Laura Schoenfeld: I have a bit of a unique clientele base. Most of my clients, if not, like, 90 to 95 percent of them, are already pretty committed to a Paleo-type approach, and they just need help tweaking their diet, so I don’t do a lot of 30-day resets with people just simply because they’ve already done it or they already kind of have the Paleo thing covered. I’ll pick certain foods that I think are going to be more of an issue for them based on their symptoms. Like I said, with someone with IBS, SIBO, that kind of thing, maybe we do a low-FODMAP Paleo approach for 30 days and see how they feel. If someone needs to do a low-carb approach for 30 days to see how that works, then that might be something we focus on. I’m not taking a lot of clients from an American diet to a 30-day reset because that’s not my clientele base that wouldn’t already know about Paleo, but I think it’s good to have the option of either.
You might just want to ask your client if they feel that they’re better at sticking to a strict challenge with rules and yes-and-no lists and that kind of thing or if they would prefer to focus on things like just do gluten free for three weeks or just do eight hours of sleep per night for three weeks or just focusing on a few things that are more bite-sized pieces that they can really focus on for a couple of weeks and then moving on to the next changes.
In my practice, I’m honestly doing a lot more small changes than total resets, and like I said, that’s because a lot of people are already committed to the Paleo diet. They’re not needing to be taught anything, really, about Paleo. We’re really making just fine-tune adjustments at that point, so I find that with those clients picking maybe three different changes to really focus on is going to be a much more effective approach than giving them, like, a massive lifestyle overhaul, which I used to do when I was first starting out. I used to give people this massive list of, like, here’s your diet, and here’s your supplements, and here’s your lifestyle changes, and here’s your exercise. There are so many different things that can affect a person’s health, and when I was doing that, I was finding the ability of my clients to follow through on those recommendations was really low. I mean, they definitely were working at it, but it was just like there were too many things and it was overwhelming, so I made the decision to start focusing on smaller, more-targeted changes to really get the biggest bang for their buck, and I find that the compliance is a lot better. I find that their ability to make those changes and stick to them is better. I find that they get better results, and then the next time we talk we’re able to add on some additional changes.
So it’s really going to depend on where your clients are coming from, what your focus is. If you’re a functional doctor and you don’t have time to sit down and talk to someone about their diet for an hour, then maybe handing them a 30-day reset guide and saying, “I want you to try to follow this as best as you can,” is the only thing that you’re able to do. If you’re like me and your entire conversation is diet and lifestyle, then you might be able to talk to them for 45 minutes about their experience with diet changes and use that information to make a recommendation that fits that patient. It’s definitely patient-centric as far as what kind of changes you’re going to recommend, so that’s a decision you’ll have to base on what your clientele looks like and if you have the time that it would take to really get to know a patient well enough that you could make a recommendation that fits their needs.