You may have heard the term “health coach” showing up in lifestyle blogs, yoga studios and nutrition centers. They typically offer services and fill the empty spaces that doctors, nutritionists and dietitians don’t have the time or resources to fill.
The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the largest nutrition school in the country, defines a health coach as “a wellness authority and supportive mentor who motivates individuals to cultivate positive health choices. Health coaches educate and support clients to achieve their health goals through lifestyle and behavior adjustments.” To put it in basic terms, health coaches are educated guides in areas like nutrition, wellness, bio-individuality and mentoring.
Whether your goal is to lose weight, increase energy or just get healthy, health coaches take the time to listen to your concerns, help you discover where and why you are struggling, and help you navigate the ever expanding world of nutrition advice to figure out exactly what works for you.
Health coaches don’t promote a specific type of diet, or way of eating. They help you experiment with finding what will work for your lifestyle and guide you in a way that helps put you back in control to make long lasting changes.
Many doctors are starting to partner with health coaches for their patients who suffer from obesity, diabetes or need to change their behaviors in order to improve their health and keep lifestyle-related illnesses at bay. This mutual respect for two very distinctive fields is a huge step in the coaching profession.
So, who makes a good health coach? Professionals in the field of personal training, yoga and nutrition tend to have the upper hand when it comes to understanding the underlying physiology necessary to communicate physical changes with their clients. However, more health and wellness gurus as well as even master gardeners and farmers are taking what they know in their respective fields and coupling that with basic coaching techniques to provide a different angle for helping clients achieve their goals.
It’s important to realize that health coaching isn’t just about diet changes to achieve weight loss. When a client comes to you and says “ I want to get HEALTHY”, the first goal should be listening and guiding conversations in order to define what health means to them. This could be as simple as quitting smoking and dealing with weight gain or as complex as asserting control over an eating disorder and completely changing someone’s relationship with food.
Not only are doctors hiring more Health Coaches than ever before, but patients are learning that working with a Health Coach is one of the most effective ways to improve their health. And as more and more medical professionals recognize the vital importance of Health Coaches, the demand will grow.