Les Encres Podcast: Weight Loss Coaching Techniques for You & Your Patients
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Welcome to the Les Encres Threads Podcast! In today’s episode, we’re joined by Certified Health and Fitness Coach Mona Jisr from Nashville. Mona shares her holistic approach to health, emphasizing the importance of goal-setting and personalized coaching. We’ll explore how aesthetics professionals can enhance their services by understanding clients’ motivations and setting SMART goals. Whether you’re an injector, nurse practitioner, or fitness enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insights to help your clients achieve lasting success. Enjoy our conversation with Mona Jisr as we bridge the gap between aesthetics and holistic health coaching.
Stacey Reynolds: Hello, and welcome everybody to our vlog this afternoon. I am joined with Miss Mona Jisr, who is a Certified Health and Fitness Coach, and I’m thrilled to have you here today. Hello, Mona.
Mona Jisr: Hi, I’m so happy to be here with you too.
Stacey Reynolds: Excellent. Mona and I are both down in the Nashville area, and for those of you who might not recognize my face, my name is Stacey Reynolds and I’m the founder and CEO of Les Encres Threads, which is one of the nation’s largest providers of PDO Threads, or lunchtime facelift. So you might be wondering, why do we have a Certified Health and Fitness Coach on with us today if this is an aesthetic industry blog? That’s a very good question. But before we answer that, Mona, do you want to tell us just a little bit about yourself?
Mona Jisr: As you mentioned, I’m a Health and Fitness Coach, so I do private personal training. I also do group fitness training, and I coach people through health. My personal approach is a holistic approach. I like to dive into all the different aspects of your life because I feel they’re all integrated and definitely take a toll on your health. So that’s kind of my focus, and I’ve been doing this for about five years now. My background before that was in accounting, so very different. I was a business major first. But this has really been my passion, so I’ve always been passionate about fitness and health, and it’s carried me through a lot of rough times. I feel like it has really helped me stay afloat, and that’s why I like to share it with others.
Stacey Reynolds: Well, thank you for your time today. This has been a project and metamorphosis as we’ve looked at the use of Semaglutide, in that whole drug category coming into the aesthetics industry. It’s been a huge driver of profitability and results for a lot of your patients out there. But there are many, many other aspects to support an individual during their weight loss journey, and coaching is one of them. As Mona and I began to start talking a little bit deeper about this coaching, it’s really an aspect of the aesthetics industry that a lot of you Nurse Practitioners and Estheticians out there are already unknowingly doing. I just thought this would be a great opportunity to really maybe up the game to understand a little bit deeper how to better provide your patients with coaching services and really what that looks like from a professional standpoint with Mona’s input and guidance. So Mona, having said all of that, what types of clients have you worked with in the past?
Mona Jisr: Typically, my clients are women in their late 30s and up. That’s pretty much my niche. That’s what I really work with. I think they relate well to me because that’s also my age category, and we have a lot of similarities just in the way that we think. So it’s easier for me to try to get into their heads and understand what it is that they’re trying to achieve so I can help them better.
Stacey Reynolds: I’m curious, what are some of the main or successful goal-setting strategies that you have found that work the best over such a wide variety of different lifestyles you coach?
Mona Jisr: Oh, that’s a great question. But you have to understand that even though all my programming is very customized per person because everybody’s very different, and we’re very multifaceted. The philosophy of goal setting really centers around just being achievable and personalized goals, right? So in order for you to be motivated and inspired, it really has to be a goal that is truly yours. But that kind of rings true with your authentic self, if that makes sense.
Stacey Reynolds: It does. I like that, your authentic self, very much working with your customers or clients. And I’m just trying to think of this from an injector standpoint as well. How do you really tailor your coaching methods to meet the needs of those individual clients since we are so, so individual?
Mona Jisr: I think the first thing is getting to know them, getting a little feel for them and trying to understand. I think mostly what you have to understand is what do they value? Like what are their values, and what do they prioritize? Because that is going to set the stage for what they will and won’t work towards and what they’re really after. So once you can get into that mind space and try to understand, like, okay, you want to lose weight, why do you want to lose weight? Are you losing weight because somebody told you needed to lose weight? Are you losing weight because you’re after a particular number on the scale? Or, you know, what’s the driving factor there? That’s what you really have to look for. And once you get to that, then just by talking to them, you can get a good feel for that. Then you can cater to them based on what is important to them.
Stacey Reynolds: You know, it goes back to, I think it’s Simon Sinek’s philosophy of the power of why, start with why. If we can all work with starting with understanding not the how or the what, but the why.
Mona Jisr: Because if you don’t know what the why is or if you don’t have the real why, they’ll never be motivated or inspired to get to their goal.
Stacey Reynolds: You’ve established your clients’ why, so to speak. What tools or techniques or are there specific tools or techniques that you use to help clients set and achieve their goals?
Mona Jisr: So once I get a feel for the client and then I understand what their why is, then we have to set what we call a SMART goal.
So a SMART goal that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, that comes into that why part, and Time Sensitive. So those are the five components that we have to attach to that goal. So we don’t say things like, Oh, I want to lose weight. Be more specific. I need to lose 10 pounds. Okay, so you can’t measure I want to lose weight. You want to be very specific and something that can be measured, whatever your goal that we’re after, like in the case of weight loss, it’s, you know, a number of pounds or a number of inches. That’s something that we can completely measure. It also has to be something realistic. If you’re someone who’s six feet tall, you cannot possibly weigh 105 pounds. Like that is not an achievable goal. It has to be something that makes sense. And relevance, that’s going back to your why. Like, you know, it has to be relevant to your lifestyle. It has to fit with your life. And then on top of that, we then we have to set a little timeline for you because a goal without a deadline is just what they call a dream. So you’ll never achieve it if you don’t give yourself some hard deadlines.
Stacey Reynolds: And that’s such great advice, even from an injector standpoint, because if you aren’t able to truly tease out what someone’s actual why and their goal is, you don’t know what their expectations are.
Mona Jisr: Sometimes I’m sure you guys have clients that have very unreasonable goals. Like, you know, like it doesn’t go with their facial structure possibly or whatever it is. And you have to manage those expectations because otherwise they’ll just kind of project it onto you. It’s like, it’s your fault that I don’t look like X, Y, Z. It’s not your fault. You’re not a magician. You know what I mean? So we have to manage expectations. That’s always important for the client to understand what is and isn’t possible.
Stacey Reynolds: And when you do have clients that hit setbacks or roadblocks, what do you do as a coach? How do you handle that?
Mona Jisr: We all have setbacks. We all hit bumps in the road. When you are on some type of a journey, it’s never going to be smooth sailing. It’s never going to be up and up and up and up just one way and that’s it. I’ll go back to the weight loss for example. You will hit plateaus. But you have to understand that that’s part of the process. You have to be patient. And I like to always make them look back and kind of see how far they’ve come. So sometimes we lose sight of how far we’ve come because we just see that we haven’t reached our goal. So to have a more optimistic, if you will, perspective on things, I tell them, all right, so we haven’t reached where you wanted to be by this date, but turn around and look behind you. What have we accomplished in the past three months? Look at all the things that you have accomplished, you know, all the inches that you have lost, the energy that you have gained, your skin looks so much better, like all these things.
Stacey Reynolds: So you have to sometimes redirect their attention and let them see it from a new perspective.
Mona Jisr: I really like that. That redirection is great because it does take that maybe negative setback or that negative feeling and allows you to just be motivated and maintain positivity. You have to give yourself some kind of grace, number one. And number two, give yourself some kind of, you know, just a pat on the back for your accomplishments so far. Just because you haven’t reached the pinnacle doesn’t mean that you have not had any success. You’ve had plenty of success. You just haven’t reached maybe your final destination, but it’s always a work in progress or always a work in progress.
Stacey Reynolds: So after you’ve really sat down and established your clients’ why and you’ve established SMART goals, what are the next steps as they’re working towards that goal during the process?
Mona Jisr: So in my case, for example, we’ll set those SMART goals and then we will chunk them down, right? If it’s a big goal, you want to make it into smaller, more attainable goals. That’s another way of keeping that motivation going, right? So if we’re trying to lose 50 pounds, we’re not just going to celebrate when we hit 50 pounds. We’re going to celebrate every five pounds on the way because that is that much closer to your end goal, if you will. Also, they check in with me and sometimes when they’re having setbacks, we kind of dive a little bit deeper into why. So why aren’t we moving forward? Oh, because we keep cheating. Why do we keep cheating? There’s always a reason. There’s a reason why you self-sabotage, but sometimes you have to just look and see what it is. When it is that it’s happening, being aware, becoming more self-aware of like, Oh, every time this happens, I do this. Okay. So now we know what our triggers are. Once we find our triggers, then we try to build new, healthier, sustainable habits to replace our bad habits that we usually fall back on when we hit our triggers. So it’s like a whole process of rewiring your brain.
Stacey Reynolds: I don’t know if the listeners out there are sensing this as well, but as you’re talking, my brain is saying, yep, yep.
Mona Jisr: We’re all guilty of it. But the thing is, is to become aware of it. That’s the first step is the awareness of realizing, Oh, I’m doing this thing that I always do when X, Y, Z happens and then breaking it, learning to break that and say, all right, this is not a good habit to have. What’s a better habit I can replace it with? Something that can make me happy. Because at the end of the day, you’re not happy when you keep sabotaging yourself. So you want to find a way to move forward.
Stacey Reynolds: Yes, your patient is coming in for that weight loss drug, but adding that extra component of coaching and goal setting and accountability is going to catapult the success of your patients and your practice beyond just the injection.
Stacey Reynolds: Mona, let me ask you, when you do hold your clients accountable, how does that conversation go?
Mona Jisr: I usually will ask them. You know, what went wrong? Well, I ate a pint of ice cream. Why did you eat the pint of ice cream? Then they’ll tell me and then I just don’t say much of anything and then they have to explain to me and usually the penny then drops with them and they’re just like, Oh, I see. And then I’m like, what do you think you could do differently? Cause I’m not going to prescribe to you what you’re going to do, because then I’m just telling you what you’re doing. So you’re not taking control. I need you to be in control of you. Cause I’m not with you at 10 PM when you’re on the couch eating that ice cream. I can’t be. You’re there. So what can you do to help yourself? And then I let them work it through and they come up with their own plan for something that could work better so that they don’t hit a wall. And then we try that for a week or two and see how that goes.
Stacey Reynolds: You know, it’s the core of coaching and its essence is not necessarily knowing what to do. It’s doing what you know, because we all pretty much know what we’re not supposed to.
Mona Jisr: I have not invented the wheel here on anything. Okay. There’s nothing that I’m going to tell you that you’re going to be like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. You had every idea. You might not know how to apply it to yourself. You might not know how to break out of a cycle. You might not be aware of your cycles that you’re in. I’m there just to kind of hold up a mirror to you and be like, this is what you’re doing and you see it for yourself. And then we talk about like, what would be the best solution that works with your life, your values, your priorities, that’s going to get you to where you want to go now that you see what you’re doing.
Stacey Reynolds: And going back to what you said about coaching with the clients, I think it’s amazing if you can spend, even if it’s only five minutes with a person getting to know them, as opposed to just giving them their shot, for example. It goes a long way with them and the thing about the Semaglutide and stuff. I think that they’re a great product. Maybe not for everybody. It’s not if it’s not something for everybody, to be honest. But it is a great tool to help a lot of people. They just have to understand that that is just one component of getting themselves on the right track. You cannot continuously eat cheeseburgers and just take the shot forever. There has to be a mindset shift as well. So as injectors, it’s wonderful if you guys have an opportunity to talk to them a little bit, to try to understand why maybe, maybe they’re very depressed, maybe there’s something else going on and maybe they need to address that as well as getting their shots for their weight loss journeys. And I think when you talk to them, even if you give them five minutes, it really shows how much you care. And I think that goes a long way with people.
Stacey Reynolds: Do you have any tips or tricks as a certified fitness coach to help establish rapport and build that strong working relationship with clients? Any words of wisdom?
Mona Jisr: I think first just try to get to know them. Just try to understand, like I said, going back to just, you don’t have a lot of time, I understand that, but when you’re talking, instead of talking about, I don’t know, the weather or the traffic today, maybe try to get in and understand a little bit more about their lives. You know, you find out that Sally is a mom of six and she works full time. Now you get to understand her a little bit better, you know? So when you do give little odd bits of advice, you can give something that’s relevant to her and not something that is more appropriate for a 20-year-old single college girl.
Stacey Reynolds: And I would imagine you probably work with your clients once a week?
Mona Jisr: With my health coaching, I actually meet up every other week with my clients. We usually have a 50-minute session every other week. They do check-ins with me weekly, though, so they do have to check in on the off weeks via email, like letting me know what’s going good, what’s not going good. And of course, I’m always accessible. So if there’s a question, a comment, how to, you know, they’re always welcome to text me and they’ll ask me stuff and I’m happy to answer, you know, like, can I do this or can I substitute this for that, so there’s always that open line of communication.
Stacey Reynolds: Do you have any other specific support materials or guidance between sessions that clients can utilize if they need to, for example, I know your newsletter is phenomenal, which is what got me hooked on you, Mona.
Mona Jisr: Yes. So I do put out a health and fitness newsletter once a month. I don’t like to bombard people with lots of stuff, but I try to cover the bigger topics that I feel like everybody’s kind of interested in. So like you came across this one about goal setting that was in one of my editions. My last edition, I talked about insulin resistance and I also talked about discipline, building discipline. So I think these are all things that are very relevant to everybody. It is targeted mostly for older women, but there’s something in there for everybody, I believe. I also will share any kind of handouts or links or reading material that I find specifically speaks, you know, like if I find that there’s something that’s very specific to your goal and I’m like, Ooh, this would be a great read for you. I’ll send that out to you and be like, you need to take a look at this, you know, like this is something I think that you should read or listen to, just to kind of help you just keep shifting that mindset.
Stacey Reynolds: You do primarily virtual or do you do in-person or equal combination?
Mona Jisr: I love to do the in-person. I do love that. If not, my second-best choice would be Zoom because I do like to be able to see, because I feel like I’ve done some that are like just on the phone, not my preference, just because I find that sometimes people tend to want to multitask. So they’re not fully vested in it. So I like to have that eye contact. I like to know that you’ve put everything else aside. You are investing in yourself, and they say health is wealth. And I really believe that everything stems from good health. So you have to start there. So if you’re going to invest in yourself, I think you should be fully invested, including your time during your session.
Stacey Reynolds: We have had this conversation about the lens of being the coach providing the services, but as the client or the patient, do you have any recommendations that you would recommend?
Mona Jisr: So the most important thing in a relationship with my clients is going to be honesty and trust. If we go back to the food thing, just because that’s what I focus on a lot here, but if you fill out your food journal of what you did from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. and then leave off what you did after 6 because you’re afraid of my judgment, I will never know that you’re consuming 2,000 extra calories at bedtime and I am not going to know how to help you. So I can’t help you if you’re not ready to help yourself. So I need my clients to be very honest and realize that this is like a judgment-free zone. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help you and I can only help you with the information that I have. I don’t live with you and I don’t live in your head. So I can only work with what I’m given. So it’s really important that my client trusts that I’m there for their best interests and feel safe to share with me whatever’s going on so that I can then turn around and help them become successful because that is my goal.
Stacey Reynolds: If we’re here to help people, our goal is really to bring them happiness and bring them to that level of motivation and security.
Mona Jisr: It is kind of human nature. We’re always afraid to be judged. So it is human nature to, I’m going to say lie or omit the truth or omit parts of it. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine one time, and I was telling her that a lot of times people will omit stuff, and she said, why? And I said, because they’re afraid of being judged. She’s like, but they’re there for you to help them and I’m like, yes. I said, so let’s talk about you at her in that case scenario. I said, didn’t you go to physical therapy for your back a few months back? And she said, yes. And I said, did they give you homework to do? And she said, yes. I said, did you always do it? And she said, no. And I said, when they asked you about it, what did you say? And she said, I did it. I said, okay, so it’s the same thing. We do it all the time, whether it’s with a physical therapist, if it’s your fitness trainer, your health coach, your doctor, probably your esthetician too. But again, we can’t help you if you’re not 100 percent honest. Or, you will have better success if you’re 100 percent honest. How about that?
Stacey Reynolds: I love it. Well, this has been very, very insightful today and I truly think a lot of our Injectors and Nurse Practitioners out there are going to hopefully take a little bit deeper look at how they’re providing their coaching services to their patients and really institute that Why and getting to know the value of that Why and understanding how to apply the SMART goals. I think there’s a lot of value to this.
Mona Jisr: If they just give them a few extra minutes and just kind of extract a little bit and understand really where their client is coming from. It’ll go a really long way. I also did want to say that my newsletter is free. If they would like to subscribe, there’s always something I think that could be of some kind of relevance. Like I said, whether it’s about goal setting or discipline or any of the other topics that I cover, so they are welcome to send me an email if they like with their email address, then I can add them to my mailing list.
Stacey Reynolds: And if they want to follow you on social media, where do they go?
Mona Jisr: Yes. So my Instagram handle is @morphmindandbody. I do have a website. It’s the same, morphmindandbody.com. So you can follow me. I’m on Facebook and I’m on Instagram.
Stacey Reynolds: Thank you for your time again today, Mona. I appreciate it. And all of you watching, we appreciate you as well. Have a great day.
Mona Jisr: Thank you for having me.