As a coach, it can be tricky tracking a clients diet.
You understand the importance of seeing what they are eating, but getting accurate data can be problematic.
Worst, often the data you do get - through meal logs, or calories counted - is inaccurate.
And to top it off, our clients generally don't have the same desire to track every morsel of food that goes into their body.
All of this makes life as a health coach / personal trainer somewhat difficult.
Fortunately, with the power of smart phones, there is now a better tool for coaches when it comes to tracking their clients meals. That tool is photo logging.
Before we take a deeper dive into the world of photo logging, let's look at why the traditional methods of diet tracking are flawed.
Any coach or trainer can put together a diet plan for their clients. How suitable those diets are are worthy of another blog post, but the challenging part of any coaches job is ensuring their client adheres to the diet. Meal tracking can be challenging, who wants to log every item they eat in a food diary?
Food Journals - not fun for coaches or clients
This may work well for a few days, but soon the client forgets to log meals, becomes lazy and either way the data is not that accurate.
A meal of roast chicken may simply be logged as 'Chicken'. What use is this for the coach - was it grilled chicken? Fried chicken? How much was eaten? Was it breast or thigh? Was it free range organic chicken, or cage raised chicken feed GMO corn and antibiotics?
Calorie counting, though more accurate, is even more impractical for clients. Sure some people on very specific diets may require down to the gram precision (people dieting for a bodybuilding show for example).
But for most people, this is far to intense. Plus, who wants to carry around scales and measure everything that goes into their mouth? I know I wouldn't, so why should I expect my clients to do this?
Anyone that has used any form of social media would have seen a photo of their friends meal at some point.
Perhaps you post your meals yourself? I know I often do:
Even if you don't stop and study these images, in a flash you get a ton of information from one photo:
As the saying goes - a picture is worth a thousand words.
If you read the one or two line description that generally goes with these images, you will gather more info such as:
You can get a lot of information about your friends diet from this one photo.
Now what if this photo wasn't that of a close friends meal, but instead a meal that a client of ours was eating.
In a few seconds we can see exactly what our client ate.
Not only can we see what they ate at that one particular meal. But we can see what they ate for the rest of the day... and the rest of the week.
Instantly you have a ton of information about your clients diet.
Sure you're not going to see exact calorie and macro counts (but tracking such data is pointless as covered in this article - The Problem With Counting Calories For Fat Loss), but you are going easily see portion sizes, vegetable vs protein, carb intake and much much more.
You don't need to trust calculators and formulas to help your clients. You, as the educated and knowledgeable coach can take the information from the photos and draw your own conclusions about the clients diet.
This is why they pay you isn't it? For your advice, experience, education and wisdom?
Imagine being able to get on a call with a client, and pull up all their meals from the past week. In front of you are 21 photos of what went into their mouth during the week.
A 7 day meal report with Hey Coach App
A quick scan of these images will tell you a lot of valuable information. Maybe you see things such as:
Do you see how powerful photo logging is for a coach?
Tracking isn't the only benefit to a coach using photo logging. Feedback is dramatically improved as well.
Here's why:
As we have established, a photo gives you as the coach much more information about what your client ate. Now with this information you can do so much more - you can tell your clients 'Hey, next time only have 1 chicken breast, not two'.
Or 'next time you eat at this cafe, ask for the dressing to come on the side'
The power of feedback
If you were only using food diaries or meal logs, you might simply see entries such as 'chicken breast' or 'bacon salad with ranch dressing'.
Such entries require more investigation by the coach - how big were the chicken breasts? Did you have one or two? Was the ranch on the side or over the salad?
We need to ask these questions before we can provide feedback.
We become an investigator instead of an adviser.
And remember, clients pay us coaches to provide support, motivation and advice. Not to quiz them on how many chicken breasts they ate.
With photo logging, we can instantly see this information - rendering the questions unnecessary, and allowing us to do our job - provide feedback. Value add.
Not only this, if we are using a tool like Hey Coach to track our clients meals, we can provide feedback directly on the meals photo.
There is no need to send through emails or SMS's, we can leave it in the comments on the meal itself. The client will then see the comment and learn from your feedback.
Helping them reach their goals.
Also, another benefit of using the Hey Coach App is the in built star tracking feature. You can simply rate a meal out of 5 stars - allowing the client (and other clients in the group) to see how good their meals were (or weren't). To learn more about the Hey Coach App click HERE.
Tracking a clients diet through photos allows the coach to see exactly what their clients are eating, but it helps us coaches give our clients real time feedback on their diet. Rather than reviewing a food diary every month, they're receiving feedback on a daily basis.
Photo logging meals is not only a win for coaches, but for our clients as well.
No more weighing food, no more entering ingredients into My Fitness Pal, no more food logs.
Instead, the client simply snaps a photo and moves on. Freeing up time and willpower to focus on other healthy habits.
All they need is a smart phone. Technically they don't even need a meal logging app - they could simply take a photo and email or SMS it to the coach.
But such a process is cumbersome and can be expensive for international clients.
Fortunatley there is an easier way and that is with tools such as Hey Coach,
With the Hey Coach app, clients log a meal just as they would log a photo to any other social media app.
Open up the Hey Coach app, hit the photo button, snap a photo and they're done.
Clients simply snap a photo and the coach can review it
What happens if they finished their meal and you forgot to take a photo? No problem, the app allows text based entries.
Have a big bowl of soup and a photo won't show whats hidden within? Easy, add a caption to explain exactly what the meal is.
You can even backdate entries, or pull images from your camera roll. So if you'd rather log everything you ate at the end of the day, thats possible as well.
For the client, it is like having your coach watch over your shoulder at every meal!
I have been involved in the online coaching industry since 2012. I personally believe that photo logging apps such as Hey Coach will become increasingly popular with personal trainers, health coaches, nutritionists and even doctors.
The ability for coaches to easily and accurately track and monitor the diets of their clients through a smart phone is empowering for all.
For example, the Hey Coach App allows me to check in on clients throughout the day. If there are any issues with their diet, I can address and correct them immediately instead of waiting until our next monthly review.
As a coach, it's great when I see a client post a meal that I approve of. I can see exactly what they are eating, how much they are eating, and if there's anything questionable about it (ie, what is that sauce on the side) - I can comment and ask.
But tracking meals through SMS or emails, or Instagram and Facebook aren't the best place for me to be telling clients what they should be doing.
However, there is a solution. It's an app called 'Hey Coach'.
And it was designed by coaches for coaches. The ultimate platform for online coaches and trainers.
Hey Coach, is a meal logging platform and app built to help coaches not only easily track their clients meals, but also:
To learn more about Hey Coach, please click HERE.
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