What is Health Coaching?

We all want to be healthy, but often aren’t sure how to get there or what optimal health looks or feels like. Even before I got sick with Lyme disease, I often wondered if my habits were truly healthy. At the time, I was only looking at my eating habits – but it turns out that my mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial habits were all key contributors to what would eventually keep me sick with Lyme disease for two years.

Following a lengthy period of dedicated research and self-experimentation, and boosted by my education with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), I’ve realized that the path to optimal health is profoundly personal and will be different for each person.

This is where health coaching comes in.

What Do Health Coaches Do?

A health coach can help you examine your habits in the different areas of life that impact your health, and help you find the tools and strategies that reside within you to create the healthy change you desire.

For my fellow graduates from IIN, the areas we examine can include your eating habits, exercise habits, relationships, spirituality, mental habits (such as procrastination, rumination, or feelings of overwhelm), even your financial habits, since these all contribute to your overall health and wellness.

In a session, your health coach will gently hold a safe space for you to explore these questions with real vulnerability. This often results in “aha” moments, where you may come to understand the root causes of your habits, and be the well from which you draw the motivation to create lasting behavioral change.

Why Should I Get a Health Coach? 

Working together with your coach, you’ll create your vision of what success looks like, and craft a step-by-step plan for you to get there. Your path to success might surprise you. I’ve found that often the core issue might not look at all related to the problem you bring up.

Root causes are funny that way.

Identify the Root Causes and Motivation to Change Your Habits 

For example, one client came to me with sleep issues. Melatonin and other sleep aids didn’t help. Her insomnia was worse when she’d feel hungry in the middle of the night and need a snack.  

Once we examined what she ate on those particularly sleepless nights, she was able to make the connection between her insomnia and not having the right balance of protein, fat and carbs throughout the day. We developed a batch cooking plan to make it as easy as possible for her to get the right balance of macronutrients, and to create high protein snacks in advance she can have before bed on occasions where she doesn’t feel she’s gotten the right balance of macronutrients to sleep. Now she eats for sleep! And she sleeps much better.  

Healing Presence and “Aha!” Moments 

There is great power in listening, and in being listened to with unconditional presence. I’ve found this helps clients feel more at ease in exploring their habits with me. These listening skills help me tune in to my clients’ inner wisdom, and to see the connections between seemingly unrelated occurrences that they hadn’t been aware of previously.

Accountability and Overcoming Challenges

Working with a health coach can help fast track your path to a healthier lifestyle. They help you set goals and visualize success, co-create an action plan to get you there, help you measure and celebrate your milestones along the way, help overcome obstacles and provide tips and tricks to make change easier, and they help keep you motivated as you do the work to create a healthier lifestyle.

A Quick Word on My Approach to Health Coaching

I founded Not Your Typical Health Coaching to help clients have their breakthrough “aha!” moments that make lasting change possible in their health and wellness habits. I specialize in serving clients that have Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, mold toxicity, mitochondrial dysfunction as well as autoimmune conditions, since I have extensive personal experience with them and have gotten them to remission without pharmaceuticals.  

I’ve also realized that the path that got me to remission creates health more broadly. Getting the fundamentals right — like getting enough sleep, sunlight, hydrating, reducing stress, nurturing social connections, finding your purpose, eating more whole foods and less processed foods — will go a long way toward not only preventing many chronic illnesses, but also bolster your mood, resilience, and help you feel great every day.