Why you need a Health Coach:
Health coaching has become quite a newsworthy term these days. If you Google search “health coach,” you will find at least 50 health coaching programs that are new in the last few years looking to sign you up.
Contrary to what you might think, health coaching is much more than making sure you are eating your vegetables, taking your supplements, and getting out for some exercise. At the core of what makes health coaching so powerful is the work that goes into creating lasting behavior change. Without this, taking supplements and doing functional testing won’t really make a difference in your health.
We are headed into a new year (thank goodness!), and with the start of any new year there are many resolutions made around “getting healthy”. Those might include losing weight, getting back into exercise, doing a sugar detox, finally addressing nagging symptoms, or any number of life goals that crop up at this time of year. This is a highly repeatable pattern. This time of year we see gym memberships skyrocket, new exercise equipment purchased, new diets started, and a new commitment to health. It’s really a time of momentum, but harnessing that momentum for lasting change is the key to creating a lifelong lifestyle change.
We need to create habits that stick!
How do you do that? Well…here is where health coaching is an invaluable resource. As a Board Certified Integrative and Functional Medicine Health Coach, I have spent a lot of time studying and learning the tools to help you create behavior change. It’s not a lack of knowledge about what is or isn't healthy for us that keeps us stuck in unhealthy patterns, it’s really much more than that. For instance, most people know that eating fast food, being sedentary, and overly stressed is not good for our health. But it’s changing those behaviors that are our biggest barrier.
When I work with someone as a health coach we start out by getting to know one another. I want to learn about you as a person, what makes you tick?
Are you an all or nothing person or do you like to move cautiously?
What are your past successes and how did you get there?
What are your values and what is most important to you?
What are your habits and behaviors that serve or don’t serve you and make you who you are?
Learning about you and how you move through the world helps to establish some truly compelling goals and strategies to get you where you want to go.
Coaching is a partnership. I aim to meet you where you are and empower you to get where you want to go. This is accomplished with small micro-slices of change in the areas that you choose. This slow, one day at a time, work of shifting your habits and mindset allows you to achieve the lasting change you desire. I will teach you how to use tools that will create new neural pathways to allow you to create a lasting habit change.
We know that a healthy and flourishing life includes more than just nutrition and exercise. Our focus includes optimizing sleep (which, by the way, starts the moment you wake up), learning tools to reduce the stress response in the body, cultivating a sense of purpose in life if that isn’t present, discovering or fostering some sense of spirituality on a daily basis whether that includes organized fellowship or a walk in the woods.
Together we set goals that are achievable for you, reduce overwhelm, and move the ball forward each session with healthy habits. It’s the support you need until you can move motivation inward.
If you feel you have “fallen off the wagon” more times than you want to count, have a hard time maintaining health goals or want to optimize what you are already doing, health coaching is for you. Health coaching is really a partnership that involves a commitment on the client's part just as strongly as the commitment on the coach's part. This is the beauty of this symbiotic relationship and what will set the pace for lasting lifestyle change.
So are you ready to get started? Are you ready to invest in yourself to create the life and health you deserve with the support to help it stick this time?
It’s never been easier to get started. Dr. Emily and I have created a new online coaching program and we’d love to have you join us!