DAY 2: NUTRITION COACHING COURSE

HTTP://WWW.PRECISIONNUTRITION.COM/NUTRITION-COACHING-DAY-2-TRANSCRIPT

Assessment
by John Berardi, Ph.D.

Welcome to day 2 of the PN 5-day Exercise and Sport Nutrition Coaching course.

Todays lesson is designed to cover the first step in the Precision Nutrition coaching process: Assess.

Truth be told, the nutrition coaching process begins with you, and your ability to assess to new clients.

Now, I dont mean that you need to sit down and chat with your clients about their goals and their hang-ups.
Like a therapist would.

In fact, thats the opposite of what I want you to do. Thats what the worst trainers do.

And its a bad idea because these types of conversations never really go anywhere.

In fact, your clients rarely ever know what they want and need from you as a coach and mentor. So they'll often
tell you what they think you want to hear. They generally just parade out some vague and socially acceptable
goal. And then they complain about why their life has conspired to prevent them from accomplishing it.

And none of that information is very valuable to you.

First of all, its too limited in scope. Even if some of the info was good, thered be too little to plan a nutrition
program around. Youd simply have to make too many assumptions about who this client is. And thats the
biggest problem with fitness coaching today. Way too many assumptions are made before programs are
generated.

Second, its too subject to your clients mood, memory, impressions of you, fear of your judgments, and
willingness to admit things that arent socially acceptable to admit. Seriously, would you admit your deepest,
darkest secrets to someone during your first face-to-face with them? Probably not.

Finally, the information may not be accurate. Very few new clients can abstract from their situation to give you
an unemotional appraisal of who they are and where theyre at. So even if you feel like you had a good, open
chat with a client, chances are youre either getting, at best, an incomplete picture or, at worst, inaccurate
information.

So, what should you do instead?

Instead of simply listening to them, or worse, not listening to them at all, you need to purposefully assess
them.

Before ever meeting with your client for the first time, you should provide them with a well-structured set of
objective questionnaires that theyre to answer before ever sitting down with you.

This way, during the very first meeting you have with them, youll have a ton of information to guide your
discussion.

Most importantly, youll have the two critical pieces of information you need from them to give them good
advice.

First, youll know what level the client is at. We divide clients into 3 distinct levels, each of which requires a
very different coaching approach and a very different set of nutrition strategies. The assessments I share with
you today will tell you exactly which level they're at.

And the second thing you'll know is their most important limiting factor. Because instead of throwing the
kitchen sink at a client, you need to know with a decent degree of accuracy what specifically is holding them
back, and work on that. In almost every case, a client will not be able to identify their own limiting factor; you're
going to have to help them, and I'll show you how.

So let's start with determining the level your client is at.

Again, we divide clients into 3 distinct levels.

Level 1 clients are people who are completely new to eating well.

Level 2 clients are people who demonstrate some understanding of good nutrition yet need guidance,
planning, and direction.

Level 3 clients are people who generally eat the right foods in the right amounts at the right times.

Each one requires its own approach. An effective coaching strategy has to begin with a clear idea of which of
these three levels your client falls into. So the questions we ask and the assessments we perform are
designed to yield that info specifically.

But they also have to yield info about a client's most important limiting factors.

So, what are limiting factors? Well, a limiting factor is the first and most important thing standing in the way of a
clients progress.

For example, if a level 1 client wanted to increase their protein intake but didnt know what foods contain
protein, food knowledge would be their most important limiting factor.

Now, lets say you teach that client which foods contain protein and theyre still having a hard time increasing
protein intake. Then its time to seek out and eliminate the next limiting factor.

Knowing your clients limiting factors is critical in ensuring you can produce the maximum amount of progress
with the minimum number of changes.

And thats essential. Think of how most fitness pros do it. They try to change everything on day one. And, in
short order, the client gets overwhelmed and quits.

Remember, the only way this can work is if youre striving for the largest result from the smallest change
possible.

Okay, so now you know what info you need: level and limiting factor. Question is, how do you get it?

Well, not by chatting. You determine it by asking specific questions and looking for specific things. Here's how
we do it.

At Precision Nutrition, we use a battery of 7 short questionnaires and 5 assessments.

Our questionnaires include:

Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire - this simple questionnaire lets you know whether your
client is physically ready for a major exercise and nutritional overhaul.

Medical History and Present Medical Condition Questionnaire - this questionnaire is much more
comprehensive and provides you with critical information about previous and ongoing medical conditions.

Comprehensive Client Information Questionnaire - this questionnaire allows your clients to

articulate and rank his or her goals, plus it will give you an idea of their lifestyle including habits, work
demands, travel demands and more.

Three Day Dietary Record - this questionnaire provides you with a representative sample of what
your client is eating and when.

Readiness for Change Questionnaire - this questionnaire narrows in on just how ready your client
is to do the work necessary for change.

Kitchen Overhaul Questionnaire - this questionnaire provides valuable information on your client's
nutritional home base their kitchen.

Social Support Questionnaire - this questionnaire clues you in to the client's support environment,
or lack thereof, at home and at work.

And our assessments include:

Initial Body Composition Assessment - this assessment allows you to accurately track and record
skinfolds and girths.

Baseline Stress/Recovery Assessment - this assessment gives you critical information about your
client's stress levels and objective data about their physical state.

Initial Performance Assessment - this assessment gives you a nice set of baseline performance
data.

Baseline Blood Chemistry Assessment - this assessment lets you know where the client is at
physiologically.

Baseline Visual Assessment - and this assessment provides an objective look at the person's
physique.

Now, instead of just talking about them, I'm just going to flat out give them to you. In fact, you can download
them on this very page and begin using them with clients today.

What I want you to do before tomorrow's lesson is to download them, read them over, and familiarize yourself
with them.

Because tomorrow well be back with the next step in the nutrition coaching process. Specifically, I'm going to
teach you how to use what youve learned during the initial assessment process to plan your clients nutrition
strategy.

You've got your homework, so get going. Download, study, and be back tomorrow for Step 2: Advise.

See you then.