A holistic health coach is a trained professional who uses an integrative approach to diet and lifestyle changes. Their ultimate goal is to help you become the best version of yourself. They help you accomplish that goal by looking at your life as a whole in order to ascertain what areas you need to focus on making changes in order to become your best self.
To begin with, your health coach will look at your nutrition patterns, relationships, physical fitness, spirituality, and support system. This will provide an overall picture of what areas in your life could be keeping you from achieving the goals you’ve set for your health and well being. They help you to create meal plans, can assist in setting and reaching time management goals, and also refer to other credentialled specialists if they see a specific need in your life.
A holistic health coach will provide a holistic assessment of your lifestyle, in order to help you identify the possible obstacles in accomplishing your goal plan. They’ll discuss your support systems, and can help you identify the more positive areas in your health plan that you should focus on retaining. They typically provide weight management coaching, including fitness planning, nutrition evaluation, and nutrition education.
Your holistic health coach will help you to identify small, integrative steps that will help you become an overall healthier individual. In addition, they often serve as a wellness mentor and a support system to their clients, and they educate them on how to listen to their bodies in order to ascertain the right wellness choices for themselves.
There are also specialized typed of holistic health coaches, which include the following:
Paleo, whose focus is on the paleo diet, and encompasses it’s diet and fitness plan.
Plant based, or vegan, which helps to educate you on the benefits of vegan lifestyle.
Diabetic, who assist in making smart choices to assist in your overall health as a diabetic.
Family Health, who typically assist in coaching whole family units.
Holistic health coaches address your bio individuality, or your unique biological makeup. They assist in tailoring an approach specifically for your success, as opposed to using an approach with a group of people in mind. This approach can be very beneficial to those who have found their diet and fitness goals difficult to attain in a group setting.
Many holistic health coaches stress awareness of the importance and benefits of preventative care. The benefits most often cited of having a holistic health coach are as follows:
They are known to teach eating in health beneficial ways, based on bioindividuality. That is, they aren’t following a mass program for weight loss and fitness. Instead they are tailoring a meal and exercise program specifically to benefit you.
They assist in developing a strong mind, a strong body, and an overall sense of well being. This is in sharp contrast to some of the well known programs for weight loss that address your meal plans and exercise regimens, but do not address your mental well being, or the thoughts and feelings behind your physical state.
They help you to learn and incorporate stress management into your day to day life. This is in direct opposition to some commercial programs that simply advise you have a cheat day, or to replace cravings with physical activity. Stress management aims to get to the root cause of why you are stress eating, and what alternatives are suitable to assist you in managing your stress levels.
They aim to help you create a balance of mental and emotional well being. It is one thing to be mentally capable, however, without emotional strength, it can be very easy to fall back into unhealthy habits and routines, and get discouraged by feeling as though you have lost the progress you were making.
They aim to help you reach a level of inner peace. They do so by helping you to make healthy lifestyle choices, instead of focusing on the numbers on a scale or the size of your clothing. This school of thought is said to ensure long term health benefits, versus the up and down weight losses often associated with diets and trends in exercise.
To find a holistic health coach in your area, you often need only go as far as your social media groups. They often have holistic health and nutrition blogs, YouTube channels, and host groups on social media platforms. However, not all of the coaching they do is in the virtual realm. Often, holistic health coaches lecture in their local communities, as well and teach holistic health seminars and give lectures on the matter. You can also find a large number of holistic health professionals have written how to guides, in addition to offering meal planning and delivery services both on a local and national level.
In short, there is no lack of choice in the holistic health coaching field. You can observe them on social media or during a lecture to get a feel of their general personality, and if you feel as though it would mesh with your personal goals and lifestyle. There isn’t a one size fits all approach to holistic health, just as there isn’t a one size fits all holistic health coach for women or system. You may want to have a list of questions prepared for your potential coach to ensure that they are the individual to assist you in meeting your personal goals.
Some of those questions could be:
What are their personal meal plans like? Does it line up with a meal plan that you could see yourself adhering to long term?
How do they personally manage stress in their personal life? Is it the same way that they advise their clients to handle stress?
How do they normally address client setbacks? Is there a particular hardship that they see their clients struggling with repeatedly?
Do they feel as though the goals that you have set for yourself are attainable in a 3, 6, 9, or 12 month range? Do they often stay with clients for longer than a 12 months length of time?