THE POWER OF CHECK-INS
Your weekly check-in. Is it inconvenient day of the week where you have to scramble to take your photos before work and remember what the heck happened the past week? Or do you use is as an opportunity to reassess your goals, share your struggles, and determine how to continue progressing?
If you have a nutrition coach (or really any kind of coach), you probably have a regularly scheduled opportunity to touch base with your coach and catch up on how things are going. This check-in provides an outlet where you can celebrate your wins, share your struggles, and receive advice and accountability as you continue working towards your goals.
As coaches, we want nothing more than to help and support you in your journey, and The best way to take advantage of that is by completing your weekly check-in.
For our KLN clients, weekly check-ins are completed through a client portal and consist of updating weekly photos and measurements, syncing your MFP log, and answering questions about how your week went. Because we believe so strongly in the accountability that weekly check-ins provide, this week’s post is dedicated to breaking things down and offering advice from a coaching perspective about how you as a client can get the most out of your check-ins (without having it be just another annoying box to check off on your to-do list).
1 — FIND YOUR BARRIER
If doing your check-in every week feels like a pain in the butt, figure out what your barrier is. For most clients, it is taking photos and measurements. If this is you, find a process that works in your normal morning routine on your check-in day. (See some of our tips for this below). Maybe taking photos is the easy part but answering the questions is like pulling teeth. If this is you, maybe instead of completing your check-in in one fell swoop on your check-in day, set aside 5 minutes each day during the week to jot down some notes so all you have to do is copy and paste come check-in day. Here are some of our tips:
PRO-TIP:
Set a reminder in your phone every week for your check-in day at the time that you usually wake up on that day.
Upon waking up and seeing your reminder, check your weight, do your measurements and your photos before doing anything else. (It’s best to do this anyways for most accurate body measurements).
Once the hard stuff is out of the way, you can do your check-in anytime during the day. If you don’t have time to complete in the morning, set another phone reminder to get it done by the end of the day.
2 — CONSISTENCY
Consistency is everything when it comes to tracking macros and consistency with check-ins is no different. This not only means completing your check-in regularly, but also completing your check-in with consistent information. Recording accurate photos and measurements is one of the major ways we track progress, so it’s important to create consistency around taking these measurements. If you’re weighing yourself at a different time each day or taking your waist measurement from a different spot every week or worse yet not recording your measurements for each check-in, it’s hard to determine your progress and also makes it difficult for your coach to help you with what comes next.
PRO-TIP: TAKING PHOTOS
Take your photos on the same day at the same time (ideally as soon as you wake up) wearing the same outfit in the same spot in your home. This is really helpful for seeing progress over time when you compare side-by-sides, which is one of the main reasons we ask for photos as coaches.
Use the front camera on your iPhone using the self-timer feature. Prop your phone up on the side of a jewelry box or a stack of books on your dresser so the camera angle is the same every time.
If doing your check-in on a desktop or laptop, use the AirDrop feature to upload your photos directly from your phone to your computer.
3 — WEEKLY REFLECTION
Your responses to the questions that your coach asks during your check-ins are there to give your coach insight into your week but maybe even more importantly, they are there for you to reflect on how you think your week went.
You aren’t expected to write a novel for each answer, unless of course you want to, but taking a little extra time to really think about your wins and losses from the week is part of the process of learning to navigate your nutrition on your own. And at the end of the day (or the end of the week) the more information you pack into your answers, the more information your coach can offer back to you.
PRO-TIP: Take 5 minutes at the end of each day to jot down one win and one loss in your client portal or in a note on your phone. When you do your weekly check-in, pull up your saved note and all you have to do is copy and paste! This will not only help you remember all the great things that happened during the week, but then you already have most of your check-in done!
4 — GETTING your momentum back
There are weeks where nothing went according to plan. If it hasn’t happened yet during your tracking experience, it will at some point and it’s ok. Checking in during these weeks when you “eat bad” or feel like you “fall off the wagon” may be even more important than checking in during a really good week.
It’s easy to want to write it off and say, I didn’t do well this week and I don’t want anyone to know about it. Not saying you need to out yourself, BUT your relationship with your coach should feel safe and encouraging and it’s there especially for weeks when you fall off the wagon. Even if you don’t have any tracked days to show and you don’t want to get on the scale, the act of checking in is a really helpful way to get back on the wagon.
This could also be applied to tracked vs. untracked days. It’s normal to want to leave a day untracked when you feel as though you have ‘messed up’ or you know you have exceeded your targets. BUT, tracking on these days is especially important because it not only brings awareness but you may not have done as bad as you thought you did.
Hiding from your coach or the scale or MFP only continues to tell yourself that you’re in trouble and you’ve done something wrong, when that’s hardly the case. I’m here to remind you that this is ALL about progress and part of making progress is trusting the process. Sometimes there’s a detour here and there, but you have to be able to ask for directions every once in a while to get back on the right path.
PRO-TIP: Even on the weeks where life feels like a mess, still check in.
Just like anything else, the time and effort that you put in is what you’re going to get out. If you intentionally set aside time to complete your check-in and do your best to fill out the information as accurately and consistently as possible, then your coach is able to serve you as best as possible. And that’s our favorite part of being a coach.
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