Coaching Facts
All your questions answered about the benefits of hiring a health coach and how I approach working one-on-one together.
What is an integrative health coach?
As an integrative health coach, I am a guide and mentor who provides support and encouragement in formulating a personal health and wellness practice that fits my client’s unique needs and lifestyle. I take a holistic approach with the aim of empowering personal responsibility in achieving overall health and wellbeing. I focus on the following in order to achieve success:
I identify what specific health empowerment issues my clients are facing (i.e. weight management, food cravings/constipation, chronic disease, sleep, hormonal imbalances, low energy levels, work/life balance, stress management to name a few).
Using a mindfulness and strength-based approach, I focus on behavioral choices that keep clients stuck and encourage them to create a mindset that investigates their past dietary and self-care motives so they can create new patterns that will achieve the balance they crave.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, my ultimate goal is to help my clients become self-motivated and confident when adopting healthy habits that are sustainable within their lifestyle.
I do not diagnose, suggest treatment plans or provide advice for treating medically-diagnosed dietary conditions, mental illness or chronic disease; however, I do provide support and accountability to those who have been diagnosed with chronic health issues (i.e. obesity, eating disorders, allergies, auto-immune, diabetes, IBS, Crohns, addiction, depression) and are working to initiate the everyday lifestyle changes needed to address such diagnoses.
List of benefits you’ll receive from health coaching:
Establish a list of health objectives and create a daily practice that works towards achieving them.
Discover/learn how to eat intuitively, how to choose the right food for your unique body, how to read and understand food labels and how the food you eat can impact your physical and emotional body.
Shift perspective about cravings so you can reframe your mindset to better understand how food makes you feel.
Develop a unique and do-able self-care practice (including exercise and mindfulness exercises) that fits into your daily life so that it doesn’t fall by the wayside.
Determine what obstacles have stood in the way of your success in the past and tackle each at the root cause so that your new lifestyle choices are sustainable over the long-term, as opposed to simply treating symptoms and hoping that something will change (i.e. the short-term).
What we aim to discover in our sessions together?
A health coaching session is a one-on-one conversation about you and about how to create an actionable plan to pursue your goals and enhance your practice on an ongoing basis. Within the outline of my programs, sessions are either weekly or bi-weekly and can be conducted virtually or in person. In person sessions can be in my office, in the studio or even outdoors in a quiet space. Every session is framed around the individuals needs in that moment but generally include the following topics:
Developing a powerful holistically-based formula for you to pursue on your journey to better health and a long-term sustainable wellness lifestyle.
Investigating how certain foods (primary and secondary), habits and patterns are effecting your progress.
Uncovering what has stopped you, slowed down your progress or kept you from having the body, health or energetic lifestyle you crave.
Creating a coping strategy to counter overwhelm and the chaos of everyday life. Chronic stress, anxiety and burnout are REAL and they manifest differently in each person’s body and mind in unique ways. Everyone needs an individualized plan to identify and counter the effects of these ailments on a regular basis.
My four critical truths to creating a wellness lifestyle
1. Holistic health and well-being must be approached from an individual’s perspective and can only be pursued and practiced, not necessarily obtained. A common misconception I made in my past is that being “healthy” is a goal that I could achieve or something that if I worked hard enough, I could “obtain.” But the critical truth is, being “healthy” and thriving is really an ongoing, lifetime, CONSCIOUS PRACTICE that one must engage in every day.
As a coach, what healthy looks like for one person will look very different for another. And, what health looks like for one person right now might look completely different for that same person one year from now. In other words, living a “healthy” life is personalized and constantly shifting. This is why health is a practice. A practice that must suit the individual and change as that individual changes.
Being healthy in the truest sense is also a reflection of where you are in every aspect of your life so practicing a health lifestyle must be holistic in nature - not just about diet, exercise or illness. Family, relationships, career, finances, home environment, habits, self-care and spirituality all play an equal part. Any person could be free of disease, eat the perfect diet and exercise every single day and still feel “unhealthy” because something else in their life is imbalanced.
2. Mistakes and imbalance are GOOD things. It is not uncommon for most people (in fact, ALL people) to be critical of their poor diet choices, their supposed lifestyle failures and/or their physical and emotional scars. It is usually the shame or guilt that they carry around these criticisms that block them from forward motion.
But the critical truth is that no one is perfect. The only way through this narrative is to embrace – NOT CONDEMN – the inevitable messiness of imperfection.
In formulating a self-care practice, every mistake can be viewed as a learning opportunity if and only if you shift your mindset towards self-compassion and lean into curiosity. I liken this process to being a scientist who specializes in you. Because when you ask better questions, its definitely possible to avoid the self-pity and jump more fully into the opportunity.
Further, it’s important to remember that in any structure, true balance cannot be realized without first experiencing imbalance. In the human body, balance is supposed to be fluid – ever changing and ever possible. Imbalance is just a necessary piece of the equation.
3. You really are your own expert. Everyone, whether they realize it or not, has been conditioned from a young age to look outside of themselves for the answers when it comes to many things, including our own health and well-being. We often value and rely on external guidance and forget to listen to our own instincts.
It is true that external guidance has its place – but the critical truth is there really is no substitute for INNER WISDOM.
Training to listen to your own inner guidance muscle and trusting yourself is just as important as the amount of information you take in when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle.
Having said that, I believe …
4. Doing anything alone is HARD. I truly believe that everyone has everything they need inside of themselves to get where they want to be on their unique health journey. But the critical truth is that it can feel impossible to tap into that power if you cannot see the behavior/thought patterns that are holding you back. Anything can feel insurmountable if you are in it alone and feel stuck.
Another person’s INSIGHT AND PERSPECTIVE can work to support the efforts you consciously and unconsciously know you are meant to pursue. A little nudge and a voice to cheer you on is what connects people to success and ultimately, to each other.
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is a large part of how I approach developing a healthy diet. It is a philosophy that promotes the idea that you are the expert of your body and its hunger signals. It is the opposite of a traditional diet – it doesn’t impose rules or guidelines about what foods you must avoid, what foods you must include and when/how you eat. This philosophy is meant to support a positive attitude towards food and your own body’s cues about hunger.
To eat intuitively, you may need to relearn how to trust your body. This can often look like:
Deciphering your eating habits to distinguish what is physical hunger versus emotional hunger using a curiosity mindset, not a shame-based mindset.
Letting go of the rigid ideas that certain foods are either good or bad or that you are good or bad for what you eat and don’t eat.
Appreciating and respecting your body, its limitations (if any) and the cues it gives you regarding fullness and satisfaction.
Honoring your feelings without using food and creating other tools and practices that you come to rely on to process your feelings (i.e. self-care regime).
Approaching exercise as a way to feel energized, strong and alive – not just about losing weigh.
Understanding food itself, how it impact the systems in the body and experimenting in the kitchen by preparing your own home-cooked meals.