How To Deal With Clients With Rigid Thinking Around Food

Every coach has met the client with rigid thinking around food, and who seems to thrive on rules. They come in with a list of foods they’ll eat and a longer list of foods they won’t. They weigh, track, and measure everything with military precision. On paper, they can often look like the “perfect” client as they are often disciplined, committed, and highly compliant. 

But scratch the surface, and a constant low-level anxiety, a dread of social meals, and a fragile sense of success that collapses the moment real life interrupts the plan, emerges.

That’s what we mean by rigid thinking around food. It shows up as all-or-nothing rules (“If I eat one cookie, the whole day is ruined”), as moralizing (“Bread is bad, salad is good”), as fear of deviation (“I can’t handle it if the restaurant doesn’t have my usual option”), and as catastrophising (“One slip and my progress is gone”). These rules can feel safe to the client. They promise clarity and control. 

But in reality, they make the client more brittle, not resilient.

Rigid thinking blocks growth because it turns nutrition into a tightrope walk. Any wobble feels like failure. This fragility leads to predictable outcomes like the binge–restrict cycle where a “bad” day cascades into a lost week, or social isolation as clients avoid restaurants, travel, or even family meals, or chronic under-fueling that undermines training, recovery, and mood, or, often, injury and burnout. The irony is that the more tightly a client grips their rules, the more easily their results slip away.

However, the difficulty as a coach in this situation is that your job is not to strip away all structure. Most clients need structure to feel anchored. Whether that is meal templates, consistent routines, or simple guidelines that reduce decision fatigue. However, there’s a line between structure and rigidity. Structure is scaffolding that helps a client climb higher while still leaving room for life to happen. Rigidity is a cage that shrinks their world and punishes deviation with guilt or shame. 

A useful test here, is to ask: Does this guideline reduce anxiety and expand options, or does it increase anxiety and narrow them?

There’s also a deeper layer to this work. Psychologists call it cognitive flexibility. This is the executive skill of set-shifting, or adjusting when circumstances change. You can think of it as mental mobility. Just as an inflexible body is prone to injury, an inflexible mind is prone to breakdown when conditions change. The tree that bends in the breeze remains standing when a storm comes through, whereas the rigid tree breaks. The good news is that flexibility can be trained through small experiments, reflective language, and safe exposures to deviation.

Philosophers understood this long before psychology gave it a name. Aristotle described virtue as the Golden Mean, which is the middle path between extremes. In nutrition, that path lies between ascetic denial and reckless indulgence. The goal isn’t to eliminate rules, but to find a measured freedom where food supports health, performance, and joy.

Rigidity promises safety but delivers fragility. Flexibility delivers resilience. When we teach our clients to bend instead of break, we’re not just helping them to get results from our coaching, we’re giving them the tools to sustain health, performance, and a meaningful life in the face of change.

TL;DR

Rigid food rules can make clients look “perfect” on paper, but they often mask anxiety, social avoidance, binge-restrict cycles, and under-fueling. The goal as a coach isn’t to strip all structure, but to distinguish between supportive scaffolding and rigid cages. Dietary flexibility is the skill you need to help these clients develop. Start by assessing the purpose behind each rule, align choices with deeper values, and introduce safe, gradual adjustments (e.g., Control Dial, 5% bends, Exposure Ladders). Use tools, mindset shifts, and behaviour design to help clients replace all-or-nothing thinking with resilient patterns. Stay within scope, refer out when red flags arise, and remember that rigidity breeds fragility, flexibility builds resilience.

Scope of Practice & Safety First

One of the first lessons every great coach learns is that you are not supposed to do everything. Your job is not to be therapist, doctor, and dietitian rolled into one. Your job is to coach within your scope of practice. 

So what does fall inside our lane? We guide clients with general nutrition and lifestyle skills. That might mean helping them set up reliable meal anchors, showing them how to put together a simple plate template, or brainstorming better grocery strategies. It also includes habit change, mindset skills, and gentle reframes. For example, catching an “I blew it” thought and helping a client see it instead as a chance to learn. We stay in the realm of practical, actionable coaching that supports health and performance without drifting into diagnosis or therapy.

But inevitably, you’ll meet clients whose struggles run deeper than habits. Maybe their weight drops alarmingly fast. Maybe they avoid eating in front of anyone. Maybe they’re locked into punishing cycles of overexercise, or their fear of certain foods is so intense that it dominates daily life. These are red flags. They tell you that what’s happening is no longer just about accountability or better planning, it’s a situation that may involve disordered eating, medical instability, or psychological distress. 

When you see signs like rapid weight loss, purging behaviours, or compulsive exercise, you don’t push forward with more macro targets or tighter diet structure. You hit pause, and you bring in the right help.

This is why every serious coach builds a network. You need to know a registered dietitian you can call when medical nutrition therapy is required. You need relationships with doctors who can assess medical stability, with therapists who understand CBT, ACT, or eating disorder treatment, and with sports medicine professionals if you’re working with competitive athletes. 

Outsourcing to that network doesn’t mean you’ve failed as a coach, it means you’re doing your job. 

Of course, professionalism doesn’t stop with referrals. It also shows up in how you protect both yourself and your client. Keep clear notes about what’s discussed and what actions were taken. If you’re co-treating with another professional, make sure communication is aligned and consent is documented. Set boundaries in how you communicate. Clients don’t need a coach who’s available at all hours like a crisis line, they need a steady, consistent presence. 

Most importantly, never diagnose. If a client asks, “Do you think I have an eating disorder?” the most professional response is: “That’s not something I can diagnose, but I think it would be smart for us to bring in a specialist to help.”

Finally, don’t forget to zoom out and look at the systems your client is operating in. Rigid thinking doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s often shaped by long work hours, limited access to healthcare or nutritious food, cultural or religious food norms, or even the distorted pressures of social media diet culture. If you focus only on the individual, you risk blaming them for barriers that are largely structural. World-class coaches understand this and help clients find realistic strategies that work in their real lives, while also acknowledging the bigger forces at play.

So, stay in your lane, but don’t stay in a silo. Know what you can do brilliantly, and know when it’s time to call in reinforcements. Clients will trust you more, not less, when they see that you care enough to keep them safe and supported. Safety always comes first, and it’s the foundation on which all great coaching is built.

Understand the “Why”: Roots of Food Rigidity

If you want to help clients loosen rigid rules around food, you first need to understand where those rules come from. On the surface, it might look like a simple matter of “willpower” or “discipline,” but rigidity almost always has deeper roots. 

When you can name and normalise those roots, you reduce shame, and you give both you and your client a clearer map for change.

Let’s start with the psychological drivers. 

Many clients bring perfectionist tendencies into their nutrition. If they can’t do something 100 percent, they’d rather not try at all. For others, rigidity is about controlling anxiety. When life feels unpredictable, food rules offer a sense of order. Some clients struggle with uncertainty in general. The ambiguity of “eat mostly whole foods” feels terrifying compared to “never eat sugar.” And then there’s identity. Food becomes a way to signal who they are: disciplined, healthy, strong, pure. 

These rules serve a function, and they’re not random quirks. Your job is to recognise the purpose the rule is playing, so you can eventually help the client find a healthier way to meet the same need.

Layered on top of individual psychology is the cultural environment we all live in. Modern diet culture moralises food constantly. “Good” foods, “bad” foods, “clean” eating, “cheat meals.” Social media floods clients with extremes. The shredded influencer who eats nothing but chicken and broccoli, the wellness guru who demonises gluten and dairy, the “biohacker” selling the latest fasting or elimination protocol. These narratives can easily harden into rules. If a client’s feed tells them daily that carbs are toxic or that skipping breakfast makes you weak, it’s no wonder their relationship with food becomes rigid.

Neurodiversity adds another dimension. Clients with ADHD often swing between extremes of hyper-focused tracking and complete disinterest, all-or-nothing dietary experiments that don’t stick. Those on the autism spectrum may find comfort in sameness and predictability, which can express itself as eating the same foods day after day or resisting changes to familiar routines. None of this is pathology, it’s simply how their brains work. As a coach, understanding these patterns helps you frame flexibility as a skill that can be trained gradually, without pathologising their needs for order or consistency.

Sport and physique goals can also fuel rigidity. Athletes in weight-class or leanness-based sports live under real pressures to make the weigh-in, stay photo-ready, or risk losing their competitive edge. Competition timelines make rules feel non-negotiable, and coaches sometimes reinforce this culture of precision. The same goes for bodybuilders or physique-focused clients, where structure is necessary during prep phases, but it can bleed into off-season life if not handled carefully. Helping these clients means teaching them when structure serves performance, and when it starts to backfire.

Medical contexts complicate the picture further. Some rules are entirely legitimate. Coeliac disease really does require strict gluten avoidance, and people with severe allergies have life-or-death reasons to avoid certain foods. Diabetes, GI protocols, and other conditions also bring necessary guardrails. But often, clients overgeneralize these rules. Someone who once felt bloated after a big bowl of pasta may swear off carbs/gluten altogether. As a coach, it’s important to respect genuine medical needs while gently challenging unnecessary over-restriction.

Then there are the logistics of life. Budget, culture, religion, and family norms all shape food choices. A shift worker with unpredictable hours, a parent feeding three kids on a tight budget, or someone travelling weekly for work isn’t just choosing food in a vacuum, they’re navigating real constraints. Rules sometimes develop as coping mechanisms to simplify decision-making in these messy contexts. When you understand the logistical pressures, you can help clients design more flexible, realistic strategies that fit their actual lives.

If we zoom even further out, we see the evolutionary mismatch. Humans evolved as opportunistic omnivores, built for variety and flexibility. Our ancestors thrived by eating what was available, shifting between plants and animals, feasting when food was abundant and fasting when it wasn’t. But in today’s world of constant abundance and social status signalling, that natural variability often gets distorted into rigid “rules.” What should be an adaptive trait (flexibility) gets squeezed out by modern pressures to control, optimise, and perform.

Finally, there’s an existential layer that often goes unnamed. Philosophers like Sartre and Kierkegaard noted that freedom itself can provoke anxiety. Too many options can feel overwhelming. However, rigid rules offer escape from the burden of choice. “I don’t eat sugar” feels safer than “I can choose how much sugar to eat and when.” When you can help a client see this dynamic and actually name the fear of freedom itself, you take away some of the shame. Their rules aren’t evidence of weakness, they’re just an attempt to manage the uncertainty of being human.

When you understand these multiple roots, you stop seeing rigidity as stubbornness or resistance. Instead, you see it as a coping strategy with a history, a purpose, and a cost. That shift in perspective is what allows you, as a coach, to work with empathy, patience, and precision.

Assessment: Spotting Rigidity Early 

The best time to catch food rigidity is before it takes root, or at least before it’s caused real harm. That means learning to spot it early, and without turning an intake session into an interrogation. Think of yourself less as a detective trying to catch someone out, and more as a curious guide who wants to understand how your client’s rules actually work.

The first tool is simple conversation. Early on, I’ll ask a client, “Walk me through a usual day of eating. What feels like a ‘good’ day for you? What about a ‘bad’ one?” The language they use in response is often revealing. Someone who describes a “bad day” as anything outside of exactly hitting their calories and macros, or a “good day” as perfect compliance with no flexibility, is telling you a lot about how tightly they’re gripping the reins.

Another gentle but powerful question is, “Which foods feel off-limits? And if you were to eat them, what do you imagine would happen?” You’ll often hear predictions of disaster: “I’d lose all control,” “I’d blow my progress,” “I’d feel disgusting.” These predictions aren’t reality, they’re mental models the client has built. Naming them brings them into the open, where you can eventually test them in safe, graded ways.

I’ll also ask about self-talk: “What do you say to yourself after an unplanned meal?” If the answer is filled with shame, self-criticism, or catastrophic language, rigidity is likely in play. And one of my favourites is the anxiety scale: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how anxious do you feel when plans change around food?” A client who scores high here is telling you they’re clinging to rules as a way to manage uncertainty.

From there, I like to map things out using what I call a Food Rules Inventory. It’s straightforward: write down the rule, the trigger for the rule, the function it serves (“reduces anxiety,” “signals discipline,” “keeps me safe”), the cost it imposes, and then brainstorm one tiny test. For example:

• Rule: No carbs after 6 p.m.
• Trigger: Dinner out or late training session
• Function: Signals discipline
• Cost: Missed social meals, poor recovery
• Tiny test: Add a small portion of carbs after one late workout and notice recovery and anxiety

When you see it written down, the trade-offs become clearer for the client and for you. We will flesh this out a bit more later on. 

Beyond explicit rules, you’ll want to listen for rigidity indicators. Black-and-white language (“never,” “always”), micro-tracking every bite, avoiding social meals, panicking over restaurant menus, etc., these are all early warning signs. They don’t mean the client has a clinical disorder, but they do tell you that flexibility is underdeveloped.

Sometimes, though, what you uncover suggests something more serious. For example, you may uncover patterns of secretive eating, purging behaviours, and many more deeper psychological issues. When that happens, the right move is to pause the pursuit of performance or body composition goals and coordinate care with the appropriate professional. You don’t need to diagnose (and shouldn’t). You just need to recognise when you’re outside your lane and bring in help.

Assessment isn’t about labelling a client as “rigid” or “flexible.” It’s about shining a gentle light on how their current system works, what it’s costing them, and where there’s room to safely experiment. Done well, it’s the first step toward helping them build a way of eating that’s durable, resilient, and freeing.

Coaching Framework: Assess → Align → Adjust

When you’re working with clients who lean on rigid food rules, it’s tempting to want to tear the rules down. But smashing rules rarely works. In fact, it usually backfires. Rules serve a purpose. They keep discomfort at bay, reduce uncertainty, and give clients a sense of control. If you rip them away, you strip away safety without offering anything in its place. A better approach is to treat rigidity as something to work with, not against.

That’s where the framework of Assess → Align → Adjust comes in. It’s a simple structure you can use to help clients move from brittle rules to flexible habits in a way that feels safe, gradual, and sustainable.

The first step is Assess. Here you want to clarify the rule, its story, and the “job” it’s doing. Every rule has a backstory of where it came from, what it promises, and what it protects against. A client might say, “I don’t eat carbs after 6 p.m.” Instead of arguing, you ask: “Where did that idea come from?” and “What does following that rule do for you?” Maybe the answer is, “It makes me feel disciplined.” Or, “I used to binge at night, and this helps me feel safe.” Once you understand the job the rule is hired to do, you can respect its function, even if the form isn’t serving them anymore.

Next comes Align. This is where you link choices to values. Clients rarely want rigidity for its own sake, they want what it represents: health, performance, confidence, connection, etc. 

If a client values being present at family meals, but their rule forces them to skip dinner with their kids, there’s a misalignment. If they want to compete well but their rule leaves them under-fueled for training, again, misalignment. Your job is to gently surface those tensions and help the client see that flexibility may serve their values better than rigidity does.

Finally, we Adjust. This is where change happens, but it must be done slowly, safely, and in tiny steps. Instead of demanding they drop the rule, you frame it as an experiment. “We’re not smashing your rules; we’re testing them.” The goal is to introduce small, graded deviations that allow the client to discover through lived experience that nothing catastrophic happens when they bend. Maybe it’s a 5% tweak: adding a spoonful of rice to a post-training meal after 6 p.m., or allowing a small “fear food” in a low-stakes setting. Each tiny test builds tolerance, confidence, and ultimately flexibility.

To make this process concrete, I use a set of tools that help clients move from rigidity to resilience. They’re simple on the surface, but in practice, they open up powerful conversations and unlock small but lasting changes.

The Rule Job Interview

Think of every rigid food rule as an employee. It’s been “hired” by the client to do a specific job. If you want to change the rule, you first need to understand its role.

When a client says, “I never eat carbs at night,” resist the urge to debate the science. Instead, interview the rule. Ask:

• “What job is this rule doing for you?”
• “What problem does it solve?”
• “What discomfort does it prevent?”

You might hear, “It helps me feel disciplined,” or “I used to overeat at night, and this rule keeps me safe.” Once the function is clear, you can respect it, even if the form (the rigid rule itself) is costing them. Then you can suggest: “Let’s see if there’s a different way to do that same job, without the side effects.”

This reframes the rule from an enemy to a tool, and tools can be updated.

The Control Dial

Rigidity often feels like an all-or-nothing switch: either total control or total chaos. The Control Dial helps clients see that control is not binary, it’s a spectrum.

Ask your client, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how tightly do you feel you need to control your eating right now?” If they say “8,” you don’t push them to a “2.” Instead, you explore what “7.5” might look like.

Maybe that means allowing themselves to choose from three dinner options instead of one, or practising eating without weighing every single ingredient. These are half-step loosens, tiny enough to feel safe, but noticeable enough to practice flexibility. Over time, clients learn that they can dial control up or down as needed, rather than living at the extremes.

The 5% Rule-Bend

Change doesn’t have to be radical to be effective. In fact, with rigid clients, small is almost always better. That’s where the 5% Rule-Bend comes in.

Here’s how you might frame it: “We’re not asking you to abandon the rule completely. We’re just going to bend it 5 percent and see what happens.”

If the rule is “no carbs after 6 p.m.,” the bend might be adding half a cup of rice to a post-training dinner. If the rule is “I never eat dessert,” the bend might be sharing one bite of cake at a family celebration. The point isn’t the food itself, it’s the exposure. The client gets to experience reality not matching their catastrophic prediction. Nothing terrible happens. Anxiety drops. The brain updates its model. That’s progress.

Over time, 5 percent bends accumulate into a flexible mindset that can handle change and surprise.

The Golden-Mean Check

Aristotle taught that virtue lies in the middle, not at the extremes. The Golden-Mean Check brings that philosophy into coaching.

When a client is facing a decision, ask: “Is this choice at an extreme, or is it somewhere in the middle?”

Take the client who eats nothing but boiled chicken and broccoli. On one extreme is ascetic rigidity; on the other is reckless indulgence. The middle path might be grilled chicken with a side of vegetables and a small serving of rice or a sauce they enjoy. Not rigid, not chaotic, more balanced.

This tool is especially useful for clients who only see food decisions as black or white, good or bad. It gives them a new lens: choices can be graded, not absolute. 

When you combine these tools, the process feels collaborative rather than confrontational. You’re not dismantling a client’s safety net overnight, you’re showing them, step by step, that their rules can bend without breaking. We have a few more tools at our disposal, but these are my usual got to ones to start.

In summary, first you assess what the rule is and what job it’s doing. Then you align food choices with the client’s deeper values (health, connection, performance, family, etc). Finally, you adjust with small, graded experiments using tools like the Control Dial, 5% Rule-Bend, or Golden-Mean Check.

Over time, clients stop seeing flexibility as failure and start experiencing it as strength. And that’s the essence of world-class coaching where you create resilient eaters who can adapt, adjust, and thrive, no matter what life throws at them.

Core Mindset Skills

If you want to help clients with rigid thinking around food, you can’t just work at the level of meal plans and macros. You need to give them mindset skills, and the inner tools to handle uncertainty, soften unhelpful thoughts, and keep moving when life doesn’t fit the plan. These are coachable skills. When you teach them, you’ll see clients start to relax, adapt, and succeed in ways they never thought possible.

Let’s start with cognitive distortions. Rigid clients often fall into familiar thinking traps: all-or-nothing (“I missed my target, so I failed”), overgeneralising (“I messed up today, so I’ll never get this”), catastrophising (“If I eat dessert, my progress is ruined”), or moral labelling (“I was bad yesterday”). These thoughts feel real, but they’re distortions. Mental shortcuts, not truths.

Your move as a coach is reflective labelling. When a client says, “I was bad because I had pizza,” you can respond: “Sounds like some all-or-nothing thinking popped up there.” You’re not arguing with them or dismissing their feelings, you’re shining a light on the distortion so they can see it for what it is. Over time, clients learn to catch these distortions themselves, and that awareness opens the door to new, more flexible responses.

Another set of tools comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which offers skills that are surprisingly coach-friendly and scope-appropriate. For example:

• Values clarification. Help clients articulate why flexibility matters. Is it health, performance, family meals, or cultural participation? Anchoring choices to values gives them a reason to practice flexibility beyond “because my coach said so.”
• Defusion. Teach clients to step back from rigid thoughts rather than fusing with them. “Ah, I notice the clean-police voice is here again” creates distance, turning a thought into something they can observe instead of obey.
• Willingness and urge surfing. Instead of fighting cravings or anxiety, clients can learn to ride them out, noticing the rise and fall like a wave.
• Paced breathing. A simple, physiological tool that reduces anxiety when rules feel threatened. Calm the body, calm the mind.

Layer onto this the principles of Self-Determination Theory. Humans thrive when they feel three things: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. As a coach, you can support autonomy by giving clients choices (“You decide which experiment feels safest”), competence by designing winnable reps (a 5% rule-bend, not a leap off a cliff), and relatedness by encouraging social eating experiences where they feel supported rather than isolated. Flexibility isn’t just a mental exercise, it’s about belonging, mastery, and ownership.

Don’t underestimate the power of self-compassion scripts, either. Rigid clients tend to beat themselves up when they break a rule. You can model a different voice: “Of course, that was hard, new skills are always hard. These are learning reps, not tests.” It reframes “failure” as practice. Over time, clients internalise that kinder narrative, which lowers the stakes and makes flexibility less threatening.

For clients who appreciate a more philosophical approach, Stoicism offers another mindset anchor: focus on what’s in your control, accept what isn’t. You can control what, when, and how you eat. You can’t control whether the restaurant changes its menu or whether your flight is delayed. That distinction helps clients stop wasting energy fighting the uncontrollable and redirect it toward choices they can make in the moment.

And finally, from economics, we have Goodhart’s Law. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. For clients, this shows up when hitting 150 grams of protein becomes more important than how they feel or perform. Suddenly, the metric, not the end goal, is running the show. You can help by shifting them to ranges (“130-160g”) and thresholds (“a palm of protein at each of your 3 meal”) instead of exactness. This reduces obsession and keeps measures useful without turning them into traps.

Together, these mindset skills give clients the mental flexibility to match the nutritional flexibility you’re coaching. They stop fearing change and start seeing it as a skill they can train. That allows food to stop being a source of anxiety and starts being fuel for both body and life.

Behaviour Design: From Rules to Guardrails

Once you’ve helped a client soften rigid thinking, the next step is designing behaviours that feel stable without becoming cages. Think of it as building guardrails, not prison bars. The goal is to provide enough structure that clients feel anchored, while still leaving room for life’s inevitable detours.

A great starting point is meal structure without rigidity. Instead of strict schedules or calorie targets, I’ll often encourage clients to establish three to four “anchors” per day. These are regular eating moments that keep energy and recovery steady. Within those anchors, we can use a simple plate method like we teach on our nutrition course. This formula reduces decision fatigue while allowing endless variety. It’s predictable, not prescriptive.

From there, we expand into flexible templates. Clients can build a short list of default breakfasts, good-better-best options for snacks, or batch-cook modules that can be combined in different ways throughout the week. The point isn’t perfection here, it’s adaptability.

Fear foods require a different approach. Here, I use an exposure hierarchy. Together with the client, we create a five-step ladder that starts with the least threatening version of the food and gradually moves toward the scariest version. If the fear food is pizza, step one might be just imagining eating a slice of pizza, step two could be eating a small slice with a supportive friend, and step five might be enjoying pizza at a party without measuring or compensating. Each exposure is paired with coping skills (like paced breathing) and a short debrief: “What did you expect would happen? What actually happened?” Over time, anxiety drops, and the food loses its power. This can seem a bit extreme, and you may feel like they should just “get over it”, but you need to realise that this is just a process to help them get over it. You are building the ladder for them to get over it. You just need to create a ladder that they can actually use. 

Planned flexibility is another cornerstone. Some coaches like to introduce the idea of Flex Tokens. These are one to three intentional, guilt-free choices per week. A birthday dinner, a date night, or simply the chance to order dessert because it looks good. Framed this way, flexibility isn’t a slip, it’s part of the plan. I personally don’t do this exact method, but I know many coaches have success with this. The reason I don’t do it is two fold. Firstly, I find it can lead some clients to developing the mentality of “cheat meals”, which comes with its own issues. Secondly, I prefer to have more of a dimmer switch approach, and I find this method can lead people to thinking they are either on track or off track, even if that is part of the plan. 

Instead, I like to use, If-Then plans. These help clients handle curveballs: “If my usual isn’t available, then I’ll pick a protein-centred meal and enjoy dessert if I want.” I find this strategy much more effective at preventing panic when life strays from the template. You also never run out of tokens, and develop a mindset of always trying to make better choices, rather than thinking about how to spend your tokens.

Environmental design is also a powerful tool here. Instead of banning foods, help clients right-size their environment. Keep bridge foods (like mixed nuts or protein shakes) easily accessible. Put fruit and protein in plain sight. Store high-trigger foods out of immediate reach, not forbidden, but not front and centre either. This isn’t about control through restriction; it’s about making the easy choice the likely choice. I have discussed before about how I live right beside a McDonalds, and this definitely has an impact on my dietary choices. If I was to just rely on motivation and will power, I would likely not be successful in navigating this. However, making healthy food choices just as easy as the McDonalds, makes it much more likely that I will actually stick to my diet.

The metaphors you use matter, too. When clients hear “rules,” they think of rigidity. So I talk about guardrails, because they are structures that keep you on track without boxing you in. Or I frame strict rules as training wheels, as the rules can be helpful at first, but they are meant to come off once balance is developed. These metaphors give clients a different story to tell themselves about why structure exists and how it evolves.

Finally, it’s important to remember the principle of diminishing returns. The more you chase precision beyond a certain point, the less benefit you actually gain, and often, the more stress you create. Nutrition is no different. Tracking calories may be useful for awareness at first, but trying to nail exact macros to the gram forever usually backfires. Past a certain threshold, more precision produces less progress. Teaching clients to recognise that turning point saves them from chasing diminishing returns.

When you build behaviours this way, you create systems that are both stable and flexible. Clients stop living inside cages and start navigating with confidence, and that is what creates long-term resilience.

Tracking Without Obsession

Now, many of you may use calorie and macro tracking in your coaching, and wonder how that fits in here. Well, tracking is one of those double-edged swords. On the one hand, it can be an incredible tool. It can be wonderful for bringing clarity, awareness, and a sense of control. On the other hand, for many clients, it becomes a trap. They slip into micromanaging, perfectionism, and guilt the moment a number isn’t hit exactly. You’ve probably seen the client who basically nails their macros to the gram, but feels like a failure if they’re off by five calories. Or the one who obsessively logs every bite, only to spiral when life makes that impossible.

So we don’t want to throw tracking out entirely, but we do need to use it wisely. I like to think of tracking as scaffolding. It gives stability while a client is learning to build flexibility. The goal is to avoid both extremes: not rigid obsession, but not total chaos either.

Now, when it comes to calorie and macro tracking specifically, it helps to remember that the tool itself isn’t “good” or “bad.” What matters is the relationship the client has with it. For some, logging macros brings awareness to protein gaps or portion sizes they never noticed before. For others, it becomes a cage and their whole day judged by the app’s red and green numbers.

As a coach, you need to assess where the client is on that spectrum. A beginner who’s never tracked before may benefit from a short, time-boxed phase of macro tracking to build awareness, with a clear off-ramp into looser systems. A client who already shows obsessive patterns may need the opposite: moving away from the app and toward broader anchors, plate visuals, or hand portions. In both cases, your job is to frame tracking as a temporary scaffold, not a lifelong requirement.

One strategy I like is using “macro buckets” instead of exact targets. Instead of, “You need 150g protein, 200g carbs, 65g fat,” you might set:

• Protein: 130-160g
• Carbs: 150-220g
• Fat: 50-75g

The ranges make the numbers functional without creating the illusion of precision. Clients get the benefits of awareness and intentionality, but with breathing room built in.

Another adjustment is to track patterns instead of points. For instance:

• Did you include protein at each meal?
• Did you have at least 2 servings of veg?
• Did your meals follow the “protein + veg + carb” template? (or whatever meal template you are using)

This keeps the focus on behaviours (within their control) rather than outcomes (numbers that fluctuate for many reasons).

The same philosophy applies to other metrics. Body weight, step counts, sleep hours, HRV, even CGM data. All of these can be useful or harmful depending on how they’re framed. A client who weighs in daily might panic at normal fluctuations, forgetting that water retention and glycogen shifts can swing a scale by 2-3 pounds. Your move as a coach is to zoom them out and highlight the trend over time and remind them that no single data point carries moral weight.

This is where a layer of Stoicism adds real power. Numbers are outcomes; actions are choices. Clients can’t fully control whether their scale drops this week or whether their sleep tracker shows 7.2 versus 7.8 hours. What they can control is going to bed at a consistent time, including protein at each meal, taking a walk at lunch. Anchoring them to what’s controllable not only reduces anxiety, it also re-establishes agency. It shifts the measure back to being a guide, rather than a judge.

So when you’re deciding whether and how to use tracking with a rigid client, ask yourself:

• Is this tool creating clarity or anxiety?
• Is the client using data to learn or to self-punish?
• Does the measure highlight behaviour change or has it become an identity test?

If it’s the latter, it’s time to pivot to ranges, thresholds, narratives, or simplified templates.

The bigger principle is that tracking is not about creating perfect numbers. It’s about building awareness, practicing flexibility, and reinforcing the actions that actually drive health and performance. Use it as scaffolding, not as a cage. Teach clients to treat numbers as feedback, not morality. 

You may find that the best way to start most clients who are dealing with rigid thinking around food, is with low-friction metrics. Instead of dozens of numbers, track the essentials: Did you hit your three to four anchors today, yes or no? Did you get enough protein and fruits or vegetables? How was sleep? How was stress? These binary or broad-stroke metrics keep attention on the big rocks without overwhelming the client. They’re easy to measure, and easy to recover from if missed.

Another powerful tool I like is the Flexibility Score. This is a simple 1-5 weekly rating system based on five questions:

1. How anxious did you feel when food plans changed?
2. How often could you pick a “good-enough” option instead of needing the perfect one?
3. How was your self-talk after a deviation from the plan?
4. How comfortable did you feel at social meals?
5. Were you willing to try a fear food, even in a small way?

When clients track this over weeks, you can celebrate upward trends, even just a +1. It reframes progress from being purely about body composition or performance to being about psychological flexibility, which is just as important.

Another coaching principle here is trend over micromanagement. Encourage clients to look at weekly averages, not daily perfection. Missing one anchor doesn’t matter if they hit most across the week. One poor night of sleep isn’t catastrophic if the week averaged out well. This perspective reduces anxiety and prevents the “I blew it” spiral.

And remember, when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure (Goodhart’s Law). This principle is crucial for coaches to understand, because many clients slip into exactly this trap.

Take protein intake. A measure like “150 grams of protein per day” is meant to guide behaviour. But once it becomes the target, the only thing that matters, clients lose sight of why they’re tracking protein in the first place. Suddenly, the difference between 148g and 150g feels like success versus failure. That single number looms so large that it outweighs everything else: enjoying food, feeling satisfied, recovering well from training, or sharing a meal with family. The measure stops being a tool and starts being a master. 

This doesn’t just happen with protein. It can happen with body weight, calorie counts, daily steps, sleep hours, or even HRV scores. The moment the number itself becomes the goal, the client starts gaming the system. Hitting the metric while missing the point. A client might down a late-night shake just to “get their protein up,” even though they’re not hungry, it disrupts sleep, and it adds unnecessary stress. On paper, the data looks perfect. In real life, it’s fragile.

The antidote is to replace rigid single-point targets with ranges and thresholds. Instead of “150g protein daily,” aim for “130-160g most days.” Instead of “8 hours of sleep,” look for “7-9 hours on average.” Instead of “hit 10,000 steps,” try “somewhere between 7,000–12,000, depending on the day.” Ranges give clients permission to live like humans, not robots. They preserve the usefulness of the measure without creating obsession.

It also helps to regularly re-ask the key coaching question: “What’s the job this measure is supposed to do?” If the job is to support recovery and strength, and your client is hitting PRs, feeling energised, and recovering well at 120g of protein, then 150g is arbitrary. If the job of step counts is to reduce sedentary time, then hitting 8,000 comfortably every day may be better than 10,000 with anxiety and resentment.

As a coach, you want to train clients to keep the purpose of tracking front and center. Remind them that measures are guideposts, not tests of morality. Numbers are there to direct effort, not define identity. When clients learn to treat data as feedback instead of judgment, they can use tracking flexibly, and that’s when it becomes sustainable.

The bottom line is that tracking isn’t the enemy, and neither is flexibility. The skill is knowing how to design tracking systems that stabilise without suffocating, and how to step away when the tool starts doing more harm than good. Teach your clients that data is there to guide, not to judge. When you can help them use tracking as a flexible support rather than a rigid cage, you’ve given them one of the most powerful tools for long-term success.

Coach Tools & Worksheets

Now, one of the things that separates good coaches from great ones is having a toolbox of simple, repeatable resources you can pull out at the right moment. Clients love concrete frameworks. They give shape to abstract ideas and help people translate “coaching conversations” into everyday action. Below are some of the core tools I’ve developed and used over the years. Worksheets, templates, and quick-hitters that bring flexibility training to life.

The Food Rules Inventory

This is usually my starting point because it takes the invisible and makes it visible. Clients often carry rules in their head that feel like “truths” rather than choices: “I can’t eat after 6 p.m.” or “Bread makes me fat.” Left unspoken, those rules are hard to coach. On paper, though, they lose some of their power and become things we can work with.

The worksheet has five rows:

1. Rule: the exact wording of the belief.
2. Trigger: when or why it gets activated.
3. Function: what the rule does for them (reduces anxiety, signals discipline, simplifies decisions).
4. Cost: what the rule takes away (social meals, recovery, energy, joy).
5. Tiny Test: a safe, graded experiment to challenge the rule without smashing it.

For example:

• Rule: No carbs after 6 p.m.
• Trigger: Dinner out, late training session
• Function: Reduces fear of weight gain, signals discipline
• Cost: Missed dinners with family, poor workout recovery, hunger at night
• Tiny Test: Add half a cup of rice after one late workout, reflect on what actually happens

This structure normalises the rule (“it has a function”) but also shows the client that it’s costing them something. The test gives them a way to experiment without fear.

The Exposure Ladder

Fear foods can feel overwhelming if tackled head-on. The Exposure Ladder breaks the process down into a staircase. Five levels from least threatening to most. The client chooses one food (pizza, chocolate, bread), then, with your guidance, maps exposures from easiest to hardest.

For example, if the fear food is pizza:

1. Look at a photo of pizza.
2. Sit at a table while someone else eats pizza.
3. Eat half a slice at home with a supportive friend.
4. Eat one slice in a restaurant with coping strategies.
5. Eat pizza at a party, two slices, without compensation behaviours.

Each step includes a coping plan (paced breathing, grounding, self-talk) and a SUDS rating (Subjective Units of Distress), 0-10, before and after. Over repeated exposures, the numbers drop, showing the brain that the feared outcome doesn’t materialise. That’s neuroplasticity in action.

Restaurant Strategy Card

Restaurants are often landmines for rigid clients: too many options, too little control, too much fear of deviation. The Restaurant Strategy Card simplifies this into a three-step script:

1. Look ahead: scan the menu online before you go.
2. Pick a combo: protein + veg + pleasure.
3. Order early and close the menu: reduce last-minute anxiety and comparison.

Example: If the menu has chicken, fries, and salad, the “combo” could be grilled chicken (protein), salad (veg), and share some fries (pleasure). It’s flexible, realistic, and avoids the spiral of indecision.

Self-Talk Reframe Sheet

Rigid rules live in self-talk: “I was bad,” “I failed,” “I blew it.” The Self-Talk Reframe Sheet helps clients slow that process down. It’s a four-column exercise:

1. Thought: what they told themselves.
2. Emotion: how it made them feel (guilt, shame, anxiety).
3. Reframe: a more flexible, compassionate version.
4. Action: what they’ll do next.

For example:

• Thought: “I was bad because I ate dessert.”
• Emotion: Shame
• Reframe: “Dessert was one choice in one meal. It doesn’t erase my progress.”
• Action: Go for a walk, return to regular anchors at the next meal.

Thoughts are just thoughts, they don’t have to dictate behaviour.

Weekly Debrief

Rigidity thrives on pass/fail thinking. The Weekly Debrief reframes progress as an ongoing practice. Clients answer three prompts:

• Wins: what went well this week?
• Lessons: what did I learn from challenges?
• Next Tiny Test: what small experiment will I try next?

This turns every week into a training session for flexibility. Instead of “I failed” or “I succeeded,” the focus shifts to “I practised, I learned, I’ll try again.”

Flexibility Score Tracker

Some clients need numbers, as they want to see progress. The Flexibility Score Tracker quantifies psychological flexibility on a scale of 1-5, across five domains:

1. Anxiety when plans change
2. Ability to pick “good-enough” options
3. Self-talk after deviations
4. Comfort at social meals
5. Willingness to try a fear food

Each week, the client scores themselves, and you plot a simple graph. Even a +1 shift (“I felt less anxious at dinner this week”) is a huge win. Over time, the upward trend provides reinforcement that flexibility is a skill being built, just like strength in the gym.

The Golden-Mean Checker

This is one of the simplest yet most powerful reframing tools. Clients who think rigidly often see choices in extremes: either hyper-disciplined (“clean eating only”) or completely loose (“blowout cheat weekend”). The Golden-Mean Checker cuts through this by asking one question:

“Is this choice an extreme, or is it closer to the middle?”

For example, imagine a client saying: “I’ll either skip dinner because I went over my calories, or I’ll just say screw it and order a pizza and dessert.” You might reflect: “Okay, one extreme is skipping dinner, the other is overeating out of guilt. What would the middle way look like?” Suddenly, options open up. Maybe a balanced plate with some pizza, salad, and water.

The power of this tool is that it reframes flexibility as balance, not as weakness. It teaches clients that sustainability almost always lives in the middle zone.

The Opportunity Cost Ledger

Rigid rules don’t just provide control, they also carry hidden costs. The Opportunity Cost Ledger makes those costs visible. On a simple worksheet, have the client create two columns:

• What this rule gives me (e.g. safety, clarity, sense of control).
• What this rule costs me (e.g. missed family meals, low energy, social isolation, stress).

For example:

• Rule: No carbs after 6 p.m.
• Gives: “I feel disciplined,” “I feel safe from overeating.”
• Costs: “I can’t eat dinner with my kids,” “I feel under-fueled for training,” “I wake up hungry at night.”

When clients see this written down, the imbalance often speaks for itself. Your coaching move is to validate what the rule gives, then ask: “Is there a way to get those benefits without paying so high a price?” That’s where experiments come in.

The Control Dial

The Control Dial teaches clients that control is not all-or-nothing. It’s a continuum.

Here’s how you use it: before a meal, ask your client to rate, on a scale of 0 to 10, how tightly they feel the need to control their eating. After the meal, ask again. Over time, clients learn that they can dial control up or down depending on the context, rather than living at 0 or 10.

Example: A client about to attend a business dinner might say, “I feel like I need a 9 out of 10 level of control.” Together, you could explore what a 7.5 might look like. Maybe something like ordering a protein-based main, but also allowing a shared dessert. Afterwards, debrief: did loosening the dial actually cause chaos, or did it work? Most of the time, clients discover they can tolerate a little less control than they thought.

The Plan-B Plate Template

Rigid clients panic when their planned food isn’t available. The Plan-B Plate Template is a fallback strategy that removes the need for perfection.

Teach them this formula: Protein + Veg + One Pleasure Item.

For example, if their planned chicken-and-rice dinner isn’t available while travelling, they might instead choose salmon (protein), a side salad (veg), and fries (pleasure). It’s not “off-plan”, it is the plan.

The beauty of the Plan-B Plate is that it creates instant flexibility without requiring calorie math or rigid substitutions. It’s easy to remember, works in restaurants, airports, and homes, and helps clients feel capable rather than lost when plans change.

The Next Bite Pivot Card

Perhaps the simplest tool of all, but also the one that has saved countless clients from spirals. Many rigid eaters believe once they’ve “messed up,” the whole day, or even the whole week, is ruined. The Next Bite Pivot Card disrupts that story.

On a small card (or as a phone note), write:

“You are never actually off track. You can pivot on the very next bite.”

Then give examples: if the client overeats at lunch, the pivot isn’t to skip dinner or wait until Monday. The pivot is simply: “Okay, next bite is back to balance.” It reframes food choices as a long sequence of opportunities, not a test where one mistake fails the whole exam.

Over time, clients internalise this principle. Instead of spiralling after “mistakes,” they practice bouncing back immediately. 

Bringing It Together

These tools work best as in-the-moment coaching supports. You don’t need to use all of them with every client. Pick the one that fits the situation: Golden-Mean Checker when they’re stuck in extremes, Opportunity Cost Ledger when a rule feels too costly, Control Dial when they need to soften perfection, Plan-B Plate when travel or surprises throw them off, and Next Bite Pivot when they feel like they’ve blown it.

Think of them as tools in your coaching toolkit. Each tool transforms something abstract into something concrete. They turn vague anxieties into patterns you can name, test, and track. They also give the client tangible wins to hold onto when the old rules start whispering again. They are like mini training wheels. Each one helps the client stay upright long enough to develop balance on their own.

Communication Playbook: Scripts You Can Use

All the tools in the world won’t matter if you can’t communicate them with empathy and clarity. For many clients, food is loaded with identity, morality, and fear. That means conversations can feel tender or even threatening. As a coach, your words become the bridge between their rigid rules and a more flexible future. The key is to speak in ways that de-moralise food, surface paradoxes gently, and invite clients into curiosity rather than confrontation.

Let’s start with opening tough conversations. Imagine a client says, “I was bad this weekend, and I had pizza.” You might respond:

“I hear that you’re feeling like pizza equals ‘bad.’ Can we explore that together? Because food isn’t moral. Eating pizza isn’t a sin. It’s just food. What matters is how it fits into your goals and your values.”

This kind of de-moralising language helps clients separate their worth from their food choices, which is a foundational step in breaking rigidity.

However, sometimes you’ll face pushback. A client insists, “But if I let myself relax, I’ll lose all control.” Instead of debating, reflect their paradox back to them:

“It makes sense that holding tight feels safe. But let’s look at the pattern together: the tighter we grip control, the more it seems to slip. What if loosening just a little, let’s say 5 percent, actually made being feeling in control easier?”

This isn’t persuasion through force, it’s guiding them to see a truth that’s already in their lived experience.

When you need to encourage flexibility, lean on Socratic questioning. Ask, “What evidence would convince you that a 5 percent relaxation is actually safe?” This shifts the client from defending their rule to imagining what proof would change their mind. You can then design an experiment that generates that proof in a safe, contained way.

Practical situations like restaurants are also prime testing grounds for communication. A client says, “I can’t handle eating out, it ruins everything.” You might offer a script:

“Here’s an experiment we can try: Look at the menu ahead of time, pick a protein + veg + pleasure option, order it early so you’re not swayed by last-minute anxiety, and then close the menu. That way you still get structure, but with more flexibility.”

Scripts like these give clients a template for real-world action when their own words fail them.

Finally, remember the power of identity language. Rigid rules often feel like part of who a client is, “I’m disciplined,” “I’m someone who eats clean,” “I’m an athlete.” Instead of trying to strip that away, expand their identity. You might say:

“You’re a data-driven athlete who cares about performance, and you’re also a connected friend who values your team. How does dinner with the team serve both parts of your identity?”

When clients see that flexibility actually strengthens their sense of self rather than threatening it, change becomes much less scary.

The throughline in all of this is that you must communicate with curiosity, not confrontation. Done well, your words don’t just coach behaviour, they actually reframe how clients see themselves in relation to food.

Step-By-Step Program (~12 Weeks)

At this point, you’ve seen the philosophy, the tools, and the mindset skills that will help you to deal with clients with rigid thinking around food. But coaches also need structure, and something you can hold in your hand and adapt to the person in front of you. What follows is a 12-week framework. It’s not a rigid prescription (remember, we’re not replacing old cages with new ones). Instead, think of it as a scaffolding. It’s a loose template that helps clients move systematically from rigidity to resilience.

Weeks 1-2: Stabilise the Foundations

In the first phase, your priority isn’t flexibility, it’s stability. Clients often arrive either over-controlled or in chaos. Before you can loosen rules, you need an anchor. That means helping them set up three to four regular meals per day (anchors), locking in the basics of sleep and hydration, and using a simple plate template. You can potentially use calorie and macro tracking, but only if it is appropriate.

During this phase, introduce the Food Rules Inventory. Get the rules out of their head and onto paper. What’s the rule, what triggers it, what job does it do, what’s the cost? This step alone can be eye-opening. At the same time, establish a baseline with the Control Dial: ask how tightly they feel they need to control food (0-10) right now. It gives you a reference point to revisit later.

Weeks 3-4: Name the Patterns

Once the foundations are stable, it’s time to bring awareness to mental patterns. Teach clients to spot cognitive distortions: all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophising, moralising, etc. Reflect them back when they appear in conversation. Begin language upgrades such as swapping “I can’t eat X” for “I’m choosing eat X less often.”

Introduce their first 5% Rule-Bends. These are micro-deviations designed to test whether the world actually collapses when a rule is bent. Pair these with Golden-Mean Checks to reinforce the idea that virtue lies in the middle, not the extremes. By the end of this phase, the client should have at least one successful experience of bending without breaking.

Weeks 5-6: Exposure Lite

With trust built, you can move into gentle exposures. Help them build one or two fear-food ladders. Support them through at least two exposures in this window, and then run a prediction-error debrief: what did you expect would happen vs. what actually happened? Each mismatch rewires the brain toward flexibility.

Weeks 7-8: Social & Travel Skills

Many rigid rules crumble under real-life conditions: restaurants, airports, holidays. Now’s the time to practice. Build a restaurant blueprint (scan the menu ahead, choose protein + veg + pleasure, order early, then close the menu). Create a simple airport strategy (bring bridge snacks, hydrate, flexible meal template). Stock a hotel fridge plan (protein, fruit, one comfort item).

This is also the stage to introduce Flex Tokens and/or If-Then Plans. By practising flexibility intentionally, the client learns it’s not a failure, it’s a skill that can be developed.

Weeks 9-10: Performance Alignment

Here, the focus shifts to ensuring flexibility doesn’t mean under-fueling. Teach fueling windows around training, and draw a bold “red line” under chronic under-fueling risks. Introduce recovery meals as non-negotiables. This is also a good window to explore Metabolic ↔ Mental Flex drills, drawing parallels between how the body shifts between fuel sources (carbs, fats) and how the mind can shift between strategies. The metaphor lands powerfully with athletes and data-driven clients.

Weeks 11-12: Maintenance & Relapse Planning

In the final stretch, the goal is to future-proof progress. Help clients identify relapse triggers such as stressful events, travel, competition, and dieting attempts, and create pre-commitment plans for each. 

Revisit their values and assess whether their current strategies still aligned with what matters most. Set next-quarter goals that emphasise practice, not perfection.

Most importantly, plant the seed of an antifragile mindset. Rigid systems break under pressure; flexible ones bend. Antifragile systems actually grow stronger from disruption. Teach clients to see volatility not as a threat but as training: every curveball life throws is another rep in flexibility.

By the end of 12 weeks, your client has practised the full arc: from stability, to awareness, to gentle bending, to exposure, to social flexibility, to performance fueling, to relapse-proof resilience. And because the program is principle-based rather than rule-based, it can be adapted to almost anyone, from athletes to parents to professionals.

Now, of course, this is going to look different for everyone, and no plans survive contact with reality. But you should be able to get an idea of the process from this template. 

Special Populations & Contexts

Now, beyond this, it’s important to realise that not every client comes to you with the same background, pressures, or constraints. Some groups live in contexts where rigidity is reinforced, even rewarded. Others have genuine medical or cultural guardrails that need to be respected. As a coach, your job is to understand the context, honour the boundaries, and help clients find flexibility within their reality, not by denying it.

Take weight-class and endurance athletes. In the peak of competition season, structure isn’t optional, it’s essential. These athletes may need to hit very precise fueling windows, make weight for an event, or maintain leanness for performance. 

But the off-season is a different story. That’s the window to train dietary flexibility. They can do this by practising more relaxed meals, experimenting with social eating, and ensuring energy availability is restored. If they can only function under prep-level rigidity, burnout and underperformance are inevitable.

For strength and physique clients, the challenges look different. Many can dial in tightly during contest prep or training blocks, but it’s the “maintenance modes” (holidays, travel, the post-show rebound) where rigidity often unravels. Here, intentional dietary flexibility becomes crucial. Instead of “on” or “off,” the focus shifts to learning how to flex between phases without spiralling.

Older adults bring their own unique needs. Appetite often declines with age, so helping them spread protein evenly across meals matters more than obsessing over precision. Social meals also become vital, both for nutrition and for emotional health. A lonely eater may under-fuel simply because eating alone feels less appealing. Flexibility here may mean encouraging shared meals, even if the food isn’t “perfect.”

For clients who are vegetarian, vegan, kosher, halal, or otherwise eating within cultural or religious frameworks, the role of the coach is respect. These boundaries aren’t up for negotiation, they’re identity markers. Flexibility comes from broadening food variety within those constraints. This can take the form of experimenting with new plant proteins, rotating culturally appropriate staples, or making travel plans that honour both dietary needs and social inclusion.

Medical constraints are another area where guardrails matter. Clients with diabetes, coeliac disease, severe allergies, or GI issues may genuinely need certain restrictions. The mistake coaches make is either ignoring the restrictions or reinforcing them with unnecessary rigidity. The solution is partnership. You will most likely need to work alongside a registered dietitian or physician to ensure clients stay safe, while still finding flexibility where it’s possible. A coeliac client may not be able to eat gluten, but that doesn’t mean they can’t loosen rules around meal timing, portion size, or dining out with friends.

Finally, there’s the deeper layer of evolutionary psychology to think about here. Humans evolved under conditions of scarcity, where food was inconsistent and communal meals reinforced belonging. In today’s world of abundance, scarcity triggers can still be activated, and rigid restriction often leads to binge risk when the forbidden food finally becomes available. Diets also serve as in-group signals: the keto tribe, the clean-eating group, the fasting community. Clients may cling to rigid rules because those rules provide identity and social connection. Part of your work is to show them that flexibility doesn’t mean losing belonging. It can actually strengthen it, since shared meals and cultural participation are some of the oldest ways humans have bonded.

In every one of these contexts, the principle is the same. Flexibility doesn’t mean erasing boundaries. It means teaching clients how to live skillfully inside their unique boundaries, whether those are competitive, cultural, medical, or evolutionary. World-class coaching isn’t about creating one universal system. It’s about tailoring flexibility to fit the reality of the person in front of you.

Troubleshooting Guide 

Even with the best framework, clients will still struggle. Flexibility is a skill, and like any skill, progress isn’t linear. You’ll see breakthroughs followed by setbacks, confidence followed by doubt. That’s normal. Your job as a coach isn’t to prevent stalls and struggles, it’s to help clients move through them without spiralling back into old patterns. Here are some of the most common roadblocks you’ll face, and how to handle them.

One of the most familiar is the “I blew it; might as well keep going” spiral. A client has one unplanned meal, then writes off the entire day or week. This is where you pull out the Next Bite Pivot. Remind them: “You’re never off track. You can pivot on the very next bite.” Teach them to practice resetting immediately, rather than postponing until tomorrow or Monday. The faster they can pivot, the less damage the slip does, and the more resilient they feel.

Another common stall is the macro police mindset. Some clients cling to exact numbers as if hitting them is the only measure of success. If they come in frustrated about missing their protein target by 3 grams, it’s time to widen the lens. Swap single-point targets for ranges (e.g. 130-160g protein), or move them toward hand portions and plate visuals. The goal is to maintain structure while easing off the obsession.

Sometimes you’ll see fear-food exposures backfire. A client tries to face a fear food, but the step was too big and their anxiety spikes. Don’t treat it as failure, it’s just a sign the ladder rung was too high. Help them drop down one or two steps and add more coping reps. Exposure only works when it’s tolerable. The principle is the same as strength training: progressive overload, not maxing out on day one.

Resistance can also come from outside the client. Partners or family members may push back, either because they don’t understand or because their own habits are being challenged. In these cases, involve them where appropriate. Recruit allies by creating shared defaults (e.g. family meals built on solid principles), set clear boundaries, and remind your client that flexibility isn’t about imposing rules on others, it’s about making choices that align with their own values.

Finally, beware of the coaching mistake of arguing with the rule. If a client says, “Carbs after 6 make me fat,” don’t try to out-debate them with studies. That usually makes them dig in deeper. Instead, validate the rule’s function: “I hear that this rule helps you feel in control.” Then frame an experiment: “What if we tested that with a small bend, just to see what happens?” Rules are best weakened through lived experience, not lectures.

Ultimately, rigidity left unchecked leads to burnout, injuries, social isolation, worsening anxiety, rebound eating, and performance plateaus despite “perfect” compliance. Clients might look disciplined on paper, but their system is brittle. If you avoid troubleshooting, you’re not just stalling progress, you’re setting the stage for breakdown in the future.

The mark of a great coach isn’t that your clients never stall or make mistakes. It’s that, when they do, you know exactly how to meet them with the right tool for the job.

Your Professional Development

If you want to do good work with clients struggling with rigidity around food, it’s not enough to master tools and frameworks. You also have to invest in yourself as a professional. The best coaches I know aren’t just skilled with clients, they’re humble learners, well-connected, and self-aware. They understand that their growth directly impacts their clients’ outcomes.

The first step is to build a referral network. You cannot, and should not, try to do everything yourself. Most nutrition coaches are not dietitians, doctors, or therapists, and when you bump up against medical or psychological red flags, you need a trusted roster of professionals to call on. At minimum, this should include a registered dietitian, a primary care physician, and a therapist who works with eating disorders or CBT/ACT approaches, and for athletes, a sports medicine doctor. Depending on your client base, you may also want a GI specialist, a diabetes educator, or a women’s health doctor and physiotherapist. This network isn’t just about safety, it shows clients you respect scope, value collaboration, and have their best interests at heart.

Next, commit to supervision and debrief. Coaching can stir up your own stuff: biases, food history, even personal triggers. Without a place to process that, you risk projecting it onto your clients. Scheduling a monthly consultation with a supervisor, mentor, or peer group gives you space to check your blind spots, talk through tough cases, and stay grounded. Therapists and dietitians do this as standard; coaches should, too.

Finally, make continuing education a lifelong habit. Our field moves fast, and you’ll need to stay current, not just with nutrition science, but with the psychology of behaviour change. Skills like Motivational Interviewing (MI), ACT-informed coaching, and good communication practices are invaluable for working with rigid thinkers. Add in training on disordered eating screening, and you’ll be better equipped to spot when a client needs referral.

Professional development isn’t just about collecting certificates. It’s about staying sharp, safe, and humble. It’s about knowing your role, respecting your limits, and continually refining your craft. The more you invest in yourself, the more your clients will thrive.

Conclusion: Teach Flexibility as a Skill

At the end of the day, everything in this article comes back to a single truth: flexibility is a skill. Just like strength, endurance, or mobility, it’s something you train through small, progressive reps. Clients aren’t “naturally flexible” or “hopelessly rigid.” They’re simply at different stages of practice. And your role as a coach is to guide that practice with patience, structure, and compassion.

The key is to celebrate process over perfect outcomes. A client who bends one rigid rule by 5% has taken just as meaningful a rep as the athlete who adds five kilos to their squat. Progress may look quiet, even invisible from the outside, but every time a client eats with their family instead of skipping the meal, every time they pivot on the next bite instead of spiralling, every time they replace “I was bad” with “I’m learning”, they’re improving their dietary flexibility.

Modelling matters just as much as teaching. When you embody calm, curious, consistent flexibility in your own coaching stance, when you’re not rattled by “mistakes,” and when you meet clients with curiosity instead of judgment, you show them what resilience looks like in action. You give them permission to practice without fear.

Whether we’re talking about health, performance, or simply living well, we want to be adaptable and resilient. Biologically, our bodies are designed to switch between fuels, to adjust to stressors, to grow stronger through variability. Psychologically, our minds thrive when we can shift perspective, loosen rigid beliefs, and find new ways forward. Socially, our lives are richer when we can join a meal, adapt to culture, and share in traditions without fear.

Rigidity promises safety, but in truth, it creates fragility. Flexibility, practised consistently, builds resilience. That’s what world-class coaching really is: not delivering perfect plans, but teaching clients how to bend without breaking, how to adapt with strength, and how to trust that flexibility is not a weakness. It’s the foundation of lasting health, performance, and joy.

If you want to keep sharpening your coaching craft, we’ve built a free Content Hub filled with resources just for coaches. Inside, you’ll find the Coaches Corner, which has a collection of tools, frameworks, and real-world insights you can start using right away. We also share regular tips and strategies on Instagram and YouTube, so you’ve always got fresh ideas and practical examples at your fingertips. And if you want everything delivered straight to you, the easiest way is to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss new material.

For those of you ready to take the next step in professional development, we also offer advanced training. Our Nutrition Coach Certification is designed to help you guide clients through sustainable, evidence-based nutrition change with confidence, while our Exercise Program Design Course focuses on building effective, individualised training plans that actually work in the real world. Beyond that, we’ve created specialised courses so you can grow in the exact areas that matter most for your journey as a coach.

And coaching can feel like a lonely job at times, but you don’t have to do it alone. If you ever want to ask a question, get clarification, or just connect with people who get it, reach out to us on Instagram or by email. We’re here to support you as you keep building your skills, your practice, and the impact you make with your clients.