What are the best ways to help clients develop healthy sleep and nutrition habits for functional training?

Assessing their current habits is the best place to start, and the most efficient. I always do a full lifestyle assessment and a food, mood, sleep and exercise diary with my clients.

One way to get started with assessing your current habits is by intentionally tracking them. You need to take stock of what these habits are before you can assess their impacts and that usually involves a conscious effort to track which of your current habits directly or indirectly affect your sleep or general nutritional wellbeing.

Sleep is a part of 3-pillar or Tryopstambha concept in Ayurveda that is vital for human growth- 1. Diet: ✓ Your digestive power strength or Agni is like? Are you eating your meals as per your digestion strength? ✓ what is included in your meals- healthy or junk & processed. ✓ opt for seasonal fruits and vegetables rather than packaged and frozen one. ✓ manage your meal timings like - are you having three meals a day at proper timing and proper gap between them or not? 2. Lifestyle; ✓ having active or sedentary lifestyle. ✓ doing exercise that is wholesome for your body type as per your prakriti or body constitution? 3. Sleep will be peaceful, when you have healthy diet & lifestyle along with sleep hygiene, Foot bath and massage.

When you dig into self exploration and awareness you will get more awareness about your sleep and nutrition but also your values and beliefs. And when you have that you are able to create extraordinary changes and undo unsupportive habits, so your body is able to start thriving again.

Create a behavior accountability list where you identify behaviors that support healthy sleep and nutrition habits. For example, what are some behaviors that will support your effort to improve your sleep and nutrition (e.g., turning your phone off at 9am, keeping a healthy snack on your work desk)? Create an accountability list of those behaviors and keep the list in a place where you see it and review it frequently.

"Fuel added to generate the fire decides the residue or debris it creates". Similarly, Nutrition-Lifestyle-Sleep pattern decides how healthy one is otherwise toxins get accumulated in the body creating sleep disturbances, nutritional issues and many more. Functional training can be a pro to your clients when they understand the depth of its working mode- Answering the Why and How questions about their full program will help them assess their focus and also will make them clear about what to expect of if they are following the guidelines for achieving healthy sleep and healthy nutrition.

The first step is to look at their values & stories. We always go to the tactics like check ins , food dairies etc but let’s stop and ask how they got to where they are in first place. After all we can’t separate the brain 🧠 from the body. Secondly what stories do they have about why they aren’t doing the things that inherently know to do but just aren’t doing that. Start with the brain first and the body will follow

I love to use analogies to explain the importance of healthy sleep and nutrition habits in a way that clients can relate to their goals. For example, I always compare the inflammation of the gut (and the steps for repair) with a fire taking place in a fireplace.

Importantly tracking your sleep as well as nothing your own subjective notes about your sleep is very important also. Trying to go to bed and wake within a 30min window at night and morning 🌅 helps balance our circadian rhythm.

Along with highlighting the benefits of healthy sleep and nutritional habits, it should also focus on how to achieve healthy sleep and nutritional habits.

It can also be suggested to practice deep breathing exercises before bedtime to help get sound sleep. In recent years, screentime is also affecting the sleep especially in younger generations, no screentime 2 hours before going to bed also helps in getting a good sleep.

A modern lifestyle-related habit that is all too common is late-night meals or snacking, which can have a fairly significant negative impact on sleep quality, so reducing and eventually eliminating mid-late evening meals or snacks is one particular tip I often suggest. It can be challenging for many but has huge downstream benefits.

One thing I found helpful is that we are habitually seekers and looking for the lazy way to do things. It takes around 28 days to get a new habit to stick. So, set the alarm or a push notices in your calendar when to do things and stay with it for 28 days. Try a balanced diet, eat every 3 hours and in small portions. Every meal should contain a source of protein, carbs, vitamins, fat and minerals. The more colorful the meal is the better is the anti inflammatory benefits. Wind down before bedtime. Avoid your cell phone and read a book that will feed you with slow dopamine instead of fast social media dopamine.

For success, start slow. Begin with what I call the "biggest ick" in your life. - If you are tired all the time, start with a consistent bedtime routine for restful consistent REM sleep. - If you struggle with bloating or digestion, start by looking at the nutrition labels and find a more natural alternative. - If it's your weight, start pre-planning and enacting a mindful eating schedule with meals and snacks your logical brain's eating goals. This is HUGE in tackling emotional, stress, or mindless eating habits.

To help clients develop healthy sleep and nutrition habits for functional training: 1. Assess their current habits and goals. 2. Educate on the importance of sleep and nutrition. 3. Create personalized plans. 4. Promote consistent sleep schedules and a sleep-friendly environment. 5. Encourage balanced, nutrient-dense meals and regular eating. 6. Emphasize portion control and hydration. 7. Advise meal timing around workouts. 8. Teach stress management techniques. 9. Address emotional eating triggers. 10. Provide ongoing support and track progress. 11. Emphasize patience and persistence. Helping clients develop healthy sleep and nutrition habits for functional training involves personalized guidance, education, and support.

So we see that many clients find improving their sleep quality one of the hardest lifestyle factors to fix - even more so than dietary changes. Either people are (A) going to be too late, or (B) failing to fall asleep easily when they're in bed, or (C) waking up in the middle of the night and not falling back to sleep again easily or (D) going to bed on time but waking up not falling asleep. Working out the root cause of these issues is the key to helping people get a great night's sleep.

Ask your clients what impact are you feeling by not addressing your habits around sleep routine? This will get them thinking about this.

In our check-ins, we ask clients to provide evidence of success for the past week and ask them to set goals for the following week based on what's been happening day by day. We tell clients in goal setting and next steps that we make suggestions but they make the decisions. If a client is still working to get a necessary habit established, we break the habit down into actions and practices (repeated actions). If the client cannot confidently say that the upcoming week's goal and actions follow-through can easily be rated as a 9 or 10 on a scale of 10, we scale back the action until it IS a 9 or 10. Because, we know that the key to successful goal attainment is consistency of actions.

Two of the most beneficial sleep habits I’ve found in working with clients are: A. Cutting off coffee (and caffeine in general) by 12PM. A lot us get in the habit of slugging coffee and energy drinks all day, and then once night hits, it’s hard to get to sleep. By cutting it off early, you give your body a chance to settle down & actually secrete the hormones that lead to getting quality sleep. B. Getting a morning walk outdoors under sunlight. This one doesn’t seem like it would impact sleep, but trust me it does. Our body has a “clock” called the circadian rhythm. Going outside early is one of the best ways to regulate it. Early time outdoors will increase energy during light hours, then throttle near end of day.

Assessment and establishing baselines are key. Next, find out if clients are ready, willing and able to address BOTH domains (Nutrition & sleep) simultaneously. Some clients are able to only handle one actionable item at a time. I would collaborate with the client on which particular areas in each of or one of those domains at a time they are struggling with. Based on their responses, I will devise some suggested practices and daily actions and give them the opportunity to select which ones and to what extent they feel confident executing the action. Finally, we would collaborate on how we want to quantify progress, schedule periodic check-ins, etc.

The are many valid suggestions here. I could add one thing that is maybe missing. Nutritional habits can affect the sleeping habits: -Type of food taken before going to bed : some of the food can enhance natural production of melatonin (certain types of nuts) -if this doesn't help there are also melatonin supplements Timing of evening meal: too early/too late and too heavy meal can disturb sleeping in terms of time needed to fall asleep as well as sleep quality.