#175: Make it Easy for Clients to Actually Try Your Nutrition Suggestions with Abigail Keeso Hopkins

Michelle Leotta:
Well happy new year health coaches. It's that time of year when our clients are sort of gung ho about making fresh starts. That is if they're not laid up sick on the couch, like I am today. So if you're here with us live, you're gonna see me lying down. If you're listening later, you're probably here in my voice, right. But it's all good of clients who are not ill. And I just had a client call earlier today. You know, they're motivated. They maybe like the holidays got a little rough and now they're really motivated to actually try those nutrition suggestions that you've been giving them. Um, I know sometimes it feels like those suggestions fall on deaf ears, which is, of course, it's always important to let your client lead the work that you're doing together. That's always gonna make it easier, but there are ways to make it easier for them to actually try your suggestions.

Michelle Leotta:
So today I'm joined by Abigail from That Clean Life to talk about all these different client scenarios that come up. And I wanna hear from you guys, and what's coming up in your practice, like, are your clients taking action? Are they getting lost in overwhelm? And this is important. If you want more specific help with helping your clients make a significant dietary change, we're gonna be holding a free webinar next week, Abigail and I, where we go into more details and resources for you on this. And it's completely free and you can join us at healthcoachpower.com/helpclients. I think this is really make or break skillset for health coaches to have, cause if we help our clients make changes, they have greater success. We get better testimonials. It's like everybody wins. So be sure to join us for that free training and I'll drop the link and the comments in just a second at healthcoachpower.com/helpclients, but for today, Abigail, thank you so much for being here and being upright.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Michelle Leotta:
Of course. It's been a while since you've been on the show. So can you introduce yourself and tell everybody a bit about who you are, what you do and what you were doing before you cofounded That Clean Life.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yeah. Cool. So my name is Abigail. I am the co-founder of That Clean Life, as Michelle said. Um, so for those of you who aren't familiar with That Clean Life, we are a meal planning platform that helps health professionals create awesome resources for their clients without having to spend hours upon hours on it. And before That Clean Life, I was actually a registered nurse at a pediatric hospital and I fell into kind of the meal planning life just by working shift work. I was exhausted. I was working days and then I'd work a string of nights and I started to just feel terrible. I was unhealthy, I was starting to gain a lot of weight and I decided that I was gonna take up the habit of meal planning. And so I started developing my own meal plans. My fellow nurses started to say, what are you doing? You seem so different. What are you eating? And I started to just share my weekly meal plans with them. And from that, it kind of evolved into a meal planning challenge, which evolved into an entire software product, which, um, a lot of you use today. And yeah, that's kind of how I ended up here completely by accident, but it's been a super fun journey and I'm super proud of what we've built so far.

Michelle Leotta:
You should be. And as I'm curious, when you were making that change for yourself, sounds like you were kind of, you know, self-motivated but were there particular things that you found yourself resisting or having a hard time with when you're making those changes?

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yeah, so personally, like time I was tired, I was exhausted. And I just, you know, I was lazy. I didn't wanna get up before I might shift and cook some meals and, you know, plan ahead. Um, that was probably my biggest obstacle was just being tired. Lack of ideas was another huge thing. Like just finding the time to come up with new ideas was always a struggle. And just kind of knowing what to eat like was healthy. Like what was gonna make me feel my best, what was gonna agree with me that took a lot of trial and error too.

Michelle Leotta:
I bet. Now when you were working as a nurse, were you ever talking to your patients about this type of stuff?

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yeah, so actually I worked, I worked in a pediatric hospital and infectious diseases and general pediatric. So I was actually talking to parents a lot more about nutrition cuz usually kids don't care. Um, but I, a lot of moms and dads in the hospital we'd be talking about it, you know, what to eat while they were in the hospital. And also it was really interesting because I got to see what a lot of kids, kids were eating. That was my first exposure to the keto diet was actually sick children on the keto diet to manage seizures. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to see like a lot of nutrition through tube feeding, a lot of parents doing like pure aid diets and stuff like that.

Michelle Leotta:
So, oh boy, that's big stuff they gotta deal with. And those are parents that are quite motivated to make that change. Yeah, exactly. Whatever they need to do. Um, I'm curious for everyone, who's here with us live and thank you guys for being here. What are some of the common suggestions that you are talking to your clients about that seem to be a struggle for them to implement? Is it like Abigail, like actually taking the time to, is it changing, you know, something that they're eliminating from their diet? Like what's a struggle for your clients. I was thinking about my own health coaching clients. You guys know I'm still in private practice. Right. And um, one of the funniest things that... I mean for me, health coach, funny, right. Health coach, hashtag health humor is when, um, I have a client who's going off gluten because of autoimmune disease.

Michelle Leotta:
And they still are stuck in like a dieting mindset where they'll say like, well I cheated, but I'll make up for it tomorrow. Like, I'll be, I was bad, but I'll be good. And I'm always trying to explain to them that you, you can't make up for like eating an inflammatory food. Like it's just something that happened. It's like, you poked yourself with a fork. You can't like undo that. It's just, it happened. So you know, own it and move forward. But there's, it's not like I ate too many reason now I can eat fewer calories tomorrow when it's all gonna balance out. So, um, that's something that comes up very often for me. Um, and another thing that's very common in my practice with the AIP diet in particular that I use with a lot of my clients is it's just so overwhelming. People are like, what? Like, can I, you know, they're like, can I eat cheese-itz? I'm like, no

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Off limits.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. Like they're like here, you know, like we need to meet them where they are. And sometimes that can be very difficult. Um, Abigail, do you see any like common themes coming up among That Clean Life users? Yes.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
I, it's actually funny cause I read a study a couple days ago that actually scientifically looked at the three most common reasons why people don't meal plan and it's so consistent with what we see with our, our own like health professional community and their clients. So lack of time was number one. Um, lack of ideas was number two and number three was, uh, food preferences in the family and having to deal with certain conditions, whether that was for themselves or family members that they just didn't know how to meal plan around. Um, and like you said, like with incredibly restrictive diets, um, AIP is not so bad, but like, like looking at the specific carbohydrate diet or sometimes like you get things like keto and stuff, just figuring out what to eat is a huge obstacle for people. And I think we take that for granted cause we're health professionals and we understand these things and we don't really realize that a lot of people have no knowledge about this kind of stuff. And we can really help out with that and simplify their lives,

Michelle Leotta:
Right. People with no dietary restrictions at all, have a hard time figuring out what to make for dinner, you know, anyway, like, is it gonna be, you know, meatloaf Monday, taco Tuesday, that kind of thing. But now introduce these other layers. Um, but you know, different changes that we're trying to make to their diet and become really, it can become really overwhelming very, very quickly.

Michelle Leotta:
Lisa's saying that with her clients it's consistency either with food or with exercise, when they go off, they feel like they messed up and they can't get back on anybody else come up against that either in your own life or with your clients. I'm curious how you deal with that. Lisa, I hear it from clients all the time. They'll say that their biggest hurdle and their health is consistency. And uh, and I always think that's an interesting answer to me. It speaks to like helping your clients build resilience or um, giving them like habits that, that are small enough that they can actually succeed. Cuz I think people just get into this. I'm a failure mindset. Um, AGA when you were working with all those nurses and nurses by and large are not very healthy people. What, how was the response when you were like suggesting they eat all these healthy meal plans? Did you get pushback?

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
I'd say like 50 50, like there was, I remember one particular nurse would walk in every day and just like turn her nose up at whatever I was eating. It didn't matter what it was. Um, you know, she just was so put off by the whole thing, but then like the other half of people were like super interested and wanted to learn and just wanted to work. They were curious about what I was doing and the, for the people that I was able to help in the end.

Michelle Leotta:
Well, yes, people have to be ready to change now. Presumably if they have signed up to work with a health coach, thrown down a significant amount of money, they are ready for that change. Did you guys hear me say that by the way, thrown down a significant amount of money, it is important that people are paying you enough that they feel invested in process. So that's just an aside. Lisa says, I tell them to just make a different choice in their next meal. It's an opportunity to, you know, every choice is opportunity to do better. I get what you're saying. Lisa. In fact, I just recorded a podcast episode for my, my shoes got power podcast, not this podcast about this idea, failing fast or like, like breaking up your day into like morning, afternoon, evening. So if you quote unquote failed in the morning or failed at nine o'clock, well, whatever you can be successful at 10 o'clock you as opposed to letting it take over the whole day or the whole week, Rhonda says, how do you talk to clients about calorie counting that it might not work and it could sabotage their eating?

Michelle Leotta:
Well, typically Rhonda I'll ask my clients versus telling them like, how has that been working for you? And you know, they're usually able to tell me pretty succinctly, um, how it's been going, which is not good or they wouldn't have hired me. Abigail, I know within That Clean Life, you guys do tally up calories for the week. Like if we are creating meal plans for sample meal plans, you guys we're never prescribing anything as health coaches. Right. But if you are giving out some sort of sample meal plan, um, it, it can't come with like the calorie count at the end. I personally always turn that off. Do you have any of idea how many of your users are using that feature versus turning it off?

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
It's it's um, it's pretty much again, a 50 50 split. We have the group of practitioners who love that, who meal plan based on macros, who like are down to like every percentage, whether it's protein, carbs and fat and a specific amount of calories. Yeah. And then we have another group, um, that don't want it. They look at it, but they don't want their clients to see that, so that's why we make it easy to turn on and off. Um, whether you're exporting or, um, sharing a plan through a link, you have the ability, um, to show a client that, or not show them that especially, um, our practitioners for that are working with eating disorder patients, that can all be very triggering. So it's good to leave that off in that case.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. I like that. I mean, it's funny sometimes I've actually had a conversation. Most of my clients very well educated with women who already know that dieting has been bad for them through the years. They don't wanna do it, but like sometimes we actually talk about it like, well, how much do you think you're eating? Like, could it be as simple as overeating? Like, is there something helpful about calorie counting now and then right. Like without, without taking it to an extreme, it is a tool in the toolbox. So Rhonda, sometimes I have to have the conversation one way or sometimes I have the conversation the other way. But I'm curious how you've been handling it so far for any of you that are here, live with us. Now, one thing, um, that I have seen through the years working as a health coach is that there are some like hacks or, or tricks that tend to go over really well with my clients.

Michelle Leotta:
And, uh, and I'm curious if you guys have anything like this, like any fun hacks or things that you do when it's hard for your clients to try something new in their diet, you know, the idea of blending the spinach into this smoothie, you know, that's kind of standard. Um, but what else have you tried? And I'll share one from my experience when I was, um, I mean, I guess I always share this recipe with clients, but uh, Abigail, you guys have a recipe for chocolate avocado pudding, right? Yes, of course. We all have to have a good chocolate avocado classic. It's a classic that and like then they banana ice cream. Yes. Oh actually you guys have several ice cream recipes.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
We have so many, we have every flavor you can possibly imagine a banana ice cream.

Michelle Leotta:
And I learned after many years of making it through your recipes was that if I add a shot of vodka, it freezes so much better. Now this is nothing to do with making a mixed drink. It just changes is I guess the freezing temperature or whatever. So you can scoop the stuff. Yeah.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
It makes it a bit softer.

Michelle Leotta:
So these are the kind of hacks I'm talking about, what works really well for your clients. So when I have had clients go through like a detox program or the client today, I was speaking to where we're trying to get her off processed sugar, that chocolate avocado put. And I'm sure you guys have made different variations of this. It's like, you know, cocoa powder, avocado, banana, and like raw honey or something like that. Some combination of those things will always make a pudding and they love it. And I've had clients say like, this is the thing that got me through this one recipe was my go-to. So I didn't feel like I was losing my mind. And I was gonna break into that like box of intimates cookies at night.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
So that's what it comes down to is finding things that people love to eat, like healthy things that people love to eat. If you can fill a client's day with things that they're excited about and that they find delicious, like that's half the battle I found, especially for myself, like it was just about finding meals. I love like I have this like quinoa shrimp fried rice that actually tastes like takeout. And it's so good. And it's, you know, it's, I would rather eat that than get takeout now.

Michelle Leotta:
Yes, they, we don't, we want them to know that it doesn't have to taste bland or boring. And also that it doesn't have to have 500,000 ingredients. Yes.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yes. Make it easy.

Michelle Leotta:
Yes. Another important thing, when we're sharing recipes with our clients, make sure it doesn't take an hour and a half and have 12 ingredients that I gotta go to a specialty store to find.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
And not only that, it costs them a lot of money and they're gonna spend that money and then they're gonna be like, this isn't sustainable.

Michelle Leotta:
Right? Exactly. There's always that hump like just cleaning out the old stuff from the pantry. But once you get past that, I'm a firm believer that eating real food is way cheaper than the process stuff. Right. I'm sure we're all on board with that idea. Lisa is saying, I work with them on subbing out ingredients that are processed to ones that are cleaner for them. I build in desserts and sweet treats that they love alternatives for that. Yeah. I love this. I mean, I'm just about to actually, um, use That Clean Life today to output like a ton of dessert it's for my clients that like doesn't include processed sugar. And um, what I find if I'm going online to find things like that, cause you could just do a Google search of course. But I find a lot of recipes that are using like it's not processed sugar, but it's like some alternative artificial stuff and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. When I say no sugar, I mean no sugar. So thank you guys for offering so many of those.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yeah, of course you can just, you can use our filters and hit dessert, sugar free and we will show you only desserts that are sugar free, which is super handy for stuff like that.

Michelle Leotta:
But not subbing with Splenda.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Rright. Sugar free means no added sugar. Like no only not natural sugars only. That's how we define it in That Clean Life. Yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
So that's what I, you know, like I said, you could spend a lot of time, um, poking around the internet, but you, you find some questionable stuff. So that's awesome. Kimberly is saying my clients seem to have the hardest time at night. So I do suggest warm drinks, like tea or healthy, hot chalk or golden milk. That's awesome. Especially this time of year, everybody wants something toasty.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Comforting, cozy.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. I know you guys have hot chocolate don't you have one with no wait, that's a smooth... That something has cauliflower in it.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
We have a chocolate cauliflower smoothie. Yeah. That's we also have, we have a drink tag, so you can go to the filters again and it hit drink and we'll show you all of our drinks. We have Tumeric latte, um, hot chocolate, um, and lots of like homemade teas, which I, I absolutely love.

Michelle Leotta:
Those are all great ideas. So listen to you guys. We're gonna be going into more detail about how to help clients make a significant dietary change and talking about like the resources that can really help next week. So if you're here with us and this is interesting to you, be sure to sign up for that free webinar. It's at health coach power.com/help clients and Lisa bananas. Monk fruit are good. Natural sweeteners. I don't even do the monk fruit, but I'm on board with the bananas. Okay. So, um, again, for all of you that are here, let's talk about why it's so rewarding when our clients actually do take our suggestions, right? Like some times there's so much pushback, but what are some successes that you've had with your clients who actually are able to take what you talk about and put it into action? Cause that is so rewarding. Abigail, I'm sure you've seen so many like success stories through the years, either with, you know, through your own life or the people who are using your product.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yeah. We were just... I was speaking to one of our, um, members the other day and she had a client come to her and do food sensitivity testing and was like absolutely overwhelmed with all the things she couldn't eat. Right. And she basically, she was so in the mode of providing, uh, people with meal plans and for this client, all the client needed was a bit of healthy eating inspiration. And she provided her with like a collection of just a few recipes. And it was a game changer for the client. The client was so happy and so excited. It was so helpful. And it was just such a little thing that went such a long way and changed her life that she actually started offering like recipe books as a service in her business now.

Michelle Leotta:
That's awesome. Again, it seems so silly. It feels like recipes are so freely available everywhere, but they're hard to search for and clients don't know what to search and when they find something, you know, it, it just, there's always, here's the thing that kills me about food blogs, by the way, tell me if you guys can relate. There's always some ad in the corner that is like spinning and spinning and spinning and like freaking out my browser. I can't even deal anymore with the [inaudible]

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
I know. Yeah. Same. Whenever I end up searching outside of that clean light for something I get so frustrated cause and they always have this long story. You're scrolling through so much stuff to actually find the recipe. It takes forever.

Michelle Leotta:
I think they do that for SEO purposes. I don't know. Maybe we have some food bloggers here in the group. Long time ago. I used to food blog myself. So there's reasons that it's like that. And I got a friend who's an amazing food blogger making a whole career out of it. So I know they gotta have those ads and everything, but when you try to do this for your clients all day long, gets old, real quick. Yeah. You don't have time for that. We do not have time for that. I do not. Um, I had a Hashimoto's client that it was just like, boom. You know, she went off gluten and dairy and that's all she had to do. And this weight that she had been like, I don't know why I've been gaining all this weight. Like I helped her just get off the gluten and the dairy and it just started like shedding, just like so easily for her.

Michelle Leotta:
And it was so touching for me to like see her face change and the tone of her voice change. Like, oh my God, there's not something wrong with me. Oh my God. I'm having just been failing after, you know, with diet after diet. Um, and it was just so remarkable. I remember she was um, a really big ice cream lover. And so of course this is what people do. They they'll like go off the gluten and the dairy, but then they always try it. Or they always have that day that they say screw it. And she said, Michelle, I ate the ice cream. Like I always do. And I felt it. And immediately she said her whole body swelled up like noticeably, like even just to look at her and she's like, I had no idea it was affecting me like that. So after that experience, sometimes it's nice when they do that thing, where they go and eat the thing, they just eliminated cause they feel it.

Michelle Leotta:
And then it clicks, oh I'm in control of how I feel. Lindsay says my first client is gluten free and I'm excited to use That Clean Life because I have not worked with someone before with gluten intolerance. Awesome. I mean, there's so many, so many gluten free resources these days, thanks to like whole 30 and the paleo movement. I feel like it's a, it's totally than it was 10 years ago. But uh, but yes, that's gonna make it even easier for you. Tracy says her Instagram is her food blog and ingredients are listed and they can ask me for the individual ingredient, quantities, Tracy, where do you get recipes to put on your Instagram food blog? You know what I've is? I've taken, um, picture of something that I'm making and you know, talk about it and then say, if you want the recipe, you know, DM me and then whether it's a recipe that I've created or something off the internet or something I got from That Clean Life now I'm in like a DM conversation with somebody and it's a nice way to, you know, start chatting.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. You develop that personal connection and then you have a reason to follow up too, to be like, Hey, did you try that yet? Tracy says her recipes are coming from her head also. Very cool. I'm gonna tell you, I used to make up all my own recipes. And about two years into my business, I kind of ran out of ideas. got a lot harder, like all I'm my go-tos I had used up. Um, and then I actually hired someone at one point to help me develop recipes for programs that I was running. This was before That Clean Life was around you guys. And it was so expensive. It was so very expensive to have someone do the recipe development and testing and photography and things like that. Um, so funny now because I'm like, I used to have great ideas, but uh, I ran out. I guess that happens.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, absolutely. And you don't have to do that anymore. You don't have to do that anymore. That's right. Just like you don't have to go to the bank to deposit checks. Yeah. We live in a beautiful world you guys. Kim is saying, I have a client who lost 40 pounds in the last year, working with me and told me he has tried everything before we work together. Mindfulness and work life balance were his biggest issues. Plus understanding inflammatory foods and I'm finding, it's not just about the food. Well, isn't that a hell? Yes. From all of us. So often it's not about the food, but have you ever noticed that somebody's food? How do I put this? It often reflects the rest of their life. Like if they're overscheduled and they're stressed and they're running a mile a minute, those are that's nothing to do with food, but that's gonna go hand in hand with like the diet that fits that kind of lifestyle. Um, so I love, I love using a food journal with all my clients, just so I can like step into their shoes. I tell them I'm not, I'm not judging your food. I just wanna understand your life.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yes. And that's so important to do, like make it the first thing you do. Like before you even think about what you're gonna offer, the plan you're going to create and they see this get skipped. So often it's such a big mistake to not do like that initial assessment, like learning about like their time constraints and like what they have in the kitchen, or even like what their social support is like, what their background is like their culture, like what foods like culturally, they, they have eaten and, but they will and will not eat. Like all of those things are so important, um, to discuss upfront so that you actually create a, a plan or a resource or anything that's going to actually help them. That they're going to be able to follow.

Michelle Leotta:
100%. Tracy's saying I substitute any unhealthy ingredients. Oh good. Yes. You could take other recipes and make substitutions there. So good. You guys. I mean, this is a lot of, of course some health is health coaches don't even touch the nutrition piece and they're working so completely on like primary foods or like lifestyle issues. But I think most of us do dip our toe and the, into the nutrition aspect. So, so I'm glad that you guys were able to join us today to talk about this idea of making it easier for them. Like, can we give them the resources? Can we spell it out for them? Can we give them the shopping list? So they don't have to create it themselves? Like these are all super, super helpful things for our clients. And again, if you wanna see more about the types of resources that are available and how we can supply our clients with what they need to make necessary changes, um, join us next week for a free webinar we'll be doing. You can sign up at healthcoachpower.com/helpclients. And it's always so much fun to hear from what you guys are doing in your practice. So thanks for everybody that was here, live today and sharing what's going on, you know, with these real life scenarios that are coming up in Abigail. Thank you for joining us today.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Thank you for having me.

Michelle Leotta:
And we'll see you next week.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Yes. I'm super excited. I've got a lot of great stuff planned for you all next week.

Michelle Leotta:
Amazing. Thanks everybody for putting up with me laid up here on my couch. I'm gonna go back to napping. I think in just a few minutes. Stay healthy everybody. You'll see you soon.

Abigail Keeso Hopkins:
Bye everyone.