of ways, technically that's not a food issue. That's an education issue. That's an embodiment issue. 'cause you could tell someone what to eat, but until they have an experience, oh, this feels better. Oh, this feels right for me. Until they make the connection between what just went into my body. Oh God, that feels different. Oh wow, I've been eating this food and my guy told me, yeah, my, my, my coach, my practitioner told me this is gonna, this is gonna be more helpful. This is gonna be healthier for me. Wow, I've noticed a difference. Wow, my digestion's better. Wow. I've got a better mood. Wow, I've got more energy. Wow, I've got less brain fog. So they make the connection that's about body wisdom, that's about paying attention, that's about being present, that's about embodying and being in your body. See what I'm saying? We get stuck on the food. And every client who comes to see any practitioner for a weight issue, they are prepared for foo f fufu food. And in fact, they want a diet oftentimes, or they don't wanna diet, but they don't even know what the other possibilities are and they just can't imagine.
So I'm doing a dietary intake last. It lets my client know, Hey, there's been a lot of other important things. Now we're gonna talk about food. Great. So in a future conversation, I'm going to go into details, elaborate details about a dietary intake. For now, what I'm gonna say to you is, in general, for a dietary intake, I wanna know without my client writing it down on a form that they fill out, I'm gonna ask them, when's the first time you eat in a day? What time, what do you have at breakfast? Do you have a snack after breakfast? What time? What do you have? What do you have at lunch? What time? When's the next time you eat? When's the next time you eat? I wanna know, are they eating five small meals a day? Are they eating three big meals a day with no snacks? Hey, do you eat different on the weekends? Oh yeah. Okay. See, people will never tell you that they eat different on the weekends unless you ask them. Um, do you travel Mr. And Mrs. Client? Oh yeah, I'm, I'm on the road at least two weeks a month. Great. Is your diet different when you travel? Oh, extremely. So I have clients who you're gonna meet people who they travel and their diet is completely different when they travel. Or people who their diet is completely different on the weekend than it is during the week. Their diet might revolve around their work schedule. Sometimes people will say to you, when you're doing a dietary intake, okay, tell me what you eat at breakfast. Okay? Is this when I'm on my diet or off my diet? It's a common question. Somebody will say to me, well that depends. You have to tell me how often are you on your diet or off your diet? I wanna figure out in an average month what you are eating. So you have to tell me, when are you on your diet? Oh, well, I'm really on my diet. Little, maybe a week outta the month. Okay? So tell me what you eat when you're quote unquote on your diet. So there might be two different diets that you're taking down. Okay, Mr. And Ms. Client, I, I just need you to be honest with me. I'm not judging you. I don't care if you're off your diet all the time. 'cause that's how a lot of people think. There's a lot of people you're gonna talk to that they're gonna get all confused when you ask them what they eat. Or I don't even, I I, you know, for breakfast, I just have what's ever there my friends. You may never, ever, ever, ever let a person get away with that question. Whatever's there. No, I need specifics. Is this how you eat every day on the weekends as well? Most of the month? Oh, when you're on your diet, what about when you're off your diet? Be honest with me. What does that look like?
So you have to understand that because it helps you understand your client. It helps you understand their actual thinking, excuse me. And it helps you understand their actual eating and what they're eating and when. Because a lot of times clients will tell you what they think you wanna hear. I will say to my client, do me a favor, you're amongst friends here. Do not tell me what you think I want to hear. Because if you tell me what you think I want to hear and you don't actually tell me the actual things you are eating, I really can't help you. And then you're not getting your money's worth. So I wanna give you more than your money's worth. So I need you to just be super clear with me and super honest. Don't worry about it. What you're letting your client know when you say that is, I'm not judging you. It is very important when you do a dietary intake to smooth the pillows with your client to make all the pillows nice and fluffy and nice and comfortable. Because for many clients, not all, there will be some clients who love to talk about exactly what they eat. Exactly when exactly how much they love it. There are people like that. In fact, they will talk to you all day about it. I don't want my client, by the way, talking all day about this, a dietary intake. You should be able to get through it within about 15 minutes or less.
There are people who are afraid to tell you what they eat. There are people who are embarrassed to tell you what they eat. There are people who feel you will be judging them because they judge themselves. So they assume you're gonna judge them or they've been to other practitioners who have been judgy and they're expecting you to be the same way. So I'm letting my client know it every step along the way. Don't worry, I just need to know what you're doing. I'm not gonna hold it against you. I'm not gonna judge you. I've seen everything. I've absolutely, absolutely seen everything. So there's your dietary intake, all meals, all snacks. And I wanna know amounts. You gotta make sure you know rough amounts. I don't want to hear grams or anything like that. Oh, you know, I, I have a coffee at breakfast. Like what size coffee? What do you mean? I just have a big mug. Like, just show me with your hands how big is a big muck? 'cause some people have a huge mug. So I'm just trying to get an idea. Is it a actual cup of coffee? Is it two cups of coffee? Is it three cups of coffee? Because some people had, they have this big thing of coffee and they call it their cup of coffee, but it's really two or three cups of coffee. So I wanna know amounts, I wanna know what they drink and how much, you know, if somebody tells me, you know, yeah, I have salad with, you know, a little bit of chicken at lunch, well roughly how much chicken, you know, compared to the size of your hand, the size of your hand, half the size of your hand. Just I'm, I'm looking for you to eyeball things. That's all. Um, and when you look at that dietary intake, that's when you're noticing macronutrient balance. You're noticing, wow, are they eating a lot of carbs and sugar? Are they eating a lot of artificial store-bought foods? Is there quality foods in here? What is their eating rhythm? Like I eat time of day that they're eating what they're eating. Does it look like they're eating their biggest meal at dinner or lunch? I'm listening for this. I'm also noticing in the back of my mind some of the other questions I've asked my client. You know, my client might have said, yeah, secondarily, you know, I know I'm seeing you for weight when I ask my client any other health issues that you're facing. Oh yeah, you know, I get real brain foggy during the day. I just low energy and I hear that and I'm remembering that. And then when my client tells me that they're doing a sugary breakfast that's small and they're doing just a salad at lunch with a no fat dressing, it makes sense to me that they're weak or fatigued or brain foggy or can't focus during the day. 'cause they don't have any food in their system. They don't have much fat or protein in their system. They don't have a sustained caloric release in their system.
They need more food, they need better macronutrient balance. So I'm putting that together in my mind. So then at the end of the session, I am able to start to make an assessment based on all these details that I am collecting. Does that make sense? Okay, so remember you don't need to ask all of these questions that we've just gone over in these three sections, in these three parts, in these three videos. You don't need to ask all these questions in the first session. And it would be great to cover them in the first few sessions. The optional questions are optionals, the ones that I didn't say were optional. I'd like you to ask them, practice getting comfortable, asking questions that you might not usually ask around a person's religion and spirituality around a person's sexuality. Just get comfortable, play with it, enjoy it.
'cause it can be important and it can be useful.
It's a way for you to connect with your client. It's a way for you to have a unique relationship with your client because you are covering all the turf and all the terrain and looking for all the possibilities that can indeed help them get where they want to go.
So in the last 20 to 30, you know something, I'm gonna say make this the last 15 to 20 minutes. Last 15 to 20 minutes of the first session. Approximately last 15 to 20 minutes. I want you to begin to take over the conversation and offer your client an assessment
last 15 to 20 minutes. You know, usually for a first session,
if you're a beginner at this, a first session, especially for a weight loss client, if you could do it 90 minutes, that would be great. I could do a first session with a weight loss client in an hour because I'm good at this and I could be focused. Um, and it's okay if you can't do a 90 minute session, that's fine. I'm saying in an ideal universe, nice to have the first session last a little bit longer, especially for a weight loss client. But in the last 20 minutes or so, I want you to begin to offer your client your thoughts, your insights, your assessment, and the specifics of how you would like to work with them moving forward. That's what the last 15, 20 minutes are for. You're taking everything your client has just shared. You've been asking them questions, you've been gathering information. So essentially you are looking to see, do we have a relationship here? Is there a foundation here? Is this a good match? Me and you? So you truly have to assess that. You might be sitting there afraid of this client freaking out because you're, you don't like them, you don't think they like you, you think they're too complex for you.
And if you're really feeling that, then it's not a good match quite honestly. But at the same time, I want you to really listen in and if you have some confidence, some,
then I want you to consider moving forward with this client. So you're looking to let your client know that you indeed a know what you're doing. You can semi confidently assess them, tell them what you think, tell them what you've gleaned from this conversation and then tell them how you wanna move forward. Let me say more about this.
If I'm truly believing I can work with this client, I like this. So ultimately I wanna let my client know that I'd really love to work with them and that I'm really inspired to help them get where they wanna go. I'm gonna tell them about my approach. Hey listen, you probably know this by now, but you know, I consider, consider my approach and my training pretty unique. We are going to work in most likely, most likely nutritional and personal realms. I love to do this work and I'm very clear that, you know, weight loss is very unique for each person. And whatever we gonna, whatever we do is gonna be unique for you and I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that you get your money's worth. And um, this is what I'm saying to my client, if this is indeed true for me, if I feel, if I get the notion yes I wanna pull the trigger, I wanna work with this client, I want to give this a shot either because I'm super confident or I am 51% confident, that's all you need to be
51% confident that I think I can help this client. And you have to listen to the universe. You have to listen to your intuition, you have to listen to the wisdom of life
and ask, okay, is this for me? If you're really worried and really concerned and when in doubt, err to the side and say yes because that client has showed up in your office. So when in doubt, even if you don't have certainty, that's okay.
For those of you that have been seeing clients for a while, I'm gonna say take it as an educational opportunity. Our clients are here to teach us, let them teach you while you're offering them your highest service. So here's an example
of what might happen for me towards the end of a first session. 15 or 20 minutes left, I've asked all these questions and I'm co-learning things in my mind. So I might say something like this to a client, okay Mr and Ms. Klein, based on everything you've told me, here's what I see going on. You've tried all kinds of diets to lose weight and whenever you lose the weight it comes right back on. And I just wanna say, you know, you've made some very sincere efforts over the years you've been working at this. So I applaud you. You know, I know you're working hard and the diets and the exercise that you've been doing clearly are unsustainable. They just haven't worked for you. That's why you're coming to see me. You know, I've noticed a couple of things I wanna share with you. A few things I noticed when I went over your diet with you. I noticed on first glance that you are pretty low in healthy fat. And I've also noticed that you think low fat is a good thing.
I also noticed that when you eat very low calorie during the day, because a lot of times you're trying to control how much food you eat because you think if you eat less food you're gonna lose weight. But when you're not eating a lot during the day, I notice that you end up binge eating at night because you told me that you said you binge eat two or three times a week. And I've noticed that there are days when you're just not eating much food. So you're either following a very low calorie diet and then there's these other days where you told me you're just cutting loose. So what I'm thinking in the back of my mind is we've gotta find a way of eating that's doable for you and that works. Just something that can sustain you and works for you day in and day out. You also told me you're a fast eater. Let me explain to you what happens when humans eat fast. Puts us in sympathetic nervous system dominance, eating fast and that means stress response. So eating fast is a stressor for the body. Now the reason why is because the brain thinks, oh my God, why is this person eating fast? They must be under stress, duress. Maybe they're being chased by an animal. Maybe there's a hostile invader in their environment. As soon as the brain senses stress, we go into a stress response, which means increased cortisol, increased insulin, which for a lot of people day in and day out, it signals the body to store weight, store fat, not build muscle. Additionally, when we're eating fast, because that's a stress or, and it puts us in a physiologic stress state, in the stress state, our appetite is deregulated. So the stress state, the the ultimate stress state is, is when you're being chased by a lion. So when you're being chased by a lion, your digestion shuts down, your appetite regulation shuts down because you don't need to be eating food or digesting food when you're being chased by a line, all your metabolic energy needs to go into survival. So bottom line is strange, as it may sound fast eating is deregulating your appetite and it likely contributing to your inability to lose weight.
You know, I'm also noticing that you know,
you are eating the bulk of your calories during the day at night. So in any particular day the your dinner's your biggest meal and that's fine. You know, if dinner is somebody's biggest meal, I got no problem except if they have a problem. So your problem is you wanna lose weight and you haven't been able to lose it. It just so happens there's something called bio circadian nutrition when we eat, is often as important as what we eat, especially when it comes to natural weight regulation. So you and I digest and assimilating calorie burn most efficiently during the day, especially at the lunchtime hour. So we might work on shifting your caloric balance, not eating less food, just shifting a little bit more towards the first half of the day. So the bottom line is we got some great places to work and I believe I can really help you get where you wanna go. So here's what I'm thinking. I'd like to see you once a week for about four to six weeks straight and then twice per month for about three to four months. I think that is a good amount of time for us to see results. If you wanna start looking at potentially losing this 25 pounds, it's taken a while for your body to get here. You know, if I wanted you to have a super fast weight loss, I would, I would chain you to a chair in my basement and starve you and you'd lose the weight and then you'd leave and you'd eat and you'd gain it right back. So we're gonna figure out a way to help you reach your natural sustainable weight. And that takes a little work, takes experimentation, you know, so four to six weeks straight, once per week and then three to four months, twice a month. And from there we'll see how things are going, we'll renegotiate. And I really think I can help you get where you wanna go. So with all that, how does that sound for you Mr. And Mrs. Client? So what I've just done is I've given my client an assessment. I've given them a few places where I am saying to them, here's I'd work with you. I'm coming from my confidence, I'm being relaxed about it all. I'm letting them know I think I can help you. And I'm giving them an approximate timeframe. So what I'm going to say to you, my friends, um, is I think this is useful. I've done this every which way, meaning I've said to clients, Hey, you know, we'll we'll just work with each other and at each session we'll determine if we wanna keep, keep moving forward. I used to work like that. I generally afterwards stop working like that because if you wanna come to see me for, for weight loss, that's a process. That's a journey and it's gonna take time. So in my mind, my friends for a weight loss, I'm usually thinking four months and four months I'm gonna say is the approximate minimum. I don't say that to a client four months minimum because that scares people. But four months, what I have found is a reasonable starting place for me as a practitioner because I can usually help someone within that amount of time, either lose weight or just better their relationship with food for sure. And if I'm truly gonna help somebody lose weight, sometimes, sometimes it takes people a while for even the first couple of pounds to lose if they truly have weight to lose. Even though you're doing all the best strategy. So it's hard to know everybody's different. So I'm saying for a weight loss client, I want you to think minimum four months,
especially if it's like 25 pounds plus 25 pound plus client four months.
I won't say, oh my god, this is gonna take six months or eight months or a year. Even though sometimes I look at people and I think, God, this is gonna take a long time and I'm fine with that. So I'm committed to helping my client get where they want to go. So I usually let my client know, you know, we're gonna be seeing each other. This is, uh, four months is sort of like the baseline. We might be able to get there before that. It might take longer. We gotta see everybody's different, every person's different. So I'm very positive about it, which is true. Everybody is different. You are unique. So I'm gonna frame it in a positive. You are very unique. We have to see what your unique journey is and what your unique metabolism needs for us to get you where you wanna go.
Once again, notice how this sample script does not focus on and I will help you lose the exact amount of weight that you wanna lose. I never say that. I will say help you get where you wanna go. That's my line. If you have a different line that feels better for you, that says the same thing. I will never, ever, ever promise a person a bunch of pounds will be lost ever.
It's not a good way to go. So to be in alignment and integrity with the universe, here's a strong suggestion, don't ever promise weight loss.
It's all about practicing the eating strategies that are in true alignment with body, mind, heart, and soul. That's what's gonna help people. Will it help them lose weight when they start to align body, mind, heart, and soul and start to become the the best person that they're meant to be. With the right dietary tweaks? Sure that can help people lose weight. Maybe will it help them in other ways? Yeah, damn straight it will. And we don't know how much weight's gonna come off or when we don't, nobody knows there is zero science around that. So we're defocusing. You as a practitioner are defocusing on the numbers and you're emphasizing the kinds of practices that are truly healthy and life affirming. And from there your client's journey with weight will unfold as it should. So you are learning how to communicate with them in a way where you stay in integrity. You're not making a false promise, but at the same time you're letting your client know, I'm your guy, I'm on your side. I wanna help you get where you wanna go. I'm confident I can help you get where you wanna go, which I am. I am confident I can help my client move in the direction of their best self. 'cause that's what I do. And when I do that with a human being along with all, all the good strategic dietary and lifestyle tweaks, the probability of weight loss skyrockets, it has its best chance. We have our best chance to reach our natural weight
when we're becoming our best self.
So again, I wanna remind you in your marketing, in your language that you use on print, on the internet, in your advertising, in your conversation, I just would love for you to remove the words weight loss or I will help you lose weight or I specialize in weight loss and instead I work with weight. I specialize in weight concerns. I'm here to help you around weight and all that's true for me. I do work with weight, I do specialize in weight concerns. I am here to help you with your weight.
Is that gonna result in loss if you have weight to lose? I damn well hope so. And I'm damn well gonna work hard to get there. And we're gonna let the spiritual chips fall, fall where they may because the wisdom of the universe is driving the show. Again, I wanna remind you, my friends, many people truly do not have weight to lose and they think they do.
There are some people who the body that they have is the body they're gonna have for a while, maybe forever. I don't know. Some people need to do a lot of work on first glance that has nothing to do with direct weight loss.
I have clients who, you know, we have to defocus on the weight loss and focus on a lot of the ways that they're dealing with life and stress and how they're showing up and how they're hating their bodies. And weight loss is not gonna come until they are able to love themselves into their weight loss journey.
So their work becomes loving and accepting their body as it is right now. And they might need to let go of weight loss for a while. There are clients who I've identified fall into that group.
And I'm not gonna tell somebody that right off the bat, but I will say, you are unique. Your metabolism is unique, your weight loss journey is unique. Everyone's weight loss journey is unique. We do not know there is no science behind do this, do that, do this, do that. And this amount of weight will be lost forever and ever and ever. No, this is a learning experience. This is a journey that we're gonna go on and we're gonna keep looking to make the next best move for you so we can get you where you want to go. 'cause you've been trying to lose weight. Mr. And Mrs. Client, you told me 18 years you've been dieting for 18 years. So it's gonna take us, you know, a little bit of time, a handful of months to turn things around in a good way, in a real way. And not just another diet and another bunch of exercise that's gonna make you lose weight and then gain it right back.
So again, my friends, we're working with weight, we're working with weight concerns. We don't work with weight loss. So there's a, that's that's, that's just the linguistics of it in order to be good with the universe. And of course, you know, if weight loss is the result of the work, I'm happy your client's happy in a different way.
I'm gonna remind you again, we don't truly know how much anyone should truly weigh. We are always committed to our client's highest goals, not their smaller ones. I'm committed to my client's highest goal. I know your smaller goal, I know it, I hear it, I got it noted Again, their highest goal is being the highest and best expression of the person They're meant to be in this life, reaching their best potential as a creative, productive, real self-expressed human being who's growing in character in heart and soul, in mind, in emotion. When you, as the practitioners put the person's highest goals first in your being in your heart and your mind and your soul, things will fall into place naturally. I promise you. It doesn't mean it's gonna be easy, but it's gonna be easier.
By the way, smaller goals. Losing a bunch of pounds, having a hotter body, losing specific amount of pounds from right here, following my perfect diet perfectly. Having even more muscle, being more fit, making x amount of money, having a nicer house. I'm calling out smaller goals, kind of material goals or smaller ones. Yes, I know my client's weight loss goal to them it's their biggest goal. So I'm not slamming this at my client, I'm not saying these things to them. You will likely turn off your client, you will likely lose your client.
It is not your job to explain to your client everything that you're doing and why. Because you are helping your client step into consciousness. You are helping your client wake up. You can only speak to them in a way that they can hear you, you speak to them in a way that you can bring them along. So I will never say to my client, huh, you wanna lose 50 pounds? That's a small goal. I focus on your highest goal. No, that will not work. You will fail at that. Trust me. Um, this is between you and your own brain. This is between you and the universe.
The only time I will say that to a client is at the end of the work. But when the work has been successful in whatever way it's been, I might share with them my approach to help them break down how we got to this wonderful place that they just reached after our work together has been successful according to them and according to me. So I hope you're getting this. You don't wanna scare away your client.
So I wanna remind you, it's a great idea to give homework assignments in virtually every session. Very important. Keeps the action going. It gives your clients something to practice. It's a practical way to work. It gives you and your client an opportunity to measure progress, to have something to talk about for the next session. That's how this works. So you're gonna be learning, learning, learning, practicing learning, inventing creative relevant homework assignments for each client, for each session.
So for this conversation that I was mentioning over here, um, where, where I gave you a sample of how I would wrap things up at the end, I might send my client with the assignment of, you know, something, here's what I'd love for you to do. I would love for you to, let's focus on giving you for this week. There's two things I wanna focus on. I want to give you a healthy breakfast that you like that's more balanced than macronutrients. And we're also gonna focus on you slowing down when you're eating. So what am I gonna do? I'm gonna ask them all the things that they like to eat for breakfast. I'm gonna pick out a breakfast for them that I consider healthier than the one they're eating. 'cause they're eating a no breakfast or a high carbohydrate breakfast of cereal and milk and sugar or whatever it is. So I wanna give them the eggs, the fish, the smoothie, the almond butter, um, the yogurt, the cottage cheese, whatever it is that they'll eat.
Talk about giving them that for breakfast. I'm gonna tell them, just experiment with this. We're gonna see what happens. If the client starts to think, oh my god, well that's so much more calories then I'm going to explain to them, and you can learn about this in my book, the Slow Down Diet. Um, understanding metabolism in the morning, um, is oftentimes like stoking a furnace. Your metabolism, your calorie burning metabolism is picking up in the morning, it's coming back online. If you don't feed your body food, then it's kind of like a fireplace. There's no wood in the fireplace. You gotta put enough wood in the fireplace to create a hot fire. Of course, if you put too much wood on the fire, you can put the fire out. So I wanna let my client know that their metabolism will rise to the challenge that they're giving it. I will let every client know that whatever you eat for breakfast, you're gonna burn. For the most part. Whatever you eat for breakfast, you're gonna burn. Unless you're eating like a hundred pancakes at breakfast, whatever you eat, that's what your body is preferentially burning. So we are setting up your metabolism to be a hotter metabolism during the day by giving you a breakfast that's more full and more balanced and macronutrients. And I'm gonna talk about slow eating with that client. So those are my two assignments for that client. We'll talk about slow eating, what that means, putting down the fork, taking some deep breaths, relaxing with the food, getting pleasure from the food, taking more time. If they usually eat breakfast in five minutes, eat it in 15 minutes.
So those are the few homework assignments I'm gonna give for that client after the first session. Those are two doable assignments that I bet money that's gonna yield a good result. If my client practices that they're gonna have more energy in the morning, they're gonna have less brain fog issues, they're gonna notice a difference. I guarantee it.
So again, for the first handful of sessions with your weight loss client, the homework assignments, they're practical and targeted. Like what I just shared, one or two homework assignments to give it the end of the first session that's relevant and you think has the greatest probability to give the biggest bang for the buck in terms of giving your client a small success. I'm not gonna give them five homework assignments. Four or even three, quite honestly. Are there some clients who I give a little bit more to do after the first session? Yes. But that's just from my intuition when I really get, I can put a lot on this client's plate. Some people want that. Like they really want it. Most people don't. Most people gotta take 'em along a little slow is what I've learned. So again, some of the great bangs for the buck that you can have with a client, a weight loss client after a first session is working with slow eating, slowing down as an eater if they're a fast eater. Closely related to that is de-stressing while eating.
Now fast eaters are technically in a stress response, but a lot of people, their first couple of meals might be under a state of stress. IE they're running out the door eating breakfast, driving it in the car while focusing on a hundred different things. Or lunch is at work at the desk in five minutes while they're multitasking and they can't understand why they're overeating while that's why because their body has not gotten the signal that they've actually had food. So slowing down with eating de-stressing while eating, working with eating rhythm, working with macronutrient balance, those are ways that you can get a big bang for the buck
on average for a majority of clients.
Now remember to make sure to engage your client in giving full, complete, useful and honest answers best you can. Here's what I want to tell you. If your client is being evasive or quiet, that's not their issue. It's yours. That's not their job to fix. That's your job to bring them out. If a client is being especially difficult in this way, you know, I'm gonna say to them directly and in a lighthearted way. So I'm gonna be direct but lighthearted at the same time. I'm gonna communicate in some way, shape, or form that I need to for them to be more talkative. So I might say, if my client is giving me yes or no answers and they're really not cooperating, I might say, Hey Mr. Ms. Client, listen, here's what I need you to do. I need you to pretend that me and you are best friends who just can't shut up and we just can't help but talk. In other words, I need you to tell me more stuff. You need to be a little bit more elaborate with your answers. 'cause you've been giving me a lot of yeses, nos, and I don't know. And when you do that, I can't help you. I don't have enough information. So, you know, it's all about the details. It's all about the nuances. And I gotta tell you, I'm a competitive guy. And what I mean is I wanna do the best I can in my work. I compete with myself. I wanna be the best practitioner I can. I wanna be the best coach I can, which means I want you to get your money's worth, which means I don't wanna waste a penny of your time, penny of your money or, or any of your time. So that means you gotta jump in. That means you gotta gimme more. I'll say it just like that. I'm letting them know if we're gonna be in relationship. You can't be doing this yes, no thing. Your client has to talk to you. If they're giving you yes or no answers, it means you haven't relaxed them, you haven't brought them out. It means they are either a very nervous and they're just internally in a lot of fear. Or it means for some reason they really don't wanna be there, which means somebody sent them to you and they really don't wanna do the work. And if that's the case, I want to identify that really quickly because I will let a client know, if you are here because somebody wants you to be here and you don't want to be here, we're not a good match.
I'm wasting your time and my time. So I'm very clear about that. I don't wanna see any client who doesn't wanna be there. Plain and simple. I don't care if you're the kind of practitioner that you work in in a facility, you work in a clinic, you work in a hospital, and a lot of times you are seeing people who don't want to be seeing you, but it's part of the care team, it's part of the treatment, whatever it is. I'll still, I'll still have a, have a, have a moment with my client where I say, listen, I'm getting that you don't wanna be here. I understand it. This might not be fun for you. But quite honestly, here we are, we're together. We have this 30 minutes together, this 45 minutes together, this hour together. Why not make it worth something? Why not get some value out of this? 'cause I have value to give, but you have to want to get value. In order for me to give value, my friends. Don't waste your time in this world by you saying that you're either gonna lose a client or all of a sudden you're gonna educate them and you're gonna have a far better client. And you're gonna have a client who complies. You're gonna have a client who respects you. You're gonna have a client who listens to you because now you are respectable because you've stepped up. You've stepped into your king or your queen. Or if you're a prince or a princess age, you've stepped into your elevated royal prince. Your royal princess. Princess and princesses can be very mature and very on point and very real and very smart, and very much in their royalty, meaning in their power.
Don't waste your time with people. Call them into consciousness. Call them into responsibility. If they don't wanna play, that's their issue. You need to train the universe in terms of how you wanna work with people. You don't wanna be dragging people through this process. Like why would you do that?
So remember, the intake session is not about your client giving you a bunch of facts that you collect from them. Yes, you need information. Yes, you're gonna get it. Yes, I am listening to everything my client says and I am noting it in the back of my mind. I'm bookmarking it and or I'm taking a little bit of notes. And the questions you are asking are as important for your client to hear their own answers and to hear the nature of your question. It's important, as important for your client as it is for you to hear the answers that they give.
So when you ask your client the optional question of, Hey, what would, what would your ideal relationship with food look like? What would your ideal relationship with your body look like? A lot of people literally haven't thought in that way, or they haven't thought very much beyond my perfect weight or eating this perfect diet perfectly. So you're inviting them all of a sudden into a whole different universe just by asking that question. You may not, you may not think that that's big for your client. Trust me, that's big, my friends, you're taking your client on on an educational journey. I really mean that. You are taking them on an educational journey. You are slowly inviting them into the light into consciousness, into a whole different understanding of how to look at food, how to look at their body, how to look at weight, and how to look at how those things connect to every other aspect of their life. Chances are,
I wanna say the first session to me is one of my favorites. It could be a very magical experience. It's easy to get nervous. It's easy for you to get nervous. It's easy for them to get nervous. Don't beat yourself up if you're nervous. Breathe through your nervousness. Find a place of curiosity with your client. Curiosity will help you relax. When in doubt, just be empty. Don't know because you don't know. Let go of trying to figure out your client, even though in the back of your mind you're collating information. So it's a paradox. I'm not trying so hard to figure out my client. I'm not trying to fix my client 'cause it's not my job. I'm not here to fix their life. I'm here to be their coach. I'm here to listen. I'm here to be their mentor, their guide. I'm here to take information, collect it, and come up with a deeper understanding. So I am letting the magic of the questioning process, I'm letting the magic of listening for answers reveal their wisdom to me. Your practice, my practice as practitioners is to listen. My friends, you've gotta relax into listening. There have to be moments in your conversation with your client where you are just listening. Because if you don't listen, you can't hear. And if you can't hear, then you can't help your client. Your practice is to listen in a relaxed way. When you're listening, you're not talking. When you're listening, you're not thinking about what you're gonna be eating later on. And you're not thinking about walking the dog and you're not thinking about whatever you are listening. Trust, trust, trust, trust. Trust in the higher wisdom of the relationship, my friends. And from there, I'm suggesting to you that insights will surely come. So after the session, I want you to go over your notes. I want you to write more notes. Ideal universal. I want you to write the majority of your notes after the session. Write down insights. Hey, you know something. Here's some of my thoughts about this client. Write down the questions that you still have. Write down the wonderings that you have. Write down the confusions that you have. Take notes for yourself. Please keep a digital folder for each client. If indeed you are comfortable, I'm assuming you're comfortable living in an online universe, living in your computer world and having a digital folder on your computer for each client where you can take notes and update your notes for each session. Make sure in the following session you return to the homework assignments that you gave them in a follow-up session. Hey, Mr. Ms. Client, I wanna know about your last week since we met. You know, we had talked about you practicing slow eating. We talked about you shifting your breakfast. Were you able to do that? How did that go? Just just talk to me, what happened for you? And then from there, that's where you work with your client, my friends. Anything can happen from that conversation. Your client might say to you, you know something, I know what I was supposed to do. I had a crazy week. Life really sucked. My kid this, my husband that, my wife, this work that I, I really didn't do any of that. You know what my response is? My response is great. Thank you for being honest with me. I really appreciate that. I gotta tell you, you know, strangely enough, especially when it comes to people working with weight, uh, and changing their eating style, changing their relationship with food, changing what they eat, changing how they eat, it's not easy. And it's easy for life to get in the way of that which happened for you this last week. I totally, hey, trust me, I totally get it happens to me all the time. And this is what we have to focus on. We have to focus on you being able to find the energy to find the inspiration. Even when it doesn't seem like I can focus on my nourishment in a good way.
We need to start to figure out how you can prioritize this. 'cause this is important for you. Finding your natural weight is important to you. You're paying me money to do this. I wanna help you. So we're gonna just recalibrate and we're gonna begin again. And I wanna figure out what you can do to get the most support in this next week in changing your breakfast and in slowing down with eating. What's gonna help you actually be able to practice that and actually be able to succeed? 'cause that happens a lot. Clients, I mean that happens a lot. My friends with clients is they come back and you expect that they've done what you ask them to do. I always make it a win. Did you hear how I just make that a win? I made my client, right? I let them know. This happens a lot 'cause life happens. And this is the very challenge I wanna help you overcome because you need to figure out a way for life to support you in getting where you want to go with your weight. So we gotta figure out what's gonna support you in prioritizing this. So I'm not blaming them, I'm not making it about them, but I'm calling them into, okay, hey, we gotta figure out how to make this work. So you actually do these things. So you are learning. See what your client is telling you on one level. When they don't do what you asked them to do that they said they would do. 'cause you negotiated that. Is this breakfast doable for you? Can you practice slow eating? Yes, I can do that. Great. So I've negotiated that with my client. I didn't just give it to them. I've said, here's what I would like you to do. Is this doable for you? And they said yes, and they didn't do it. So what they're telling you on one level is, yep, my life is crazy and I will deprioritize my nourishment, I will deprioritize me getting where I wanna go with taking care of my body. So that's kind of what they're telling you On another level, they're telling you, I don't know how to prioritize this. I just get all flustered and confused. I just don't know how to do this. I've got resistance. I don't even know what it is. That's what they're telling you silently. So I'm not gonna make them wrong for that. I'm gonna work with that. I'm gonna go with that and I'm gonna understand that it's my job to take baby steps with this client. You've gotta take baby steps with your client. This isn't about them just changing their breakfast and eating slow. It's about them focusing on themselves in a busy life. It's about them having a mini breakthrough around their fear that they're gonna do something that's not gonna work. So you have to be inspiring them. You have to stay positive. You have to stay upbeat. You have to let them know directly and indirectly, I'm on your team. It doesn't matter if you swung and missed. It doesn't matter that you didn't do it this week. Great. It didn't work this week. Let's turn it into a win for this next week. Let's push the reset button because you know something, Mr. And Ms. Kline, this is gonna happen in life. All of us for me, I consider myself a great eater. I take care of myself with food. I know how to nourish myself and I could have a bad day or a bad week. And when that happens, you know, I push the reset button and I start again. So we're gonna start again, and then I'll talk about more things in the relationship that's in my notes than I'm thinking we're gonna work next.
So my friends, this is all about you. So I hope you're seeing that being a coach. Yeah, sometimes I'm challenging my client for sure. But you wanna understand that with your weight loss client, they don't need you to be screaming at them to exercise harder or control their willpower. Chances are a lot of your weight loss clients, they need your understanding. They need your patience. They need your unconditional acceptance, whether they know this or not. And chances are they don't. They need to know on a deep level, you are on their team, you are on their side, you're their advocate. You're in this for the long haul. You wanna help them get where they want to go. And my friends, all that is very true for me. So that's the space I hold inside myself because that's what I want my client to hold for themselves. I'm modeling for them, silently, energetically, the behavior, the way of being that I want them to have, which is I accept you unconditionally. I am going to love you into this weight loss journey. I'm not gonna judge you. I'm not gonna hate you into this weight loss journey, nor do I want you to do that for you. That would be silly. So modeling for them how I want them to be in their life, which is great. You couldn't do the homework. This happened. That happened. Good. You fell off the horse. Let's get back on. Dust yourself off. Here we go again. We're pushing the reset button. So you have to maintain
the light, you have to maintain positivity, you have to maintain inspiration. What a good job to have because it'll teach you how to do that. It'll inspire you to do that. My friends, we're gonna now shift gears.
This is the end of the weight loss intake. And now we're gonna start to look at um, some protocols for weight. Some very oh, logical, linear, practical ways for us to work with a weight loss client, especially for beginners who need a little bit more of a cookie cutter approach just in case. So we're gonna talk about protocols and what those might look like for weight. It's gonna be a fascinating conversation. Meanwhile, I certainly hope you've learned some good things and talking about a weight loss intake. I hope you are seeing that this is an art. It's a conversation. It's a conversation. Your relationship with a client is a long conversation. It's a long conversation that matters. It's a beautiful conversation. I love a conversation that matters. I love a conversation that's effective. I love a conversation that goes deep. I love a conversation that is enlightening, that's funny, that's silly, that's serious when it needs to be. That points us both in a direction that we need to go. That's the art of the conversation. That's the art of the relationship. So the intake is a beautiful conversation. The more you can make it a conversation, make it a dance, the better it'll go, the easier it'll be, the more fun you'll have and the more you'll draw your client in.
As always, my friends, thanks for being on this journey. More to come. I'll see you on the other side.

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