Benefits of Health Coaching
The Role of Health Coaches
As a holistic health and nutrition coach I help you discover where to begin your transformation process and how to make sustainable changes to achieve your wellness goals. I am also uniquely positioned to make lasting changes in the lives of those suffering from preventable nutrition- and lifestyle-related diseases.
The support I offer is both evidence-based and experiential; it is a combination of traditional and modern approaches tailored to each individual’s bio-individuality. In addition to supporting you with your specific dietary and lifestyle goals, I also teach you how to adopt health-promoting and functional behaviours. Creating awareness and assisting you as you move forward at your own pace to have the best state of health you desire for yourself.
Trained in areas such as bioindividuality and multidimensional health, and in evidence-based coaching modalities from many of the world’s leading experts, I guide you to create and sustain long-term lifestyle changes that improve your quality of life.
How Health Coaches and Other Professionals Complement Each Other
Health coaches focus on health and wellbeing. Like other professionals, we approach the coaching process as a relationship, where we accompany our patients/clients on the journey of creating ongoing change and advise them along the way. Many types of coaches help clients reach their full potential by creating awareness, recognising connections, identifying patterns, changing limiting beliefs, developing growth mindsets and offering strengths-based support.
Some ways in which health coaches can complement the work of other professionals include:
- Collaborate with health care providers.
- Empowering you to educate yourself and understand what to ask, and to find specialists for your specific health needs.
- Explain the information provided by other professionals.
- Identify patterns and create connections.
- Take a broader view of holistic health.
- Offer you strategies for implementing the recommendations of health care providers.
- Set and help you define small goals that will lead you to achieve larger goals recommended by other health professionals.
How Health Coaching is Different from Other Professions
Health coaches have many valuable qualities that set us apart in the field of integrative health. While many professionals are licensed experts in diagnosing and prescribing treatment protocols, as holistic health and nutrition coaches we accompany our clients to help them create and implement a sustainable plan to achieve their personalised health and wellness goals. In other words, many professionals tell their patients what to do, while health coaches provide the ongoing support and advice needed to achieve lasting change.
Health coaches assess overall wellness and make recommendations to help you establish basic lifestyle changes to improve health by activating internal strengths and using external resources. While nutrition is discussed, the process emphasises non-food areas of nutrition, such as relationships, career and spirituality.
Here are some of the issues that health coaches can address:
Exercise: I encourage you to participate in gentle, low-risk exercise and physical activity, such as walking or gardening, and to find ways to have a less sedentary lifestyle by incorporating more movement activities into your day-to-day life.
Relationships: I give you space to talk about the important relationships in your life. I can strengthen social connections, for example, by helping you explore ways to meet people.
Food: I can suggest ways to exclude less healthy foods, such as added sugar, alcohol, highly processed foods and any foods that clients have sensitivities to. I often recommend including more nutrient-dense natural foods, superfoods and home-cooked meals. This is different from prescribing a strict diet plan, as health coaches help implement sustainable and personalised changes for each individual.
Career: I encourage you to assess how your career affects your well-being and implement strategies for managing work-related stress or navigating career changes. I can also help you explore new hobbies and interests that you find fulfilling.
Spirituality: Contemplative or self-reflective practices strengthen spiritual connection, such as meditating or spending time in nature.
These elements can affect health markers such as stress, weight and energy levels. The relationship between food and lifestyle and how each affects health is the primary focus of an integrative health and nutrition coach.