Question:
Advice please..............................
I saw a new client last night for an initial consultation (I am a personal fitness trainer) She is very overweight and has been on a diet from litealife - thinks thats the right spelling for about a month. This entails taking 3 satchets of powders daily that amount to 400 calories and nothing else other than 2 litres of water. She has been told not to do any strenuous exercise by these diet people (not surpisingly) but wants some help in doing some 'toning and core stability type work'
I asked loads of questions about litealife - and she is sending me some more literature on the diet. Apparantely her doctor knows about it and has endorsed it, why I can't imagine. She says she feels full of energy and initally with this type of thing that can be true because in effect the body is going through a kind of detox and ridding itself of toxins etc, but the longer term effects are not good. My sister's sister in law has done it several times and has had her hair fall out and all sorts.
My problem is - I really don't believe in these quick fix diets or any diets to be honest. As well as being a Personal Trainer I am also studying to become a naturopathist so healthy eating and living is very important to me. These sorts of diets only make for worse situations long term, she can be doing some serious harm to her body by depriving herself of food and losing the weight so drastically - although I appreciate that having been overweight for a long time she is desperate to do something about it once and for all.
We have pretty much left the situation open, she is sending me some info on the diet and is on holiday for 2 weeks which gives me time to find out more about them, but I really just want to talk her out of it and get her on a healthy eating plan with some good old fashioned exercise thrown in. However, I appreciate this is not as easy as it sounds as she obviously has a lot of emotional issues attached to eating.
So do I help or do I walk away?? I really want to help but I am relatively new to the personal training - its not that I don't have the confidence in what I do, I most certainly do, but I will also be stepping more into the role of 'therapist' almost and I don't want to get her hopes up only for things not to work out how she wants them.
Hope some of this makes sense - bit of a brain dump I know - what do you think??????
[sm=cat.gif]
bit of both probably. help her in the areas she most obviously wants ie training and give her gentle advice but dont push about the others so that when she is ready to address a more usual method of maintaining weight you are there for her...the problem is initially is that if she is seeing results she will not want to change but slowly surely she may realise that healthy eating is more appropriate....and then you will already be in place to help her.
Tigs
xx
I saw a new client last night for an initial consultation (I am a personal fitness trainer) She is very overweight and has been on a diet from litealife - thinks thats the right spelling for about a month. This entails taking 3 satchets of powders daily that amount to 400 calories and nothing else other than 2 litres of water. She has been told not to do any strenuous exercise by these diet people (not surpisingly) but wants some help in doing some 'toning and core stability type work'
I asked loads of questions about litealife - and she is sending me some more literature on the diet. Apparantely her doctor knows about it and has endorsed it, why I can't imagine. She says she feels full of energy and initally with this type of thing that can be true because in effect the body is going through a kind of detox and ridding itself of toxins etc, but the longer term effects are not good. My sister's sister in law has done it several times and has had her hair fall out and all sorts.
My problem is - I really don't believe in these quick fix diets or any diets to be honest. As well as being a Personal Trainer I am also studying to become a naturopathist so healthy eating and living is very important to me. These sorts of diets only make for worse situations long term, she can be doing some serious harm to her body by depriving herself of food and losing the weight so drastically - although I appreciate that having been overweight for a long time she is desperate to do something about it once and for all.
We have pretty much left the situation open, she is sending me some info on the diet and is on holiday for 2 weeks which gives me time to find out more about them, but I really just want to talk her out of it and get her on a healthy eating plan with some good old fashioned exercise thrown in. However, I appreciate this is not as easy as it sounds as she obviously has a lot of emotional issues attached to eating.
So do I help or do I walk away?? I really want to help but I am relatively new to the personal training - its not that I don't have the confidence in what I do, I most certainly do, but I will also be stepping more into the role of 'therapist' almost and I don't want to get her hopes up only for things not to work out how she wants them.
Hope some of this makes sense - bit of a brain dump I know - what do you think??????
[sm=cat.gif]
Answers:
bit of both probably. help her in the areas she most obviously wants ie training and give her gentle advice but dont push about the others so that when she is ready to address a more usual method of maintaining weight you are there for her...the problem is initially is that if she is seeing results she will not want to change but slowly surely she may realise that healthy eating is more appropriate....and then you will already be in place to help her.
Tigs
xx
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