Getting Started Before the New Year

by willhealthcoach

With the holidays coming up, hopefully you are fortunate enough to have some time off, or at least a little more flexibility in your schedule. If so, it could be a good time to get a jump start on health and wellness goals you are considering for 2024.

Many of us will set at least one health and wellness goal as part of our New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately, some studies suggest that 23% of us will quit in the first week, and only 36% of us will make it past the first month.

One of the top reasons for this? Being too busy!! (19%). Loss of motivation was cited as the top reason at 36%

I would like to focus on being too busy, and why these next 3-4 weeks may present a great opportunity for some to identify and set health and wellness goals they are much more likely to stick to for all of 2024.

The start of the New Year presents great opportunity, and for some a fresh start or “clean slate.” But it often brings a very busy schedule along with it. Kids (and adults) are back to school. New projects starting at work. Short days (in terms of daylight). A basic feeling that “hey people, holidays are over, so back to the grind.” Time to gut it out for 2-3 more months of winter.

But don’t despair. Even a few weeks of exploring and building new habits could help you set a great foundation to start 2024 with. There are potentially several advantage from now until the end of the year:

Time: Hopefully many of you will have some time off during the holidays. If so, it provides a great opportunity to try a few different activities. Taking 5-10 minutes for breathwork or meditation. Extra time to grocery shop and try preparing a delicious and healthy meal. 15 minutes to explore a healthy meal delivery service to use in 2024. You get the idea

Chance to Experiment: Not sure what healthy foods you like the best? Or which type of exercise / activity feels right for you? These next few weeks can be a great time to experiment. Maybe your local yoga studio or gym is offering a free day pass or class? Or you have always been curious about a fitness app. The next 4 weeks or so may give you a great opportunity to do a one-month free trial and see if you like it.

Family and Community: Family and friends can make great activity (and accountability) partners. Wouldn’t it be more fun to start doing a daily walk with your family members, especially if you have adult kids visiting over the holidays? Many communities also host fun events: a walk, or in colder climates an outdoor skating rink, or pick-up sports activities.

Spirituality: The holidays can be a time for reflection, gratitude and spirituality. Leaning into those moments can help clarify what is important to you, what you value and how you would like to hold and keep those values moving forward. Research shows goals tied to identity and values have much more sticking power.

I hope that you will be able to take some time over the holidays to play, experiment, reflect and find connection with family and community. Best wishes to all as you also prepare for an exciting 2024!

My Journey

by willhealthcoach

If you are reading this, I am assuming you are at least contemplating the idea of health and wellness coaching. Congratulations on being proactive about managing your health and wellness journey!

So the next question might be “Why health and wellness coaching with me?” That’s a good question! Let me tell you a little bit about my journey to give you some information to answer that question…

I’ll start in my mid-20s, that’s where I think things start to get interesting. Like many, I would suppose, the “real world” came at me fast. Starting a career, starting a family, way more responsibility and stress. Desire to achieve, advance, provide. Free time was often devoted to those goals, exercise, sleep and recovery all took a back seat. Like a waaaaay back seat!

And (looking back, predictably) weight gain became an issue. Injuries never seemed to completely heal. Mental health took a big nosedive. Almost overnight, it seemed, I was 30-40 pounds heavier and struggling to maintain any consistent exercise routine. Luckily (or maybe unfortunately, as it did not trip any alarms) blood work seemed to be relatively normal, so I assumed there would always be time to work on this later, this was just a phase that would end soon. Of course, it didn’t. By the time I was reaching my late 30s, I hadn’t lost any of the weight and I was dealing with significant insomnia. Finally, something was suggesting a change was in order.

So I started to make some changes. But they came in fits and starts (sound familiar?) I would take some weight off, be a bit more consistent for six, sometimes almost 12 months. Weight would drop off. But injuries would rear their ugly head. Or I would think “I got this, made the sacrifice, we can go back to the way we used to do things.” And ultimately, weight would creep back on. I would feel tired, have major crashes mid-day. I still was not feeling like I was closing in on my best self.

Ultimately, I thought I was living a “healthy” life. I thought I was eating well, I was exercising somewhat regularly. And most folks looking at me kind of thought the same thing. And as I approached my late 40s, I was more active (hiking regularly). I had lost weight (dropped about 20 lbs. after starting time restricted eating). I figured I had finally turned the corner, and honestly conventional healthcare (and the basic well checks) agreed.

It was in my early 50s, when I was in the middle of a Precision and Genomic Medicine Coaching Fellowship with Wild Health, that I decided to engage in their patient process. I thought, well maybe I will learn a few little things about me, but there isn’t going to be much to really deal with. Well, I could not have been farther from the truth. My A1c levels were borderline pre-diabetic. Fasting insulin was quite high. Measures of methylation were also quite high. Basically, I was on the path towards insulin resistance and/or metabolic disease. To say I was surprised (and disappointed) was an understatement.

What I learned was that, yes, I was generally living a healthy lifestyle, but not for me. I needed to dial in what was going to work best for me based on my genetics and my current state of being. This was going to take significant change on several fronts. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will share, 18 months later almost all of those biomarkers have been reversed and are trending in the right direction. Physically, mentally, sleep, energy I feel much better than I have in decades. I have much more resilience than I thought possible.

Now will our stories, our successes, our challenges completely mirror each other? Not likely, no. Our paths, our solutions, our changes will be unique to each of us. I have lived that and grown to understand that. And I think that is one thing that makes me unique, I appreciate that your challenges, your goals, your journey will be your own, but I have the tools and resources to help you find your path and manage the inevitable roadblocks. But we will also have some commonalities. I didn’t win the genetic lottery. Things have not necessarily been easier as I have aged. I understand the stress of life, work, raising kids, meal planning, cooking, being there for your family, feeling lost, trying to figure out “what to do with my life.” I have compassion and empathy for you might be experiencing.

I like to consider myself perfectly imperfect. I have flaws. I am a continued work in progress. And I think that is what might make me uniquely suited to work with you! I hope to hear from you, and until then, be well!

My Approach to Health & Wellness Coaching

by willhealthcoach

First and foremost, I want to stress that I support a client-led approach to coaching. I want to understand what is meaningful and important to you. I like to ask a lot of questions and do a lot of listening.

But not everyone has a clear idea on where they might want to make changes, or what interventions might bring meaningful change. When that is the case, I like to dive into what I consider to be the four big “pillars” of health and wellness:

Diet & Nutrition

Exercise

Sleep

Mindfulness / Stress Management

Research is clearly showing that managing these pillars (or pulling these levers) can have a tremendous impact on health and wellness, sometimes more than any supplement or pharmacological intervention. They also come with very few side effects and are elements in our life that we can exercise a lot of control over. And even when supplementation or prescription medication is needed, the benefits are likely to be far greater if we are effectively managing these pillars in our life.

So working through each of these pillars, we might explore:

What are you doing well in these areas?

Where do you think you have challenges?

What do you want to better or differently?

Ultimately, we hope to strive for relative balance amongst these pillars. Significant compromise in any one of them could impact positive change or balance in the others. As an example, if you have exercise pretty-well dialed in, but nutrition and diet is out of balance, you might not see the gains or changes you are ultimately hoping for. Challenges with managing stress and/or getting quality sleep will not allow the body to rest and recover, and again, may limit positive impacts in other areas.

One of the other challenges we often face is we don’t know what we don’t know. Conventional healthcare is woefully lacking in what we look at in terms of genetics (our blueprint) and biomarkers/ blood work (how our blueprint is currently being expressed). We may talk about if you have any interest in getting more data in those areas, the costs, the benefits, and where you can go to get that data if you are interested. I can refer you to several doctors if you are local to the Puget Sound area of Washington State, or telehealth or direct-to-consumer testing services if you are not.

If you already have that data, great! I am trained in coaching for precision and genomic-based medicine and can help you interpret your data / reports (Disclaimer: I cannot provide specific medical advice based on that data, that will be the role of your health care provider). I can also, with your permission, review your treatment plan that your provider may have provided after their review of your data and help you integrate into your daily life.

To be clear, we absolutely do not need that data to get started you on the path of making positive changes in your health and wellness. They are many healthy interventions we can start talk about without any additional data. But if you want to develop a plan customized for you and your genetics, it can be an idea worth exploring.

Hopefully that sheds some light on what it might be like to work with me. If you would like to have a free, 30-min. consultation to discuss in person (well, over Zoom!) whether health and wellness coaching is right for you, please email me at willtochangecoaching@gmail.com and we can set up a time to do so.

Until we meet, chat or see each other, be well and find yourself in good health!

What is Health and Wellness Coaching?

by willhealthcoach

Traditionally, we think of “coaching” as someone who devises tactics and game plans, tells us what to do and makes critical decisions to move a process or team forward. Health and wellness coaching is a little different from the traditional ide of coaching. Health and wellness coaching is a client-centered and collaborative process, meeting their clients where they are and providing support and accountability for where the client wants to go with their health and wellness journey. It is different from other health professionals who prescribe solutions, as the coach facilitates the process of change and hands over the responsibility to the client.

Health and wellness coaches will most often support clients as they explore goals around diet and nutrition, exercise, chronic disease management, sleep and stress management. Meetings are often client-led where the coach helps clients set and achieve their own health and wellness goals, in a way that is meaningful to the client and helps them adopt changes that fit their lifestyle and ideals. The skill of the health coach is helping their clients set goals, and then create and sustain lifestyle and habit changes to support those goals, changes they can maintain for a lifetime, or until they progress to new goals with their health and wellness.

But don’t take my word for it, here is what the Cleveland Clinic says about health and wellness coaching:

“Health and wellness coaches partner with clients seeking self-directed, lasting changes, aligned with their values, which promote health and wellness and, thereby, enhance well-being.” In practice, that means that health coaches facilitate the process of change.

A health coach can help you if you are struggling to get started or feel stuck or if have plateaued short of your desired goals. Your coach will support you and provide accountability, through messaging, email and/or regular meetings (in-person or virtual), generally over a period of at least three to six months (to facilitate successful change).

If you think that health and wellness coaching may be able to help you, please feel free to reach out about setting up a free 30-minute consultation where we can explore if health and wellness coaching is right for you and assess your readiness for change. Email me at willtochangecoaching@gmail.com.