Last Updated on March 9, 2026 by Giorgia Guazzarotti

South Korea has beauty standards that would make most of us anxious just reading about them. Skin needs to be poreless, luminous, and practically translucent (what they call glass skin) and that’s not a trend, that’s just Tuesday. The pressure is relentless, it starts young, and it has produced a clinical skincare industry so advanced that people are now flying in from the United States and Europe just to get treated there. But do Korean beauty treatments actually work? Some of them are genuinely backed by solid science. Some of them are backed by very enthusiastic marketing. And some are somewhere in the messy middle, where the mechanism makes sense but the clinical evidence hasn’t quite caught up yet. This article tells you which is which.

What’s Different About K-Beauty Clinics?

In South Korea, going to a dermatologist isn’t something you do when your skin gets bad enough. It’s something you do regularly for prevention, the way you’d get a dental cleaning. This routine starts in your 20s and it never stops… and it’s why the Koreans have such great skin. What happens there is different too. Korean clinics also combine multiple treatments in a single visit. One appointment might involve a pico laser for pigmentation, a skin booster injection for hydration, and radiofrequency for tightening – all in one afternoon. In the West, those would typically be three separate appointments, spread across months, at three different price points.  None of which means every clinic is excellent, or that beauty tourism to South Korea is automatically going to give you the skin of your dreams. Do your research before booking anything. On that note, below you’ll find some common skin treatments offered at Korean dermatology clinics:

Related: 4 Lessons I’ve Learned From Korean Skincare

Rejuran Healer (PDRN Injections)

Rejuran Healer is probably the most famous treatment to come out of Korean dermatology in recent years, and the star ingredient PDRN (or polydeoxyribonucleotide, derived from salmon sperm DNA) sounds completely unhinged the first time you hear it. The mechanism, though, is actually legitimate, which is more than you can say for a lot of things in the beauty space. PDRN works by activating adenosine A2A receptors in the skin, triggering tissue repair, collagen production, and anti-inflammatory effects deep in the dermis. It’s injected in tiny amounts across the face using fine needles, targeting the dermis directly rather than sitting on top of the skin doing very little. What people typically notice after a course of sessions is improved skin texture, better hydration, softer fine lines, and an overall quality improvement that’s hard to attribute to any one thing – skin just looks more alive.

So far so good. Here’s where it gets more complicated. A 2025 systematic review of polynucleotide treatments found statistically significant improvements in wrinkle reduction, skin texture, and skin elasticity across multiple studies – but when you read the actual review, it found only nine studies that met quality criteria, covering a grand total of 219 patients. That is not a lot of people. The studies used different formulations, different outcome measures, and short follow-up periods, which makes it genuinely hard to draw sweeping conclusions.

What we have with Rejuran is a treatment with a solid theoretical basis, a well-understood mechanism, a good safety profile, and early clinical results that consistently point in the right direction. What we don’t have is the kind of large-scale, long-term randomized controlled trial data that would let you say with confidence exactly what it does and for whom. That gap between “the biology makes sense” and “we have definitive proof” is where a lot of K-beauty treatments live, and Rejuran is no exception.

If you’re considering it: go in expecting gradual improvement over a series of sessions, not a transformation after one appointment. And be skeptical of any clinic making very specific promises about outcomes – the evidence doesn’t support that level of certainty yet.

Pico Laser Treatment

Pico lasers are one of the popular treatments where the science is actually pretty solid, and where Korean clinics have genuinely refined the application beyond what you’ll typically find elsewhere. The technology delivers ultra-short pulses of laser energy (measured in picoseconds, which is one trillionth of a second) that shatter pigment particles through a mechanical rather than heat-based mechanism. Because the pulses are so fast, there’s significantly less collateral damage to surrounding tissue, which matters a lot especially for medium and darker skin tones.

It works for uneven skin tone, melasma, post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, and acne scars. A 2023 randomized controlled trial found that picosecond lasers produced significant pigmentation improvement – though the same study noted that topical hydroquinone is still considered first-line therapy for melasma.  Where pico does clearly outperform older laser technology is in the side effect profile. A split-face comparison study found that pico laser caused post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation (that deeply annoying darkening that can follow laser treatment, especially on darker skin) in 27% of cases compared to 54% for Q-switched laser, and the duration of that PIH was shorter too. For anyone with a medium to deeper skin tone, that difference is significant.

Pico laser is that it’s almost never a one-session fix. It’s done in a series, at regular intervals, as part of ongoing skin maintenance. The gradual approach is deliberate: you’re chipping away carefully rather than trying to blast everything at once, which reduces complications and produces steadier results. 

Ultrasound Lifting (HIFU)

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU, or ultrasound lifting as it tends to be called in Korean clinics) is one of the most popular non-invasive treatments for skin laxity. Here’s how it works: focused ultrasound energy is delivered into the deeper layers of the skin (including the SMAS layer, which is the same structural layer that surgical facelifts address) generating controlled thermal injury at precise depths without damaging the surface. The body responds by producing new collagen over the following months. You’re waiting three to six months to see the full effect.

A 2025 systematic review of 45 clinical trials found that HIFU showed significant efficacy in skin tightening, particularly in the lower face, neck, and around the eyes, with improvements in skin laxity ranging from 18% to 30%. A separate meta-analysis of 17 studies found moderate improvement for facial and neck rejuvenation, with fewer than 5% of patients reporting anything beyond temporary redness, swelling, or mild discomfort. That’s a decent evidence base for a non-invasive treatment.

But there are real limitations. The systematic reviews consistently flag that treatment protocols vary enormously between practitioners and studies, making results hard to predict reliably. Long-term data is thin: most studies follow patients for three to six months, so what happens to those results at the two-year mark is genuinely unclear. And HIFU works best for mild to moderate laxity. If you have significant sagging, the honest answer is that it probably won’t do enough. It’s a prevention and early-intervention tool, which is exactly how Korean clinics use it – starting patients young, before things get to the point where plastic surgery would be the conversation.

One thing that often gets undersold: it can be painful. The sensation of focused ultrasound hitting deeper tissue, especially over bony areas, is sharp and genuinely uncomfortable. Most people find it manageable. Some do not. The “minimal downtime” claim is accurate – redness and mild swelling for a day or two at most – but going in expecting it to be easy might mean you’re caught off guard on the table.

Aqua Peel

The aqua peel (also called hydradermabrasion) is the treatment most international patients get on their first visit to a Korean clinic, and honestly it makes sense as an entry point. It combines mild exfoliation of the outer layer of the skin with simultaneous infusion of skin boosters (hydrating ingredients, antioxidants, sometimes vitamin C) in a single pass. No needles, no lasers, no real downtime. You walk out with skin that looks cleaner, brighter, and more hydrated than when you walked in.

The clinical research on it is thinner than the marketing suggests. One study compared hydradermabrasion with manual serum application and found that the hydradermabrasion group showed significant improvements in epidermal thickness, fine lines, pore size, and hyperpigmentation, with increased fibroblast density and collagen remodelling – while the manual application group showed no detectable skin changes at all. It’s not a dramatic treatment. It won’t address deep pigmentation, and it’s not going to remodel your collagen. But for congested skin, dry skin, rough texture, or skin that just needs a proper reset, it works, and it works immediately. 

Radiofrequency (RF) Treatments

Radiofrequency is one of the workhorses of Korean dermatology. Less glamorous than Rejuran or pico laser, but consistently useful, and often the thing that ties a multi-treatment protocol together. RF energy heats the dermis without damaging the surface, stimulating collagen and elastin production over time. When combined with microneedling, it gets delivered deeper into the tissue and produces more significant remodelling, particularly for acne scars, enlarged pores, and smoother skin texture.

The evidence for RF in skin tightening and texture improvement is reasonably well-established, though it shares the same limitation as most aesthetic treatments. The studies are often small, the protocols inconsistent, and the follow-up periods short. What it has going for it is a long clinical track record, a mechanism that’s well-understood, and a safety profile that’s been tested across a wide range of skin types and specific skin concerns. The results from RF are slow. We’re talking months, not days. It’s not the treatment you do when you want to look better for something in three weeks. It’s the treatment you do as part of a longer-term skin health strategy.

Should You Actually Go to Seoul?

If you’re seriously considering beauty tourism to South Korea, the practical answer is: it depends on what you’re trying to treat, how much you’re willing to spend, and whether you can realistically manage aftercare from home. The combination approach that makes Korean clinics so effective requires follow-up sessions to work properly. Rejuran typically needs three to four sessions. Pico laser works in a series. HIFU results build over months. If you’re flying in for a single visit and flying back out, you’re getting a fraction of what the system is actually designed to deliver. Some people still find that fraction worth it – the quality of treatment, the technology, and the pricing compared to equivalent clinics in New York City or London can make a single trip genuinely worthwhile. But go in with clear eyes about what one visit can and can’t do.

If going to Seoul isn’t on the table, many of these treatments are available at good clinics in the United States and Europe. The gap is less about the treatments themselves and more about the protocol design – finding a practitioner who thinks in terms of layered, preventive, ongoing skin health rather than individual procedures. That approach exists outside South Korea. It’s just less baked into the system.

The Bottom Line

Korean cosmetic procedures ren’t all created equal, and they’re not all going to deliver the glass skin promised on every clinic’s website. Pico laser for pigmentation has solid clinical backing. HIFU for early skin laxity has meaningful evidence across multiple systematic reviews. Rejuran is promising and mechanistically sound, but the clinical trial data is still early and thin. Aqua peel is genuinely good for what it is – which is a solid, low-risk maintenance treatment, not a miracle. What Korean dermatology does consistently well isn’t any single treatment. It’s the approach: preventive, systematic, layered, and sustained over time. That’s the part that actually produces the skin you’ve been looking at and wondering about. And that part you can apply anywhere.

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Last Updated on February 28, 2026 by Giorgia Guazzarotti

Googling Nuskin 180 Face Wash reviews? Totally get you. £59 for a cleanser that barely stays on your skin for 2 minutes is… outrageous. Unless that cleanser does something special like… I don’t know make me coffee? I’l even take minimise the appearance of wrinkles. On paper, it seems like it’s got what it needs to do the job. After all, it has a generous dose of free flowing Vitamin C (whatever free flowing means). In practice… Not impressed. In this review, I’ll share with you how this cleanser works, who it’s for, and whether it’s a fantastic product to add to your skincare routine or an overpriced one best left on the shelves. 

Nuskin 180 Face Wash: What Makes It Work?

ASCORBIC ACID

This is the free flowing Vitamin C. I’m not really sure what “free-flowing” means in this context. Ascorbic Acid is the pure form of Vitamin C that brightens skin and prevents wrinkles. BUT, it’s very unstable. There’s a reason why Skinceuticals CE Ferulic goes bad after a few weeks. Ascorbic Acid goes bad quickly. Some brands get around this by micro-encapsulating it, a technology that keeps it safe from the rest of the formula and releases it upon contact with your skin. That’s the opposite of free flowing in my book. 

That’s not what this brand is doing anyway. They claim that, unlike other cleansers, this one is water-free. Take water out of the game and Ascorbic Acid lasts a lot longer. The catch? There’s water here, just a lot less than in other products. Ascorbic Acid will degrade more slowly, but will still degrade. And all of this is pointless anyway because Vitamin C needs to be on your skin to work. You won’t get brighter skin if you rinse it off the drain within a couple of minutes, know what I mean?

Related: Do Anti-Aging Cleansers Work?

SESAME SEED OIL

You’ll see it as Sesamum Indicum Seed Oil on the label. It’s a non-fragrant oil that deeply moisturises skin. And let me tell you, skin needs that badly during the cleansing process. But that’s not the only reason why it’s here. It’s part of the cleansing system. It works thanks to the “like attracts like” principles. This oil is a magnet for the oils in your makeup, sunscreen, and even excess sebum. It attaches to them and helps them rinse them off. 

SURFACTANTS

This a fancy name for a family of ingredients that help oils mix with water, so they can be rinsed away. This cleanser uses Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate and Sodium C14-16 Olefin Sulfonate. They’re very mild, create a light foam, and cleanse skin without drying it out. Plus, they also help remove the greasy feel that oil cleansers, like Sesame Seed Oil, sometimes leave behind. 

The Rest Of The Formula & Ingredients

• Glycerin: A humectant, a fancy way of calling ingredients that draw moisture from the air into the skin, so that it stays soft and moisturised during the cleaning process.
• C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate: It does double duty. As an emollient, it makes skin softer and smoother. As a thickener, it makes the texture… well, thicker.
• Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil: Derived from sunflowers, this oil makes skin softer and smoother. It also strengthens your protective barrier. 
• Butylene Glycol: A humectant that does the same job as glycerin. Plus, it helps others ingredients better penetrate skin.
• Stearyl Glycyrrhetinate: Derived from liquorice, it has soothing properties. 
• Ginkgo Biloba Leaf Extract: A popular herbal extract loaded with antioxidants. Unfortunately, they just end up down the drain.
• Panax Ginseng Root Extract: A darling of Korean skincare, ginseng is loaded with antioxidants to prevent premature aging. You guessed it, they end up down the drain too.
• Aqua: A solvent used to dissolve the other ingredients in this formula.
• Carbomer: It thickens the formula and helps the oily and watery ingredients mixed together, so they don’t separate into yucky laters.
• Sodium Isethionate: A cleansing agent that mitigates skin barrier’s disrution.
• Lecithin: Another emulsifier that keeps the formula together.
• Silica: An oil-absorbent that creates a smooth, easy feel on the skin. 
• Hydrated Silica: It improves the texture of the product.
• Sodium Chloride: Plain old table salt. It’s here to thicken the formula.
• Sodium Sulfate: It acts like a mild preservative from bacterial contamination. 
• Sodium Xylenesulfonate: It improves the texture of the product.
• Aluminum Hydroxide: It has opacifying and soothing properties. 
• Tocopherol: A form of Vitamin E with antioxidant properties. 
• Vitis Vinifera Seed Extract: Another powerful antioxidant… that gets rinsed down the drain.
• Parfum: Makes this cleanser small lovely, but can irritate sensitive skin.
• Limonene: A component of the fragrance that needs to be listed separately on the label because it’s a common allergen. Enough said.

Texture

Much thicker than you’d expect from something labelled a “face wash.” It’s somewhere between a rich cream and a paste – not quite toothpaste, but denser than any gel or foaming cleanser you’ve probably used.  The thickness means a tiny amount genuinely covers the whole face, which helps justify the price in terms of cost-per-use. But it also means that rinsing feels like more of a job than it should. 

Fragrance

There’s a citrusy, slightly medicinal scent – clean but distinctive. It smells a bit like vitamin C powder dissolved in something botanical, which makes sense given what it is. It’s not unpleasant, and the citrus note is fresh without being synthetic or sharp. That said, it can still irritate sensitive skin.

How To Use It

Start with dry hands on dry skin. Apply a small pea-sized amount (seriously small – less than you think you need) directly to your face and neck. Massage it gently with dry fingertips for about 30 seconds, distributing it evenly before any water is involved. Then wet your hands and introduce water gradually, continuing to massage. Let it sit for at least a minute – use this time to brush your teeth or do something else, it doesn’t need your attention. Then rinse thoroughly with warm water.

Packaging

Clean, white tube. Simple. Nothing revolutionary – it looks like a clinical skincare product rather than a luxury one. The flip-top cap is fine. The tube is squeezable without too much effort.

My only functional gripe is that the formula is dense enough that the last 10-15% of the tube takes some effort to get out. Not a deal-breaker, but you’ll need to roll from the bottom once you’re getting near the end, otherwise you’ll think it’s empty when it isn’t.

Performance & Personal Opinion

Here’s what I actually noticed: after using this, skin feels clean without feeling stripped. That’s genuinely harder to achieve than it sounds. Many cleansers that do a good job of removing grime also leave your face feeling tight or squeaky, which is your skin’s way of telling you the barrier has been compromised. This one didn’t do that – the oils in the formula seem to balance the surfactant action, leaving skin feeling comfortable and soft rather than parched.

The stinging. I need to address it honestly. There is a warmth and slight tingle when it’s on the skin, and for the first week or so, it was a bit more pronounced than I’d call comfortable. That’s Ascorbic Acid for you, by the way. It settled down after that. But if your skin is already compromised – actively broken out, irritated, post-peeling – I’d wait until things are calmer before introducing this. 

What I Like About Nu Skin 180° Face Wash

• Skin feels genuinely clean after use without that tight, stripped feeling that a lot of cleansers leave behind
• A tiny amount covers the whole face

What I DON’T Like About Nu Skin 180° Face Wash

• Expensive 
• Can sting
• The thick texture is genuinely difficult to rinse off completely, and residue likely drives many of the reported breakouts
• Contains fragrance 

Who Should Use This?

This is a product for someone in their 30s-50s with normal to dry, non-acne-prone skin. It’s not for you if: you have sensitive or eczema-prone skin, you’re managing active acne, you hate anything that tingles, or you’re categorically against paying premium prices for a cleanser.

Does Nuskin 180 Face Wash Live Up To Its Claims?

Price & Availability

$58.99 at Nu Skin

The Verdict: Should You Buy It?

If you want a vitamin C treatment, buy a serum. This isn’t that. The vitamin C gets rinsed down the drain before it can do anything meaningful. So much for a powerful anti-aging cleanser. As a cleanser on its own terms, it’s decent. It cleans properly, doesn’t strip the skin, and a tube lasts a long time. But it’s too expensive for what it does, in my opinion. 

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Every day, Lina wore a ring that continually monitored her heart rate, sleep quality, and activity levels. Most evenings, she excitedly examined its data.

“It’s amazing. It changed my life,” she told anyone who asked. “You should totally get one!”

Jeron? He was a different story.

He, too, used a device to track his sleep. But the more his smartwatch revealed, the more he tossed and turned.

Lina and Jeron are among many people who use devices to track weight, body fat, running speed, steps, calories burned, calories consumed, heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, brain waves, and more.

Thanks to modern technology, we can know more about ourselves (and our clients) than ever before.

But does everyone benefit from so much information? 

Who will respond as Lina did? And who will respond like Jeron?

In this article, you’ll find answers to those questions, as well as:

Data and gadgets are cool. But depending on context and perspective, they have the potential to help or hurt a person’s health efforts.

Here’s how to know what’s right for you (or your clients).

++++

Data points help people understand how they’re doing.

Let’s say someone wants to improve their health. To reach that goal, they might decide to replace their nightly ice cream with a piece of fruit.

To see if that change is working, they could measure:

• a behavior, such as how often they’re doing the action. For instance, they might track how often they ate fruit instead of ice cream after dinner.
• an outcome, such as their cholesterol level or blood pressure. Outcomes can either be objective (like bloodwork) or subjective, such as someone’s stress or energy level.

Either way, the information is a progress indicator, helping assess whether a change is actually working.

But is tracking progress always a good thing?

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5 surprising truths about data tracking

Truth #1: Different types of people thrive on different types of data.

Some people respond great to data.

Other people, however, can become anxious.

Rather than seeing their weight, heart rate variability, or sleep quality as a way to judge the effectiveness of what they do, some folks view these metrics as a statement of who they are.

When someone takes data personally, they might step on the scale and feel hopeless, thinking, “What’s wrong with me?”

Or they’ll look at a sleep-tracker and think, “My sleep sucks—I must be broken!”

A PhD candidate at Colorado State University, Kayla Nuss, MA, MS, PN1, has focused much of her graduate research on the relationship between data trackers and motivation to exercise.

Based on her findings as well as research by others,^1,2 she says people are more likely to take data personally if they:

✓ See the behavior they’ll track as a chore, making comments like, “I have to do this to lose weight.”

✓  Don’t feel they have a choice. Someone might say, “I don’t want to exercise, but my doctor told me I have to.”

✓ Do the behavior to avoid feeling guilty. In other words, they exercise because they don’t want to feel bad about not exercising.

(You’ll learn more on how to help people see data differently a little later.)

Truth #2: A measurement is only useful if it helps you make a decision.

For many people, wearable devices offer a fun diversion and satisfy curiosity.

Without an action plan, though, devices are interesting, but not helpful.³

Consider the difference between:

1. Someone who tracks their mile splits to see if their new training plan is improving their running speed.
2. Someone who tracks their mile splits because their watch does it automatically (so why not?).

The first person will eventually be able to make a decision: Keep following the same training plan—or talk to their coach about making an adjustment.

The second person has only a bunch of numbers—and possibly some frustration. They may even become overtrained if they continually push themselves to beat their mile splits, without following a training plan that ensures adequate recovery.

Truth #3: Some trackers spit out inaccurate data.

The reliability of a tracker, research says, depends on a number of factors: the part of the body it monitors (finger, wrist, arm, chest), the tracker’s algorithm, the sensors used, and the activity being monitored.^4,5

The least accurate progress indicators include:

Distance: Though technology has improved in recent years, some trackers overestimate your distance when you move at faster speeds, and underestimate your distance at slower speeds.

Trackers with GPS technology are usually more accurate than ones without it, though dense tree foliage and tall buildings can interfere with GPS signals.^6-8

Sleep quality: Sleep trackers tend to overestimate hours slept and sleep efficiency, and underestimate the number of waking moments.^9,4

Calories consumed: Generally speaking, calories are tough to measure, regardless of the tool. As a result, the calories listed on menus and food labels can be off by as much as 20 percent.¹⁰ (And that’s not the only thing that throws off calorie counts, as we detail in this infographic: The surprising problem with calorie counting.)

Calories burned: Trackers that estimate your calorie burn often do so based on laboratory averages, with large margins of error (around 10 to 23 percent).^11,4 (Read more: The problem with tracking calories burned.)

Now, if someone’s using a tracker merely to get a sense of a general trend or pattern, this lack of accuracy may not matter so much. But if they’re basing important decisions on these readouts? Problems develop.

Let’s say someone’s watch reports that they burned 400 total calories during a run. So they think, “Yay! I ran hard. Now I can eat 400 extra calories.”

Not so fast.

First, they might think they are eating 400 calories, but really consume as many as 480, thanks to that wishy-washy calorie math.

Second, also due to wide error margins, they may have really burned as few as 320 calories.

Finally, the numbers shown on the device aren’t all extra calories burned by the activity itself.

Anytime you see “calories burned,” it also includes the number of calories you use through normal, resting metabolism—and would have burned whether you ran or sat completely still. (For a 180-pound person, for instance, that resting metabolic rate is about 1.2 calories per minute.)

End result: They can easily end up eating 160-plus calories beyond what they expended.

Truth #4: High-tech trackers do motivate some people—for about three months.

When many people get a new smart device, they become absolutely obsessed. They wear it all the time. They study their data. They try to beat their step, mile, or speed counts.

It all works like magic.

Until it doesn’t.

“We humans get bored super quickly. We buy a fancy gadget thinking it will solve all our problems, and use it every single day for a few weeks or months,” says Kate Solovieva, MA, Pn2, a Precision Nutrition master coach.

“But then we take it off that one time in the shower. Or the battery dies, and the charger is in the other room, so we toss the gadget in our underwear drawer. For now. Two years later, we’re looking for a charger for our NEW fancy gadget, and find the old one in the drawer, and think… ‘Oh yeah!’”

Researchers call this the novelty factor.^12,13 By the end of a year, only about 10 percent of people are still using their trackers, one study found.¹⁴

Truth #5: High-tech trackers can demotivate some people.

This is especially true of trackers that come with preset goals, such as sleeping a certain number of hours or walking a certain number of steps a day.¹⁵

When someone continually falls short of the goals the tracker sets, they can feel discouraged. Not only do they stop using the tracker, but they may also give up trying to improve the activity they were tracking, says Nuss.

“For some people, the tracker is the right tool. For others, it’ll lead to a persistent feeling of, ‘Geez, I suck.’”

How to know if data tracking will help your client

When it comes to data, there are basically three types of people:

• People who benefit from a lot of data
• People who benefit from some data—but who don’t need a heck of a lot of it
• People who can be harmed by an overemphasis on data

Here’s how to figure out which category a client falls into.

People who benefit from a lot of data tend to:

✓  Be numbers-oriented. These clients often have engineering, actuarial, or accounting mindsets.

✓ Have more advanced goals. This includes elite athletes, bodybuilders, models, and other people who get paid based on how they look or perform. For them, a slight variance is the difference between placing first or 10th.

✓ See data as information—nothing more. Regardless of their profession, the numbers don’t define them. They aren’t part of their identity. For them, data can be helpful—because they can view it as just that.

People who benefit from some data tend to:

✓ Have simple goals. They want to look or feel better, to get in shape, or feel more energetic, among other things. And, while some data definitely will help them to progress, they don’t need a ton of it.

✓ Don’t get overly wrapped up in the numbers. An unexpected occurrence (like sudden weight gain) could bum them out, for sure. But with a little coaching, they’re able to turn their focus away from “That sucks” and over to, “Okay, that’s interesting. What should I try next?”

People who can be harmed by an overemphasis on data tend to:

✓ Have an unhealthy obsession with food and/or fitness. These clients can become so fixated on the numbers that they can’t think of anything else.

✓ Have unclear core values. When clients don’t define how a goal aligns with their deeper values, they never feel good enough—no matter what the numbers say. Think: The person who always wants to lose five pounds, no matter what they weigh.

✓ Have inaccurate or miscalibrated standards. Many recreational exercisers, for instance, beat themselves up for not having elite performances. They don’t have a realistic sense of what to expect.

✓ Be anxious about the activity they plan to track. Rather than feeling motivated by a sleep tracker, they might toss and turn even more.¹⁶

✓ Have perfectionistic thought patterns, aka “not-good-enough-itis.” When talking about a measurement, they insert themselves into the story. Failing to meet a timed workout goal quickly becomes “I’m slow” or “I suck” rather than “I’ll get it next time.”

✓ Be so competitive that they get injured or overtrained. Rather than take an off or easy day, they might try to get in more steps, beat their previous personal best walking time, or destroy the competition during the Workout of the Day.

Help clients use data effectively.

It’d be great if all clients saw measurements merely as a way to test the effectiveness of their action plan. But that’s not how a lot of people start out.

Here’s how to help clients view data as feedback.

Define progress.

Add specificity to hazy goals like “lose fat” and “get strong.”

Lose fat might become “get my body fat percentage below 25 percent.” And “get strong” might become “be able to get up off the floor while holding one of my grandchildren.”

Also, tie those specifics to a deeper value by asking, “Why?” over and over. (See our 5 Whys worksheet for specifics.)

The conversation might go like this:

Coach: That’s great that you want to get stronger. Could you tell me a little more about that? Why is that a goal for you?

Client: Well, I used to feel strong and now I don’t. I want to feel like I used to.

Coach: Great answer! Let’s dig even deeper. Why do you want to feel like you used to feel?

Client: Well, it kind of sucks being this weak. I used to be able to do things easily. Take groceries. It wasn’t always hard for me to carry the bags into the house. Now it is.

Coach: That’s really insightful. Why do you want those activities to feel easier?

Client: By the time I’m done with my shopping and errands, I’m so exhausted I can barely stand up, let alone hang out with my grandkids. I don’t want to be the grandma who can’t do anything. I want to be right there with them.

Coach: Bingo! Keep that strong grandma image front of mind. It’ll help keep you motivated. Now, let’s take a look at some ways to measure your progress.

Talk about how you’ll measure progress.

Nutrition coaches work with clients to create an initial action plan, based on what the client needs to do to get to where the client wants to go.

Then they break that plan down into one small, specific action to try—say eating one extra serving of veggies a day—and come up with a way to test it.

The test might track behavior, looking at how consistently the client ate an extra serving of veggies. Or the test might track an outcome, perhaps how energetic the client feels each day.

Either way, it’s testing the action—and not the person doing the action. 

To explain all this for a client interested in fat loss, you might say:

Coach: I know your goal is fat loss, but I’m not too concerned with whether you’re losing weight right now. For the first several weeks, we’re going to work on a few foundational skills that’ll help make changing how you eat feel a lot easier. It’s similar to investing now for a big payoff later.

Client: So…. I don’t need to weigh myself right now?

Coach: Actually, if you’re comfortable with it, it’d be great if you would. Tracking your weight will help us to get a better idea of your true baseline. Does that sound okay to you?

Client: Yeah, I think so. But I really want to lose weight now.

Coach: I get it. It’s really hard to wait, but it’ll be worth it. Scale weight can fluctuate a lot, so it helps to look at the trend over time opposed to just one point in time. Just know that if the trend isn’t moving downward over time, we’ll work together to determine the reason and then tweak the original plan.

Client: Yep. I can give that a try.

Coach: That’s great. And if you can’t, that’s okay. If this brings up negativity for you, we can switch to a different tracking method. Okay?

Client: Yup. Got it.

Focus on patterns.

No one improves in a consistent linear fashion. Usually, it’s a two steps forward, one step back process. An athlete might crush every single workout one week, lag the following week, only to return week three to hit another personal best.

See the chart below for a visual for someone interested in fat loss.

The following conversation shows how you might help drive this home.

Client: Ugh, my weight is all over the place! I gained 4 pounds in one day. How is that even possible? This is stressing me out.

Coach: I hear that. It’s actually totally normal for your weight to vary from day to day. My weight has gone up by as much as 5 pounds in 24 hours based on my hydration status alone. So let’s not worry about a number from just one day. Let’s pay attention to the overall trend.

Client: How does that work?

Coach: Well, we want to look at patterns—and use those patterns to make decisions. For example, when one of my clients stopped eating dinner in the dining room and instead started eating in front of the TV,  their weight trended up over time.

Another client struggled to sleep at night whenever they drank two cups of coffee instead of just one. In other words, we’re not looking at just one occurrence. We’re looking for a trend. Does that make sense?

Client: Yep, got it. That thing you said about coffee? Totally me.

Consider using a different tracking method.

If a client becomes more anxious despite your efforts to help them see measurements as feedback, it’s time to make some changes.

You might:

Ask your client to collect data, but not look at it. For example, some smart scales can be programmed to send data to the coach, but not display a weight to the client.

Run an experiment. Suggest your client part ways with an anxiety-producing tracking method for two weeks. During their break, they might track differently (or not at all).

Instead of using a sleep tracker, for example, they might track an energy rating, and sleep quality. Or, rather than trying to hit a specific heart rate during a workout, they could use Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE).

After two weeks, reassess. Did their anxiety go down?

Empower your client. You, as the coach, don’t have to know all the answers. So rather than immediately suggesting a different tracking method, you could put it back on your client. You might ask any of the following:

Don’t make it about you.

As much as possible, try to resist any urge to convert clients to your personal tracking solution.

Sure, your favorite tracking method might work great—for you.

And it might even help many of your clients.

But there will always be someone who doesn’t fit the mold. 

“As a coach, always consider that the opposite of your experience is possible,”  says Solovieva.

“If a smart tracker is the best thing that ever happened to you, be open to the idea that it could be harmful to someone else. And if trackers send you to a dark place, understand that they could actually work really well for some of your clients.”

In other words, know your personal bias, keep an open mind, listen deeply, and encourage clients to be a part of the decision-making process.

That way you’ll help clients discover the best tracking method for them—whether that entails lots of data or hardly any at all.

References

Click here to view the information sources referenced in this article.

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