A Case Study By Julia Cohen, Career Coach, UNITED STATES
Active Listening: Clients Weight Loss Plan
The client I was coaching came into the session one day wanting to talk about a new diet she and her partner were trying to follow. It seemed to be very important for the client to lose weight, have healthier eating habits, and live a more balanced lifestyle, but she was having difficulty sticking to the dieting plan. The objective for the session, that the client wanted to achieve, was to figure out concrete ways she could keep herself on track with the diet.
We began the session by exploring what was getting in the way of her ability to follow through with the diet and workout schedule she had put together. She mentioned that this plan was something her partner had largely designed. He had an all-or-nothing mindset and was incredibly regimented and structured. He was able to focus on 4 tasks at once (working out, meal prepping, eating healthy, and stretching). She mentioned that each day, he would come home, tell her about all the things he had accomplished, and then ask her what she had done. The client mentioned that she, in comparison, felt constantly overwhelmed and like she was falling behind compared to her partner. There seemed to be some undertones of sadness and defeat based on the way the client expressed herself. I brought this up and asked how she would like to be feeling to which she answered, confident and secure in the actions she was taking to follow the diet.
When I asked her what had made her compare her progress to her partners, she said that even though she knows she works best when she focuses on one thing at a time, she felt that it was the ‘wrong’ way to diet/exercise. Taking her partner out of the equation, she mentioned that she would really like to just pick one goal to focus on so that she could set more attainable and realistic goals for herself. Setting a target weight to hit or a number of calories she needed to burn was not healthy or productive for her. When asked how she felt after saying that, there was a noticeable shift in her tone and perspective. She began to realize that she actually knew how to make the diet work for her, she just had not been doing it.
After this shift, we revisited the objective of the session to assess where she was in relation to her initial goal. She mentioned that she finally understood that the only way for her to follow through was if she did the diet ‘her way.’ When I asked her what that looked like, she said she was going to start with just focusing on not having wine during the week and only doing takeout on the weekends. She felt like this was an attainable goal and felt positive and happy about
There was absolutely a new lightness to the client. When she had first come into the session, her perspective was that there was only one way to follow a diet and that was the way her partner was doing it. But she realized that there is no ‘right way’ and to be successful and feel comfortable and confident in her journey, she needed to do what made sense for her.
I prepared the client for the end of the session, by asking if there was any support she felt needed to take these new actions/mindset forward. I also asked about any learnings she had about herself and how she could apply these learnings moving forward. When she said she did not, I commended her on the progress she had made and the awareness that had come up for her and concluded the session.