What is a health coach?

A trained and certified health coach is an expert in helping you make the lifestyle and behavior changes necessary to reach your personal health goals. We are health guides that fill the gaps that doctors, nurses, nutritionists and dietitians don’t often have the time to fill. Our job is to empower you to achieve your health and wellness objectives. A health coach is non-judgmental and supportive. We are a safe place to explore your options for a healthy future, to discover your inner strengths, to set goals and develop action steps, to experiment with solutions, to manage obstacles, to become accountable, and to ultimately achieve and maintain your health goals.

While health coaching is a growing field that has found its way into healthcare practices, not all health coaches are qualified. While great strides are being made to regulate it, presently just about anyone that takes a self-paced study course or a little on the job training can call themselves a health coach. There is a big difference between a health coach and a true professional health coach. So, how do you distinguish one from the other? Check their training and look for national credentials. In the health coaching world, there are two highly respected national board certifications:

• NBC-HWC (National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach) issued by the International Consortium for Health and Wellness Coaching (ICHWC); and
• ACC, PCC or MCC (Associate Certified Coach, Professional Certified Coach or Master Certified Coach) issued by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

These are the gold standard for health and wellness coaches. Both require an approved course of study with a minimum of 75 hours of training and education, at least 200 hours of real-life coaching experience, a rigorous 4.5 hour board-certification exam (the NBHWC exam is provided in partnership with the National Board of Medical Examiners), continued education hours, and a commitment to a strict set of ethical and legal standards. Coaches with these credentials are sought out by corporations and healthcare professionals to work with their clients/patients.

What can a health coach do for you?

A health coach is often misconstrued as someone that assesses your diet and lifestyle then tells you to eat more broccoli, exercise daily and stress less. While health coaches will make some recommendations to help you unlock the powers of nutrition, stress management, mindfulness, exercise and sleep to improve your health and performance, that isn’t where our services stop. Afterall, just identifying healthy habits and deciding we want to do them isn’t enough – if it was, we would all be healthier. A health coach is trained in asking the right types of questions that will help you connect with your inner motivations for change – the real drivers of your day-to-day behaviors. Once connected with your inner motivations you will partner with your coach to create an achievable goal and a plan of action that is realistic and achievable. As obstacles come up, the health coach will help you find solutions or modify the plan in a way that keeps you on track while responding to the demands of life. You will notice that you are partnering with the coach on the goal setting and action plans. That’s different than most coaching, but health coaches give you a key role in determining your goals and action plan, we help you lay it out in a step-by-step format and support you along the way. This method helps you understand what is driving behaviors, connects you to your inner motivators and unique strengths, and teaches you to take incremental steps to live optimally under suboptimal conditions.