What is Health Coaching, Anyway?

What is coaching good for? Health coaches can't diagnose, prescribe, or treat conditions like a Dr, PT, or other clinicians. So what are they good for, anyway? Why on earth would you ever want to go to one if they're not going to tell you what to do and exactly how to do it?

In a nutshell, health coaching is a system of support in habit mastering and goal-guidance while emphasizing self-determination and autonomy of each person. This is why you aren't told what to do -- you're learning how to know what to do!

Working with a coach means working with a guide to help you navigate change efficiently and effectively. With a qualified coach, you grow skills to better make decisions, and you'll gain tools that will help you continue to navigate life even after your coaching sessions are done.

Now let's dive a little deeper.

Does the following sound like you or someone you know?

You're drained. Plain and simple. At one time (or ten), there was a change you wanted to make for your health and life -- like managing stress, overcoming your daily fatigue, starting an exercise regimen, losing weight, having better focus at work and home, or limiting your deprecating self-talk.

You tried to make changes, but you didn't have the support, and all the efforts you did put in didn't give you the results you were looking for.

Perhaps now you are eerily close to a new diagnosis -- like diabetes or heart disease -- and your doctor wants you to change some lifestyle factors; but just thinking of everything that would need to change is overwhelming, and you don't know how or where to start.

Maybe you already live with health conditions and are looking to improve the quality of your life given your circumstances, but aren't sure what could change. Maybe you even feel discouraged and don't believe anything can get better.​

-- Enter Health Coaching --

Health coaching will help you look at habits and beliefs that are influencing how you feel, think, and respond in your day. This might include your:

• Sleep hygiene

• Activity during the day

• Nutrition and hydration

• Stress management techniques

• Communication styles

• Boundary setting

• Time-management

• Environmental components

• Screen-time usage

• How and when you eat

• Posture and movement

• Self-talk, and so forth

A coach helps you navigate any and all of these habits that help or hinder your progress.

By using interactive modalities that engage your exploration, expression, and communication, you gain insight and clarity on your whole-system health and well-being. Coaching promotes self-awareness and attention to mind, body, emotions, and environment, allowing you to remember that each part of you is valid and worthy of attention.

What is a habit?

We hear the term "habit" and "behavior" a lot, but what is it really, and why are they important for making changes?

A habit is a pattern of behavior(s) that is repeated regularly. Habits are often subconscious, but they are learned -- either through necessity, or through intentionality. Through repetition, these behaviors become automatic. Habits can be beneficial or detrimental, and they play a significant role in shaping our daily lives.

There are different ways in which habits form, and that is what a coach is trained in: How to unlock your habits so you have more control in the actions, behaviors, and perceptions that you partake.

Health coaches help you define and create the habits that you want to become automatic so you have more control over your life and your health.

According to Psychologist Wendy Wood in her 2019 book Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes Stick, roughly 43% of our daily actions are performed out of habit! That's a lot of potential for what your life can look like if you intentionally choose what actions to make your habits.

Coaches guide you to create sustainable habits -- individualized to YOUR needs and life -- that help you move toward a goal. They can also guide you towards a change that your physician/provider would like to see for you; often in effort to prevent a condition that you might be on the verge of being diagnosed with, or to get the best possible long-term health outcome while living with a medical condition.

Coaches also help you step away from habits that no longer serve a purpose in your life as well as habits that might be hindering progress toward your goals like:

• Smoking

• Skipping meals, overeating, mindlessly eating

• Excess screen time

• Sedentary lifestyle

• Reactive communication

• Drinking too much alcohol

• Poor boundaries, and many more.

What are the main tenets of Coaching?

• Collaborative partnership between coach and client; coach is objective and non-judgmental

• Belief that each person comes to coaching whole, wise, and capable (you, the client, are the best expert on you!)

• Providing a safe place for exploration and processing

• Both parties to be present, mindful, authentic, and honest

How does it work?

• Come to sessions with a focus

• Identify goals

• Assess health and well-being in multitude of categories using various assessments

• Engaging and poignant questions from coach to help clients gain clarity and build confidence

• Identify and cultivate your strengths

• Identify and challenge barriers and limiting belief structures that hold you back

• Identify and organize priorities

• Work with motivations, values, and perspectives

• Use researched interactive methods to explore and process strategies and emotions around change

• Generate achievable and realistic steps to help you get to your goals

• Accountability, support, and resources with a coach

What are the (common) results?

• Improved sleep, energy, and mood

• Grow stress management skills and decreased stress

• Enhanced communication at home and work

• Incorporating healthy movement

• Decreased pain and enhance pain-management skills

• Chronic condition support and condition-management skills

• ADHD daily living skills

• Improved self-image, grow confidence and self-esteem

• Improved relationships and relationship skills

• Increased nourishment from both food and experiences

• Improved home and work performance

• Personalized work-life balance (and healthy alternatives to that model)

• Feel safer and more confident in the body

• Identify and understand emotions and learn to navigate them safely and effectively

• Desired weight adjustments -- loss or gain -- with lifestyle modifications

• Increased energy and decreased fatigue

• Identify needs and get them met

• Cultivate a care team for condition support

• Let go or replace habits that fill a void like watching tv for hours, doom scrolling, smoking, etc​

What else do you get out of coaching?

• Enhanced self-awareness and -knowledge so you can make informed decisions

• Improved quality of life

• Learn how to effectively alter and adjust habits intentionally throughout your life

• Use values to help direct motivation

• Perspective shifting is easier, therefore helping you to get out of struggle easier

• Learn how to navigate disappointment without it taking you down the rabbit hole

• Becoming intentionally responsive, less reactive in non-life-threatening situations

• Learn how to use setbacks as stepping stones

• Learn how to express yourself and your needs safely and effectively

What is the Difference Between Health Coaching and Therapy?

Although therapists and educated coaches share a lot of similar background in understanding behavior, there are major differences that are important to clarify. 

First, and perhaps most important, coaches do not have the authority or expertise to diagnose or treat mental health conditions or illness. We are, however, trained to see signs of mental health conditions and are required to recommend respective resources for clients. 

Coaching focuses on the "here and now" and helping individuals get to where they want to be in the future; while therapy may focus on dissecting the fears, traumas, and pain of the past that are affecting people's behavior in the here and now. It is not uncommon for therapists and coaches to use similar strategies when helping clients/patients gain clarity on their situation, but the unpacking of the situation and emotions differ.

With both professions, clients are offered a safe space to address their emotions and perspectives. They might even get insight into how past situations have affected a client's current behavior, but coaches will not dig deep into the past or try to treat trauma. Instead, coaches will offer tools for clarity on a client's perspective to see how the past might be influencing their current situation, and help clients use this information to support desired habit changes.

As a coach who is consistently strengthening her skillset in trauma, diversity, transitional well-being, and complex health conditions, it is of utmost importance to me that I stay within my scope of practice to ensure safe care for all clients.

If you live with the effects of trauma or deeply struggle with anxiety and/or depression, I highly recommend working with a therapist first (or conjunctively with coaching) before teaming up with a coach.

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If you're ready to break the cycle of being drained every day, feeling low on energy, and not remembering what vitality is, that's what I'm here for. Helping people just like you to take back your life and your health so you can feel engaged and inspired again.

It's time to feel good in your body. Let's get started.

Find Your Energy