How I support 1:1 clients without burning out with Christa Biegler, RD and Jenna DeKok, MS, RD

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I have my incredible co-pilot Jenna DeKok back to interview me and also provide invaluable insight. In this episode, we dive into how we evaluate and incorporate  ways to support ourselves as clinicians to prevent burnout. I talk about how my practice has evolved and what personally has helped when I've been extra crispy from burnout. We also talk about  my team’s individual strengths and how collectively leveraging them has enhanced our overall synergistic performance. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Find ways to support your nervous system
• Recognize your scope of practice & know when to refer
• Hire someone who is different than you
• Learn what works best for you
• Understand the strengths of your team and use them to your advantage!
• When is the best time to follow-up with clients?
• Get clear with your clients on expectations
• Having pre-made templates saves so much time!
• What modalities we added in our practice to support our client's nervous system

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ABOUT JENNA:
Jenna is a consulting registered dietitian via her business Nutritiously Jenna and associate practitioner at Less Stressed Life Nutrition. She started working with Christa in 2018 doing mentorship hours for her undergraduate degree. Since then, she's touched business operation roles, social media management, program content creation, and is currently working 1:1 with clients. Her passion for women's wellness came from her firsthand struggles with disordered eating that led to a variety of gut, hormone, and energy issues. This is ultimately why she loves to help women truly understand their bodies by diving deeper into the important but often not-so-talked-about areas of women's health!

WHERE TO FIND JENNA:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutritiouslyjenna/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
WORK WITH CHRISTA IN 2024: https://www.christabiegler.com/fss
You deserve to boost your energy, heal your body, & enjoy food again (WITHOUT restrictive diets, endless supplements, or generic programs that don’t actually help). You don’t have to remove more foods. You just have to find the root cause of your symptoms, so you can finally fix them — for good. (Yes, it’s possible!)

RESET IN SEDONA
For more info: https://www.christabiegler.com/resetinsedona
 A restorative wellness retreat for women who crave good food & adventure. Reset in Sedona is 4 days and 3 night of :

• Gorgeous retreat house with a serene nature vibe, creek/trail access and plenty of room to spread out
• Movement: Onsite yoga & red rocks hiking
• Nourishment: Whole foods & soul foods, hydration and savvy supplementation provided + private chef
• Integrative breathwork & bodywork for clarity and purpose
• Adventure: vortex hike and an ATV adventure
  

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Christa Biegler: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down. We're over medicated and underserved. At The Less Stressed Life, we're a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:26] Christa Biegler: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:00:44] Christa Biegler: All right. Today on the Less Stress Life, I am joined once again by my co-pilot in practice the other RD that works behind the scenes with clients. She and I share our client loads. Actually this is the whole point of this conversation. Part of it is like, how do we support one-on-one clients without burning out?

[00:01:01] Christa Biegler: We divide and conquer a little bit, but a whole lot of other things we're gonna unwrap for you today. So Jenna is going to be a co-host with me. She's gonna help interview. We're gonna be going through how we support clients, our one-on-one clients without burning out. One of the things that we know is that there is a need for high quality one-on-one work for people to do good work that's not trashy, templated work cookie cutter crap out there.

[00:01:23] Christa Biegler: And so we feel actually really committed and called to it, but it doesn't come without cost. It is actually a lot of work to work with people. I think anyone who works with people can be very drained. I always tell our clients like, don't be mad at your provider. They want to make a difference in the world, that's why they became a doctor or whatnot.

[00:01:40] Christa Biegler: But they're probably struggling with adrenal function as well. And they may not have the tools in their toolbox to deal with it because conventionally we just don't have a lot of good tools in our toolbox to deal with adrenal dysfunction which is a whole different thing. 

[00:01:54] Christa Biegler: And Jenna brought up that on episode 2 43 of the Less Stress Life podcast, we had Dr. Tammy Chang, who was a pediatric oncologist and hematologist, which is heavy. That's heavy, and she actually has pivoted and now works with burned out MDs, I think primarily. And on that podcast she talked about how 70 6% of providers are burned out.

[00:02:16] Christa Biegler: This is a topic I really care about 

[00:02:18] Christa Biegler: the end, like I am actually unnaturally obsessed with this topic in a good way. I think it's really important that people are not crispy, that they're not burned out because you can't do good work when you're burned out. So in this episode, we're gonna unpack the steps that were taken in our practice to not be burned out, and how we regularly evaluate that.

[00:02:36] Christa Biegler: I don't know if we'll get through every single detail of what we do. I think there's a lot we could unpack here. But one of the things I wanna start doing on the podcast, on this channel that'll be, this'll be on YouTube as well, is that we wanna just start being generous with clinical pearls and things that we've found in practice or that really work well for us because I think that success leaves clues and if we can help someone else be less burned out, then we're making a difference in the world.

[00:02:59] Christa Biegler: Welcome Jenna, thank you for co-hosting with, for interviewing with me again this second week in a row.

[00:03:04] Christa Biegler: And where do we wanna start?

[00:03:07] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Yeah, so maybe you could talk about, 'cause you were just sharing with me a message you got from another clinician just wanting to chat about burnout and even just working with clients, what that can sometimes lead to

[00:03:18] Christa Biegler: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:03:19] Christa Biegler: And part of, I would say this just made this episode feel even more necessary. Last week we announced something that I've been wanting to do and practicing to do for years, which is host retreats. I think retreats are an essential piece, and this episode's not about that, but I think retreats are an essential part of not being burned out.

[00:03:35] Christa Biegler: Personally. Retreats are just a place where you go away, reset, reconnect, and there's different outcomes for each retreat. I go to a lot of them. I've hosted a ton of different types of them, so I'm really excited about doing this wellness retreat for women who like good food and adventure, but also there's a big mix of nervous system stuff in there.

[00:03:51] Christa Biegler: and I had another clinician reach out to me and I asked her what she wanted to get outta the retreat and she said. I want to learn how to like people again. And there was several other things she said. And part of my practice feels stuck in helping people understand the connection between stored emotion and disease and how can I help people be okay in their feelings.

[00:04:09] Christa Biegler: And I was like, what an interesting, there's lot of cool stuff to unpack there. And I'm like, I could've written that not very long ago. Honestly, and I have a lot of feelings 

[00:04:17] Christa Biegler: about it, which I won't fully unpack here. But been there because when you are really burned out, you're, you just wanna kind of climb in a hole.

[00:04:24] Christa Biegler: And our tendency is to numb. Mine was, my tendency was to numb, like, just scroll. So if you've ever, if you feel seen there, then great. You're probably good. Let's keep talking about this. 

[00:04:34] Christa Biegler: One thing I would say for her is, the farther you get along in health stuff or healthcare, I feel, the more you realize that stress is such a big piece of it, which is why it's so serendipitous and weird that I named the podcast back in 2017, the Less Stressed Life. I was just using a word that was a synonym for inflammation.

[00:04:51] Christa Biegler: And how did I know that it was gonna come so full circle in so many different ways, right? and we'll talk about what that means, like how we incorporate stress and nervous system stuff in the practice. Because it kind, it's like we can fill in the mineral depletions all we want, which we talked about on the last episode, but if you don't correct how you're running on cortisol, then it actually doesn't shift that much and you just have to keep doing it forever.

[00:05:12] Christa Biegler: It's pretty, it sucks. It's not, it's like a thing that has to click inside. So one thing I said to her is there is a point where it's like you have to decide it's . Is this in my scope of practice and is it my responsibility to take care of someone's nervous system for them? And 

[00:05:29] Christa Biegler: I'm not, 

[00:05:29] Christa Biegler: that's not a cop out.

[00:05:30] Christa Biegler: It's just like sometimes you have to be okay with what you can provide to people and what you are not providing to people at this time. 

[00:05:37] Christa Biegler: Even if you want to grow. And that's actually where I am, is I have tools I use for nervous system in my practice. I don't have everything. I wasn't trained in that way initially.

[00:05:45] Christa Biegler: Right. I find so much fulfillment in the things we do for nervous system, and we'll talk more about that. , but I don't have every tool in the toolbox and that's okay. 

[00:05:54] Christa Biegler: 'cause there's a lot, 

[00:05:55] Christa Biegler: and most of 'em aren't regulated. Meaning not like nervous system regulation. It's like when we think about our nervous system, the thing we're most familiar with is, I'm gonna go to therapy, I'm gonna go to talk therapy.

[00:06:04] Christa Biegler: Like, this is what people are calm like, it's like, yep, I recognize it. It's almost like blood work. When we talk about labs, it's like, yep, I understand blood work, right? , people understand therapy, but there's actually a lot of other tools and modalities, however. 

[00:06:15] Christa Biegler: And I'm not saying it should be regulated.

[00:06:17] Christa Biegler: It's a wild west. 

[00:06:18] Christa Biegler: Like you don't know if you're gonna go see someone and that modality iss gonna work and, or it's like our last episode we talked about. I can tell you what test I use, but it's, there's also a kind of a disservice to doing that because sometimes people go order the test and then they're not really having an interpreted Right.

[00:06:31] Christa Biegler: And I was having this conversation with someone. I'm having come in a guest, I'm having come in to do some coaching with our clients. And she does. A type of modality and people can go do like pretend certification, well, whatever. They can do these certifications for like $10 online. That's not the same as someone who's gone to do like over a month, much more than a month of in-person training and now trains clinicians, right?

[00:06:55] Christa Biegler: So there's a wild west aspect, and so I can't unwrap all of those pieces. But what's cool is the more one beautiful thing is we have . lOnger term, maybe that's something we should jump into 

[00:07:07] Christa Biegler: next. We have a midterm long-term. Like we don't have a really short-term relationship with clients.

[00:07:14] Christa Biegler: They're not gonna come in and have one appointment with us and be over. That's just not how we function. 'cause everyone knows that doesn't work

[00:07:20] Christa Biegler: so we have a, at least enough of a relationship with our clients. so we can have conversations like this, which is the beautiful thing because usually this isn't gonna come up on the first or second if the conversation is, I want to help someone understand the connection between emotion stored in the body.

[00:07:35] Christa Biegler: That may not come up on the first or second consult, least not the way we operate, because we're usually like jumping into labs. But it may come up in other conversations. It may come up in some of the other touch points we do with clients and may come up later on when I see them, I'm like, Hey, have you thought about this thing?

[00:07:49] Christa Biegler: Let me show you this chart and how this can be and how do you feel about that? whAt do you think about, like, what do you think or what do you feel about that? Are you open to that? I know that I'm not really the person who's going to help you necessarily move that out of the body. I do technically the, one of the modalities we use can move emotions.

[00:08:07] Christa Biegler: I'm not gonna pretend to be an all moving person at this. Point. So I don't know if that helped. But that was a message I got last week that just reminded me 

[00:08:15] Christa Biegler: that we're all dealing with the same stuff in our practice and we have more in common than we do apart, or that we, than we don't. 

[00:08:23] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And I think huge to recognize, like, as again, you noted practitioners, we wanna help people like. But also recognizing what's in our scope of practice. Do we need to refer

[00:08:34] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: possibly or if we do wanna like expand our toolbox or how we serve people, at what point, yeah.

[00:08:40] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Are we best set up for success doing that? And that kind of leads into what are the two questions you ask whenever you're looking to create something new or you feel that's gonna help you create or expand upon your current offerings, 

[00:08:53] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I feel like that's always It's exciting when you wanna expand, do something new, but it also can be a little intimidating because it's like, do I have the capacity at the moment

[00:09:03] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: to expand to honestly just create something new.

[00:09:06] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Like creation is its own thing in and of itself. so would just love your thoughts on this.

[00:09:12] Christa Biegler: Yes. 

[00:09:13] Christa Biegler: And to speak to something that you just said, which is like when you're trying to make a decision on who to refer out to. This all kind of culminates into one place. Let me, I'll just use a personal story. I got my mineral analysis results done, I think in 2020, and it showed I was not in great shape mineral wise, like I had depleted them under stress, and that was a little bit of a wake up call.

[00:09:37] Christa Biegler: I was open to it, but it was a little bit of a wake up call. Around the same time I have this friend. And I very much respect her in the personal development and coach space. Now, I hate the word life coach personally. 'cause again, sometimes there's certain words that give us connotations. I know this woman, I trust her.

[00:09:54] Christa Biegler: I said, I'm gonna work with you. We're gonna do this life coaching thing. Even, I hate calling it that, I call it like mental drama work. 'cause we all have it. And I, and she, her, the way her program was set up was six months, every single week hour call. And I was like, I don't actually really have time for this , which is like nervous system, red flag 1 0 1.

[00:10:14] Christa Biegler: I don't really have time to work on this , but I'm okay. I'm gonna come. I'm like, not gonna be a pain in the ass. I'm gonna follow your lead. You're the expert in this area. we're gonna go ahead and meet, even though I think it's too much . And so I meet with her and it's so funny 'cause every single week there was something just taking up Rent-free space in my brain that she just.

[00:10:32] Christa Biegler: Mathematically fixed with the cognitive behavioral triangle model. Like she was just very skilled at putting the thought into place and like helping me course correct. And the result of that process was that I became a different person to the point where my colleagues, like the girls that I had grown up with in functional medicine, like we worked together for this celebrity influencer back in like 2016.

[00:10:54] Christa Biegler: And then we've just been . Going on trips and conferences together ever since, and we're our pack. They're like yeah, you have changed . And I started talking slower. Throughout that process and a lot of other nutritional interventions, like I was able to replete my minerals actually.

[00:11:10] Christa Biegler: But I felt a visceral change in my nervous system, in my heart and my body. And I desperately wanted to give that to people, but I can't give them. That, like, that's not up to me to give that, to bestow that I can try to explain that a little bit, like in a nutshell, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to talk about it right here, but I can explain it to them, but in transparency, I can't refer she's not the right fit for everyone. Right. And it was $10,000 to work with her. 

[00:11:39] Christa Biegler: THat's not accessible to a lot of people. And to be honest, it like also gave me a slight coronary right. At the time. Right. And so it's like, and that's, it's all fine in Dandy and whatever, but my point is like.

[00:11:50] Christa Biegler: It's hard to know who to refer to. So sometimes I would bring these experts into my practice and have them do guest coaching sessions with my clients. But referring people to other good clinicians to help them with nervous system work is still an area of opportunity for us where I don't have.

[00:12:08] Christa Biegler: The absolute robust referral network. Like I don't have someone I can refer every per single person to. So your question was if we're gonna create something, what are the two questions we asked? And to be honest, these questions came out of my work with this coach. She actually only asked me the first, I talked about this on the interview with Nick PAGs about last month, which was like the power of good questions.

[00:12:29] Christa Biegler: And I shared this story a little bit, but essentially I remember. As we do in business, Let me tell you the problem. I'm like, I'm working all the time. I'm like burning out. I love serving my clients in this way, but this isn't sustainable like this. There is like a clear burnout path and I'm headed right to it, right?

[00:12:46] Christa Biegler: Like I love these people, but I am crispy and that I don't show up well for my family, 

[00:12:52] Christa Biegler: right? And I guarantee that. People should be able to resonate with this sentiment. I guarantee it , it's just, it's a common situation. It's like you can do only so much. You can only see so much one-on-one and deeply pour out before you must refill the cup.

[00:13:10] Christa Biegler: Right? And so that's really a conundrum because it's how do you serve people? Without burning out, without just dramatically reducing the caseload, whatever. So we were trying to figure out how do I refigure this to still give people great results without being burned out? And so the two questions I remember, we were like coming up with how do I do this thing?

[00:13:30] Christa Biegler: And then she said, oh, I see the problem here. She said, it's that you don't think that X, y, Z thing that you're working on has value. Your only job is to come up with, if I have this person with this problem, what is the absolute best way to serve them? That's all you have to do. And it was like a light bulb went off.

[00:13:51] Christa Biegler: Because I work like my brain likes a game, and understanding th myself is 

[00:13:56] Christa Biegler: a magical thing in life. Like I know that I thrive on understanding. Like making it a game , and like, let me accomplish something. Let me like hit a level. So when she did that, it unlocked something massive inside me. I was like, oh, perfect.

[00:14:10] Christa Biegler: I know exactly how to do that. Like if I want people to correct their food sensitivities, which is actually what I'm really, what I really care about is like not over restricting, not enjoying life, enjoying food, and just having, 

[00:14:21] Christa Biegler: just enjoying your life. The end, right. Without being all 

[00:14:23] Christa Biegler: stressed out about your health and nutrition and food.

[00:14:26] Christa Biegler: If I know I want people to correct their food sensitivities without unnecessary restriction and improve their energy, which I feel like were like the main things that people were coming for underneath everything else. Like even if you're coming from eczema, you might be coming in and saying like having issues around food stuff.

[00:14:40] Christa Biegler: Right. So I knew I wanted to correct those things and all I had to do with was come up with like the exact way I would do that if I, someone walked in the door and had that issue. 

[00:14:48] Christa Biegler: Even though there's nuance and variables, right? Like we talked about that last episode. Like, oh, we might use stool testing, we might do this.

[00:14:55] Christa Biegler: A lot of it, you still like suss out in one-on-one, right? You come up with what do I do based on this person? So the question was how do I serve that person best? And then knowing that was the lens, was really awesome. But then I added a second lens, which was, but doesn't allow us to be burned out because if you don't have that second piece

[00:15:15] Christa Biegler: like we have a very natural people pleasing nature because we don't wanna be uncomfortable. People pleasing is really about not feeling comfortable or being uncomfortable, which is pretty much human, the end . And so just being aware of that, so we often are trying to do what we think people want we're over anticipating and being anxious about it versus instead like, what are they actually coming?

[00:15:35] Christa Biegler: Like what is statistically like factually when people walk in the door, what are they actually asking you for? then also how do you serve them best in that way? And then how do I not be burned out? So the answer to that is different for everybody and that's fine. Like I have come up with how we answer that question.

[00:15:53] Christa Biegler: Or how I think we're answering that question and we reconsider it all the time. So one nice thing we do is we do stop every quarter and every year, which we've been, we're on like year two of doing this and we're in just a bazillion percent better place because of it. by stopping to think, to reevaluate, to throw crap out.

[00:16:10] Christa Biegler: That doesn't matter. 'cause a lot of times is in, especially in entrepreneurship and as achievers and all the things really common, as you start to learn about stuff, there's a lot of shiny object syndrome. And like squirrel brain. And I think Jenna's been a real witness to that for me. And somehow she's still here and I'm really thankful for that.

[00:16:28] Christa Biegler: 'cause she's really grounding, like we are very different in a beautiful way. It's 

[00:16:33] Christa Biegler: actually very beautiful synergistic thing that I didn't even realize for a very long time. Like it was more recently in the last couple of years that I was like, oh, this is really good

[00:16:40] Christa Biegler: Thank God she fills in all these gaps and deficiencies I have.

[00:16:43] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Important to highlight though, how

[00:16:45] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: even you're maybe looking to hire and you're expanding your practice, you're not kinda looking for someone who's exactly the same as you overall.

[00:16:55] Christa Biegler: Guess how we figured that out? I used to have this practitioner in my business who I love. 

[00:16:59] Christa Biegler: I absolutely love her, and I had another person, and I don't remember what her whole role is, but she basically did virtual assistant work and I hired her because she reminded me of myself, right? We hire people who are like ourselves and I will say our clients that hire us, like when I take on one-on-one clients, they can very commonly be just like me, which is okay, that works out fine. But in this business, one thing I learned it was in the middle of restructuring a lot of things, the clinician that I'd hired to help out we had some similar things, which was not a problem technically.

[00:17:32] Christa Biegler: , but it just allowed me, like I am programmed where it would be easy for me to just like keep doing things to burnout and to work into the 

[00:17:38] Christa Biegler: ground. And maybe she had some of those like similar tendencies and it's all fine and whatever, but if you hire someone who's exactly the same as you, then you have all the same positive traits.

[00:17:47] Christa Biegler: And so if you kinda hire someone different, then they can fill in your deficiencies. That's the point. Right. So Jenna I know you're gonna ask me a question about this, right , about like, how do our differences actually create a perfect hole? I would say. So I'll give you some examples. If I did one of my favorite exercises, which is write down what's filling my cup and what empties in my cup.

[00:18:07] Christa Biegler: Text responses to messages. . I have a ebb and flow energy ability for it. Like, I like it to an extent. But one of the most innocent things that people say that is just not true is I have a quick question and I was like, have you ever met me? No. It is not a quick question for me because my brain just wants to dig into the deeper level of it and your superficial question.

[00:18:32] Christa Biegler: Okay, let me give you the dumbest example, but it works is like, Hey how much vitamin D should I take for my blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, . I'm sorry, that is not the question. 

[00:18:41] Christa Biegler: The question first of all is can we also talk about what would happen if you took vitamin D too long, or the downstream effects and how it needs to be in synergy and when it would be appropriate to take vitamin D conventionally, functionally, and when it's not appropriate to take vitamin D, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:18:56] Christa Biegler: And like, what's the indication and maybe what's something you could do better? Do you see how I like spiral out? And that is, and if you don't like that about me yeah. Whatever. Right? , 

[00:19:04] Christa Biegler: I just, I what is 

[00:19:06] Christa Biegler: what you get here, right? 

[00:19:06] Christa Biegler: One of my favorite clients who I've known . Forever. I remember she wrote something somewhere one time and she said, listen to Krista's podcast.

[00:19:14] Christa Biegler: If you like the podcast, you'll probably like working with her. If you don't like the podcast, you may not. Right. And it was like, there you are, right? It's just if someone asks me a simple question for me, it's not a simple response, unfortunately. It is a little bit of a personality flaw and I'm okay with it.

[00:19:30] Christa Biegler: So I love to have a real conversation with someone. 'cause then I can pick up what's useful for them. We can actually have a real conversation. I learned the I realized this right as I was refiguring things, and I realized that I really prefer to talk to people. And so instead of constantly messaging people, I said, Hey, I'm gonna be available every single week for q and a.

[00:19:52] Christa Biegler: If you wanna come and let's talk about this. Some of these questions I can answer some things in Messenger, that's fine, but sometimes it's like, there's a lot more to say here that I would love to share with you and I would love to like get more feedback as we go. So in short, I am a dialogue person.

[00:20:07] Christa Biegler: I know that I about myself, I love that about myself, and it's fine. Jenna. Is totally great with dialogue, but she has a tendency toward messaging and it's great and she's likes it. It doesn't like make her feel burned out. Like it makes me feel burned out because I feel like I can't say everything I wanna say in a message necessarily.

[00:20:28] Christa Biegler: And in transparency, I've had people misinterpret, have you ever like sent a text message to someone and it like, got misinterpreted? I've absolutely had that in practice where someone misinterpreted. 'cause I'm a black and white gal. So I might just like, answer something really quickly and move on.

[00:20:41] Christa Biegler: I'm not like really like sweet and like cheerful. And it's not intentional. It's not intentional. It's just like, I'm like, let me answer that and move on. Right. And so people have misinterpreted it that it's like not nice and cheerful. Whereas literally when Jenna writes, it's like nice and cheerful. I, it's just her personality like oozes out into her writing.

[00:21:00] Christa Biegler: It's just how it is. So she does really well with messaging stuff and I like to talk, so to help not be burned out when people first come into the program. They can access us both in different capacities, but at the very beginning, I might have them message Jenna with certain questions and I might have them come to me with dialogue questions in weekly q and a.

[00:21:22] Christa Biegler: And again, we'll meet people wherever they are. It's not like a hard, fast rule on anything. It's like we will meet people where they are. The main thing we always say is like, if you need help, ask, please. We're gonna also gonna be checking in on you, right? 'cause we also don't want anyone lost between the cracks.

[00:21:36] Christa Biegler: So we can make anything work, but I just try to also share with clients like, Hey, this is how I really love to serve you 

[00:21:43] Christa Biegler: and this is the best way for me to not to lose a question. And this is the best way. There's like, the way to get the best version of me, and I just am really honest about that because I also want people to realize that there's plenty of clinicians out there that are burned out.

[00:21:55] Christa Biegler: And so that can affect their experiences that they have with practitioners. And I will say. A couple of years ago I mean you heard my mineral results in 2020 were not in a good place. So before 2020 I would say like I was more a more burned out clinician back then. As we continue in practice, I have longer term just friendly relationships with my clients than I maybe didn't even have prior to 2020 because I was I had to have such boundaries 'cause I was, I just had too much right on the plate and somehow, and we've shifted it now.

[00:22:26] Christa Biegler: Where it's like we just don't have that issue. And we have clear, boundaries that don't feel bad at all. So did I cover that, do you think?

[00:22:34] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And I think it'd be cool to cover too. So one thing we change up or not even the cadence, but who sees who during what client calls. So initially, right away we're reviewing labs. I love the details, like organizing your notes so you can very, I don't even know how I would describe it. Just quickly interpret your labs, get the key takeaways, that sort of thing, get you started with your protocol whereas your strength just falls in checking in with people, highlighting those key takeaways.

[00:23:00] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So I don't know if you wanna add more in regards

[00:23:02] Christa Biegler: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 

[00:23:03] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: been very serving.

[00:23:05] Christa Biegler: Yeah. We talked about this in the last episode where we use mineral analysis. So most of the time, not every time, 'cause people are 

[00:23:12] Christa Biegler: in unique individuals, so we change it if we need to, but. A lot of the time, the first appointment's gonna be stool test 'cause it makes the most sense.

[00:23:19] Christa Biegler: There's a lot of reasons for that. We are predictably know when it's gonna come back, et cetera. And that's actually the first step of integrative process is correcting the imbalances. The second step is really repleting nutrients technically. So we personally do hTMA repletion second. And also there's just a lot there.

[00:23:33] Christa Biegler: And we can always, like, sometimes if we have that information earlier or I can just see between the lines and don't even need to see the test, I may start people on that support. So there's lots of ways to like, make sure you're filling in gaps as soon as possible. 'cause remember we like to be efficient.

[00:23:46] Christa Biegler: Like, I don't like to waste any time. Let just like. Attempt to get you feeling better as fast as possible. But all that to say, Jenna actually does a better job in reviewing those labs. 'cause you know what my personality is if I've done something a zillion times, I just may not find joy in it anymore.

[00:24:00] Christa Biegler: And so I have reviewed the labs a ton of times, so I bring a lot of nice clinical expertise to the lab. 

[00:24:07] Christa Biegler: So when Jenna and I round on a weekly basis about clients and if she has any thoughts or like, we riff off each other like, Hey. Or we might wanna just talk through one if it didn't come out the way we think.

[00:24:16] Christa Biegler: We may just like make sure we're aligned on the plan. So I have clinical expertise, but Jenna's actually gonna do a better job going through the lab. And I think you'll see this, I think people have this experience with their providers. Let's pretend you go to a doctor and he sees 15 to 25 people that day.

[00:24:31] Christa Biegler: Do you think he has time to go through every detail of your lab? Absolutely not. And if he is, he's a unicorn and bless him or her, right? Like, thank God. But if you've gotten really good at doing something for so long, I. you may tend to mentally stop being as detailed 'cause you feel, for me, I feel like I repeat myself and my clients probably have heard me say that like sometimes in group calls I'm like, I'm not sure if I've already told you this or I'm not sure if I'm repeating myself.

[00:24:55] Christa Biegler: 'cause I feel a little bit repetitive sometimes. Which is why I always enjoy high level questions. Like if someone has done a little bit of a, some work before they get, 'cause we give people a lot of ways that they can learn stuff. Let's pretend you're a really busy person. You don't really have time to

[00:25:07] Christa Biegler: Get into all the material, whatever, we'll meet you where you are, you're gonna get results. It's all fine and dandy. And then I've got some people who wanna know everything. We've also got just like the perfect thing for them too. 'cause like I've got the deep level stuff. So people go through the deep level stuff, they start to ask higher quality questions.

[00:25:23] Christa Biegler: And I just mean like, they already get the basics. So now they can ask fancier higher quality questions. And I just think they get a lot more out of working together. But back to your point, I literally said to someone the other day, she was like. Well, I say this all the time actually. They're like, Hey, are my blah, blah, blah results ready?

[00:25:39] Christa Biegler: And sometimes we have people who have different, they have like a follow-up HTMA for some reason. And I said, yeah, Jenna is gonna do that on whatever day and she'll do a better job than I will the end, and so I, what's really cool is now we're divine it and conquering, which is all beautiful because now I'm not doing something that I don't enjoy as much as I used to.

[00:25:59] Christa Biegler: But I still like talking through it with her and she likes doing it, so Yay, . Thank goodness she likes to do that. And what I really like to do is I like to see clients about that third, fourth appointment and try to pull things together because . They're doing well. But if they were seen for a GI test three months prior or an HTMA two or three months prior, they may not remember all the pieces there and there's more you can pull out from that.

[00:26:22] Christa Biegler: So one thing I'd love to do is like, go back through that, pull out the big picture pieces. 'cause I want people to understand what they're doing. I want them to understand the process that they're going through, what results are gonna give them, what results, et cetera. That's how we. Play to our strengths by dividing and conquering.

[00:26:39] Christa Biegler: And I'm just so thankful and I, I just try to remind our clients, 'cause usually when they're coming in the door, they don't know Jenna of course, right? 'cause I'm usually the face of the podcast or whatever. And I talk to them first, but I try to get them . I try to get them to know Jenna right away.

[00:26:51] Christa Biegler: And once they meet her, they're always like, oh, she's so great and this isn't. And so it's just great for me to have someone else who can also help do some of the answering of the questions. Because I want people, and it's valuable to them. It's like. Guess what? And sometimes we go on vacation every once in a while, right?

[00:27:08] Christa Biegler: And so it's really nice to have someone else there who can support if someone else is on a trip or is busy or whatever, it's fine. We have a flow that is really working well for us and now it allows us to have a really predictable cadence of how we know how many appointments we're gonna usually have a month.

[00:27:25] Christa Biegler: It varies occasionally, right? But now we know that, and that is very freeing because now we know, we've evaluated how many clients do I see per day before I start to get burned out. 

[00:27:36] Christa Biegler: Right, or what's in my like, ideal client load. And we've actually gone through that a ton.

[00:27:40] Christa Biegler: And to refer back to when you take on someone very much like you, I was seeing a whole bunch of clients per day and I thought I was doing a good job at it. And it wasn't like I, I thought I was fine. Right? If you're good at like, as Jenna has said in our education materials before. Running on cortisol feels good until it doesn't

[00:28:00] Christa Biegler: You just go and everything is fine. And you have a high energy attitude and you just have hours and hours of clients. And so that actually has a really high burnout rate actually. So we've now evaluated when is that point where we feel like more not good at the end of the day?

[00:28:16] Christa Biegler: Okay. Let's try to stay under that and be careful with that, because that's in best service to our clients. To be here in good energy, right? And to be there fully present for them. So there's a lot, there's actually just so much that goes on behind the scenes 

[00:28:29] Christa Biegler: to try to just take care of our nervous systems, of our energy, because we're really mirrors to our people, right? .

[00:28:36] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And think one thing we've also evaluated is just how often or when is like the best time to follow up with a client. So we get

[00:28:44] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: you on your protocol, your supplements will. It's gonna take maybe a week for you to even get your supplements, then get started and when are, can we actually expect results?

[00:28:53] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So I every practitioner is different with this,

[00:28:56] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: but do you feel as though you found a sweet spot timeline in terms of

[00:29:00] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: when's a time to follow up with clients?

[00:29:04] Christa Biegler: Yes. And this also came personally with just experience. so I would shop from the rooftops that my clients have been my best educators. I actually care. I mostly only care what works for people. I really don't care about a lot of other things. I just care what works for people. 'cause all people care about is their results.

[00:29:20] Christa Biegler: . very early on in practice, I probably saw clients every week or every other week. Maybe it was every I can't remember because I was doing different things and I was doing food intervention, so it was like different. So there was some things around that. Like when you first do a food intervention, there's a half-life of certain immune system cells that are 10 to 14 days.

[00:29:38] Christa Biegler: So you follow up after 10 to 14 days of intervention executed. I learned through a lot of experience and literally just seeing the common denominators and client after client, that once you start a GI protocol, usually you start to see GI changes and some other changes two to three weeks after they get to the full protocol.

[00:29:56] Christa Biegler: Almost always, in fact, very easy takeaway here is that three weeks of an effective change is usually long enough. This is why, like I'm horrified when people have been on. . The same protocol for six months without any change. Like when they come in from someone else, I'm like, oh my gosh, who thought this was a good idea?

[00:30:15] Christa Biegler: If something's not working, why would you just keep doing it the same way? So I find three weeks is a pretty good sweet spot. Two to three weeks, depending on the change. I've actually written up an entire spreadsheet for our clients to say 'cause expectations. Clear expectations solve a lot of problems.

[00:30:33] Christa Biegler: Pretty much the end, like the only reason people ever get annoyed is like unclear. Like they have a mismatch of expectations on reality. And so to solve that problem, I've like created a whole thing where it's like, this is usually when you would see these changes. This is usually when you see this changes.

[00:30:49] Christa Biegler: Here are the exceptions to that rule. And so it gives them a little bit more of a mathematical evaluation so that they can also feel good. And sometimes people come in just last week someone's like, Hey, can you let me know where I am on this timeline? I was like, you are fine.

[00:31:01] Christa Biegler: And I went, obviously the answer was a thousand times longer than that, but I went through a lot of variability in her case and said, don't worry, I will let you know if you're off timeline.

[00:31:12] Christa Biegler: I am very interested in it. You can detach from the timeline. I will stay on top of your timeline. all that to say what is the right interval? Usually two to three weeks for an intervention to see the change. But like you said, it can take people a while to get supplements. Now we've been able to expand to support several countries internationally, which is it feel, it's hard to be honest.

[00:31:35] Christa Biegler: more challenging for us and that's why we didn't do it for a long time. And we didn't really have the ability, we didn't have the things we, now, things are getting easier to get to people, but you still deal with shipping stuff, we are following up at one month intervals typically. Me personally, if people get to six weeks, I'm like, there is way too many changes.

[00:31:54] Christa Biegler: It's too long for me. I don't like it. But every client is different and some people are really on top of getting their stuff and getting onboarded, and some are not. And we don't penalize people. We just are okay, well, this is normally when we'd see these changes or we'll just try to support them again.

[00:32:11] Christa Biegler: We just try to meet people wherever they are. So we do one month intervals. Sometimes I think three weeks would be even better, and then sometimes. schedules it at five weeks. 'cause we know, we base it around when are we gonna have this lab back to review and that and we try to just set up all of those expectations again.

[00:32:28] Christa Biegler: beFore it's like, here's what we're trying to get to before the next appointment. Because in our one-on-one appointments, We don't just do like education stuff. We're usually changing the intervention. We're changing the thing. So it's basically when can you change the thing so we can see the next level of intervention and change, right?

[00:32:45] Christa Biegler: And when, what's a normal time for us to be able to follow up to see those changes? So I attempt to put into our notes as much as possible. Here's when you can probably expect to see a change from that, right? And there's variables, right? If you're super depleted, it can vary it a little bit.

[00:32:58] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I'm gonna add even what I've found to be a game changer when we're talking about, like seeing clients prepping notes, this is out of left field but just having Something as basic as note templates or I have like this protocol reference document like saves you so much time in terms of prep.

[00:33:16] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: So even that little factor, even those little things that do over and over can be

[00:33:21] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: huge just preventing the burnout of typing up the same thing over and over again. Overall, 

[00:33:27] Christa Biegler: and what's wonderful. So Jenna's a very good. Again, she just has her own strengths. And I remember this reminds me of when you were like, can we write this down? Because I was just shooting from like my brain all the time. I was like, well, I'm gonna use, I feel like using this for this person and this feels like this would work really well.

[00:33:48] Christa Biegler: And she's like, can we write this down? So I can utilize this or like, have your brain on some paper or, those things. So it's like, yeah, for this type of case this, and this might work really nicely or whatever. And there's a lot of variables there. But I appreciate that she's done a really good job on.

[00:34:07] Christa Biegler: Data collection and data mining so that it makes her life easier. And then my life easier. 'cause I mean for sure I get sick of typing out the same crap and then I'm like, wait a second, I've typed this out like 10 times in the last 

[00:34:18] Christa Biegler: couple of weeks. Like we need to like write it down and I need to be able to copy paste it and then edit it. cause it can be a lot of stuff I have to write out. And then that just, I wanna have more time to talk to the person not writing 

[00:34:29] Christa Biegler: a bunch of crap out. .

[00:34:29] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: And I think people can, or misinterpreted that as that. Oh, then it's this cookie cutter protocol you're sharing with everyone. No, we are completely like customizing everything, but it's just that, again, that same thing you would type up over and over again,

[00:34:42] Christa Biegler: For example, there's a thing that's like under supplements and it's like generally start half the dose in a different product daily, one at a time.

[00:34:54] Christa Biegler: Generally right, like, and then go up to full dose. Because if you just throw everything all in at once, some chaos can ensue 

[00:35:02] Christa Biegler: the end. And so every single person needs to know that. So that yes, is in a template, but protocol wise, it's like there's a mix and match of things. A mix and match of things regardless. So definitely still customize 'cause like different things for different markers and then it's always a game of what's the minimum amount of things I can put you on that gives us the maximum result.

[00:35:22] Christa Biegler: It's the game. 

[00:35:23] Christa Biegler: It's the game. And I enjoy the game. So here we are doing the game. So you're right. 

[00:35:27] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: Awesome. Well, I feel that sums up everything we were gonna talk about at least today. But I feel honestly this could have like part two or even not even diving into the aspect of, as a practitioner, we find it so important to support our own nervous systems, but then

[00:35:41] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: also to support clients nervous system to see progress or, and they can have, yeah, just. Sooner successes is ultimately what we've been seeing. 

[00:35:51] Christa Biegler: Yeah. 

[00:35:52] Christa Biegler: I will offer a couple moments 

[00:35:54] Christa Biegler: about that, just a little bit. I would say so big picture, we want to impact people's immune systems. 'cause people wanna reduce their inflammation in a variety of ways that may express like skin issues. It may express like gut issues, it may express like fluctuating inflammatory water weight.

[00:36:11] Christa Biegler: It may look like low energy, right? Those are signs of some signs of inflammation, right? So if you wanna improve inflammation, you need to improve the immune system. If you wanna improve the immune system, you need to improve the things that talk to the immune system. There's lots of things that talk to the immune system or that inform, I like to say inform the immune system.

[00:36:28] Christa Biegler: But the two major arms we spend a lot of space in is one half of the arm is nervous system and the other half is nutrition. And underneath the nutrition umbrella is gut imbalances and toxic burden and nutrition, nutrient, repletion and all that. But the other piece is nervous system. So we start that.

[00:36:45] Christa Biegler: conversation immediately with clients. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You can totally reduce food sensitivities by just doing nervous system stuff first. And I occasionally, every once in a while I meet someone and I don't take them. I'm like, I want you to start doing it.

[00:37:02] Christa Biegler: You go do this , and then you can come back if you want. And I've had people email me like, I am a lot better. Thank you for . Saying that, thank you for forcing me, like not allowing me to step into this place. So we do that. And then one thing I did about a year ago, and I'll just talk about this really briefly, and that could be part of follow up.

[00:37:20] Christa Biegler: We could do a whole episode on nervous system stuff we do with clients and why we do that. 'cause there's going to be more to come. A hundred percent. One thing I do is have guest guests come in. But I decided to, I really like . facilitating breath work for my clients. And you might have your own connotations around that.

[00:37:37] Christa Biegler: I got tricked into doing breath work at an entrepreneur retreat one time. And the beautiful thing about it is it allows you to be the own expert here. And I think if, I hope this came play here, That's part of how we don't get burned out is like allowing us to go introspectively and like actually ask good questions of self.

[00:37:56] Christa Biegler: And so breath work, the type of breath work I'm doing has a little bit of good questions and there's music and there's a lot to say here. So I love doing this because for my clients that show up and do it, they're really enjoying it. It's a somatic practice that affects the feelings in their body and their nervous system.

[00:38:12] Christa Biegler: And the nervous system is informing the immune system. And so anyway, lots more to say about that, but. I'm thankful for the opportunity to be a different type of clinician for the clients. It's fun. It's a very different hat to wear, a very different seat to sit in and it feels really beautiful.

[00:38:30] Christa Biegler: It feels really great. It feels really, I love, I wanna just share how to client. A few weeks ago, and she said she went to the first session. She came in and she did done breath work before, and she said she wasn't really expecting anything, which is perfect, come in without expectation of yourself, right?

[00:38:46] Christa Biegler: But just be open. And she came in and she had this takeaway that she really felt like she needed to. wOrk on a relationship with someone in her family and she wanted to go on retreat with this person in the family. And then I saw her a few weeks later and she said I couldn't find a proper retreat, so I created one

[00:39:03] Christa Biegler: And so today I'm coming to Breathwork to help me get insight on this event that I've created, and I'm like. 

[00:39:10] Christa Biegler: Yes I'm so happy. Like it made, it brought me, 

[00:39:13] Christa Biegler: it's just really cool 'cause it's a very different outcome and it's just very fun. So another day, 

[00:39:19] Christa Biegler: Jenna, we will talk about nervous system modalities, how they came to be in the less stressed life,

[00:39:24] Christa Biegler: Nutrition practice and the results we see from it, and they're only gonna just keep being added to. So I'm excited about 

[00:39:33] Christa Biegler: that, and 

[00:39:33] Christa Biegler: I think that's something that's pretty cool for us is we have, like, we stop we have meetings, we talk about things, but we really care. We're really just open to, having a vision and a big picture mission.

[00:39:45] Christa Biegler: Moving toward that and constantly asking, are we even, is this even serving the client? Is this serving the mission? Is it serving the greater vision? And we're both just really open to like what's what the future holds? And we don't have to have it all figured 

[00:39:58] Christa Biegler: out. And that's really a cool place that feels really good in the nervous 

[00:40:01] Christa Biegler: system.

[00:40:02] Christa Biegler: So thank you so much for being a part of this and for asking me these questions today. Anything else you wanna add?

[00:40:07] Jenna DeKok, MS, RD: I don't think so.

[00:40:09] Christa Biegler: All right. Thanks you so much. 

[00:40:10] Christa Biegler: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life. That's review this podcast. com forward slash less stressed life.

[00:40:32] Christa Biegler: And you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.