WHAT THE HECK IS HEALTH COACHING AND HOW CAN IT BENEFIT ME?

A Health Coach is like your very own wellness sherpa…

Aka someone you can go to for support in creating and cultivating truly lasting healthy habits. Health Coaches are trained to collaborate with you on your wellness journey, and although we are not meant to be your sole health provider, we are meant to be a resource for you on all things health and wellness. And if we don't know the answer, we'll certainly find out or will help you find the right professional to go to as an alternative!

We're also here to help you in building self-awareness around your current lifestyle so that you can see where you are now and where you want to go. Making real, sustainable lifestyle changes can be difficult, but with the right support system, it is absolutely possible! I promise, if I can do it, you most certainly can too...

Have you ever just felt stuck, exhausted, overwhelmed, and like you JUST CAN'T? Everyone's felt this way at one or many times in their life and crawling out of that hole can feel impossible... I know as I spent over 10 years in the hole, because I didn't know what to do, how to ask for help, and definitely didn't feel equipped or capable of making the changes I really wanted. It was brutal!

When you feel this way, sometimes it's hard to "see the forest through the trees," so you need someone to help you see that bigger picture. A Health Coach can fly you up in an airplane so that you can look at your life from 30,000 feet. It's way easier to see where you are when you've got the full view!

One of my favorite methods to use is a Life Compass tool that allows you to rate various aspects of your life in order to see how you really feel about them in comparison to one another. This tool is eye opening in that it gives you concrete, visual feedback on where there are holes in your life. This can be inspiring and also helps us know where to prioritize our focus. I don't care how much kale you eat, if your personal life or career is in shambles, you still won't feel great and will likely turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the disarray!

Yes, as your Health Coach, we will certainly talk at length about your nutrition and movement habits, because they are SO incredibly important, however it is also important to make sure that your Primary Food, aka your Relationships, Career, and Spirituality are all functioning relatively well.

In your relationships, we will be looking to see how you feel about your family, your partner, and your friends. Do you have a "Tribe" or a support system you can really rely on when life gets tough? Is there any toxicity that needs to be addressed or processed? Although no relationship is perfect, if you don't feel lifted up by the people you love the most, it's bound to leak into other parts of your life. It's not a Health Coaches' job to be your primary relationship counselor, but it is our job to help you see how those relationships may be impacting your health and wellness.

We will also look at your career or your daily work. That can be a 9-5 job, self-employment, volunteer work, or working as a stay at home parent. Fundamentally, it's the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning. What is your purpose and how do you contribute to your world as a whole? We spend such an exorbitant amount of time in our work life, so why do so many of us stay in jobs that we totally hate? Jobs that aren't in alignment with our values or jobs that make us dread getting out of bed in the morning. If you come home from work so wrecked that you have no room for anything else in your life, that's going to have a huge effect on your health and wellbeing! Where's the room for your LIFE?? Your hobbies, passions, family, friends, self-care?

As far as spirituality goes, I like to refer to this as, "What makes you feel small?" What are the things you can do in your daily life that get you out of your head? Things that help you feel centered, decompressed, hopeful, and rejuvenated? Whether that's your Higher Power or getting out in nature and marveling at the splendor surrounding you; we all could us a little more of this in our lives...

With nutrition, I firmly believe there is no one size fits all approach... There are so many different types of people with all sorts of different backgrounds, so it will be critical to explore what really works for you specifically when it comes to food. We will assess what your current relationship with food looks like now and in your past and will discover how you want it to look in the future as well. Many of us need to heal our relationships with food and I'd love nothing more than to help you figure out how to do that. Getting off the dieting roller coaster and learning to love your body is the most freeing and empowering feeling in the world!

I'll also help you in discovering how you like to format your meals and what makes your body feel best. This is all about you and what's going to be sustainable for your life, so there won't be any unrealistic expectations or hard-core diets here. Food can help you nourish and heal your body or make you insane, so let's stick with that former mindset and learn to enjoy food for what it is!

We'll also talk about your relationship with exercise and I'll help you in discovering how your body likes to move best. As a certified personal trainer, I've heard all sorts of horror stories and know most people think the only way to exercise is slaving away at a gym, running, or doing burpees... I'm here to tell you that is so very wrong and there are a million different ways to move your body that have nothing to do with any of those things! It's more important for us to discover things you actually like to do, versus things you think you should do; because most people don't stick with the "should's," and what sounds like more fun?

And finally, we'll talk a lot about your mindset. How do you feel about yourself, your body, and your life as a whole? Do you practice any sort of self-care or are you the last woman standing every time? If you have a million other people to take care of, when are you finding time for you? The people in your life who really love you want you to be a whole person too, so let's find out what that looks like for you!

Although society tells us otherwise, we aren't meant to live a life full of self-criticism, constant dieting, chronic fatigue, body-shaming, and feeling as though we are not enough and barely getting by all the time... Why on earth would any of us want to live like that, yet we do it every day!

Wouldn't it feel incredible to live a life that is abundant and full of positivity?

Wouldn't it feel fabulous to feel physically and emotionally healthy and resilient?

Wouldn't it be amazing to feel as though your dreams were actually possible?

There really is a way and I'd so love to help you get there! I'm not going to lie, it's going to take work, and you're going to need an open mind and a willingness to change; but we all know the definition of "Insanity," so how about we try something a little different to get the results we actually want this time?