Health and Wellness Coaching
In Person or Virtual
NBC-HWC
What is health coaching?
Probably the most asked question because coaching means different things to different people. Generally speaking, health coaching is going to apply to your overall holistic health and is individually tailored to what you are specifically looking to improve or enhance. It includes nutrition specific coaching, we well as coaching over stress management, improvements in sleep, weight-loss assistance, gut health, hormone health, etc. Since your holistic health is multi-faceted, we will often work together on interconnected aspects of your health. For example, a client may come to me with a goal to lose weight but in order to begin to lose weight we must first work on a client’s tendency to emotionally and stress eat.
What are your primary areas of specialty?
As mentioned, all aspects of your life are interconnected. However, the below areas are the most frequented topics of focus I find my clients wanting to work on:
Nutrition Coaching - Assistance with understanding the complex world of nutrition, helping them to understand what works best for them. This most often is due to my clients looking to lose weight while finally moving past the “diet” mentality. I can provide personalized and targeted macros goals; however, my preference is to assist clients with migrating more towards the mentality of eating intuitively such as eating to fuel your body in the way it needs, and also for joy. My goal is to help clients release and migrate away from any guilt or shame they may feel when they eat. Cheat meals aren’t a concept we live by, because food is food, neither good, nor bad. There may be more nutritionally dense or impactful food, but there is a place in our life for all varieties of food and feeling guilty about what we eat is counterproductive.
“In January I was tipping the scale at 270 lbs. Like most people, every time I attempted weight loss in my past, the source of my inspiration for a change stemmed from a lovely combination of shame, frustration and because I “should” be skinny. The pressure that I, and most women have, to be skinny, to have absolutely no wrinkles, or to fit into the same pair of jeans they did pre-baby, or… you get my point. The months that followed, with the continued guidance from Jen were heavy. I experienced a life-altering mental shift from the “teenage” way of viewing dieting and what I “should” look like, to a headspace of curiosity, love and potential for myself. This year has a stamp on it. A stamp of forever being a defining year. The year that I began loving myself.” ~Lauren
Wellness Coaching - This goes beyond nutrition and into your overall wellness, including hydration, guidance on movement goals, stress management, sleep practices, etc. We may discuss one area during one coaching session and another the next. Or we may spend several sessions really working through small steps in improving one topic only just because it can take a while to truly incorporate changes. This will include going as aggressively or as slowly as your particular situation dictates. I’ve had clients request to completely overhaul their diet and lifestyle to include an anti-inflammatory focus (both removing points of inflammation and adding in supplements to drive inflammation and stress reduction) because they knew they could no longer continue to live feeling as sick as they did. I’ve had clients choose to spend several months within our coaching to remove gluten from their diet while navigating various life challenges such as travel, holidays, gatherings, etc.
“I knew that with my personality type I’d need to make small changes very slowly in order to ensure they were manageable and would fit with my busy lifestyle. Jen was able to work with me at my pace and now I’ve mostly eliminated dairy from my daily diet! We even found solutions for when avoidance would be too hard. Now I’m so much more comfortable through my daily life! I highly recommend Jen’s services to anyone looking to make sustainable changes at a pace that works for them!” ~Dana
Gut Health - Given my long history of gut issues (dating back to 2006), this focus area is one I’m particularly passionate about. I’ve had clients who when we began working together would tell me they were just destined to have tummy troubles and ultimately, we were able to figure out they actually had small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and once they completed treatment, they no longer had any gut issues. During this focus area we will take a look at the troubles you experience with your gut. I may suggest some testing to be completed with your health professional, or we may just work on eliminating certain foods which could be the ultimate culprit. This path is unique to individual, as we are all unique in what has impacted us to get to where we are today.
“Working with Jen has literally changed my life. I have struggled with painful GI symptoms for years and honestly had given up on ever feeling healthy. I started working with Jen to try to develop a healthier relationship with food and my body, but she quickly focused on my GI problems and suggested we start there. She helped me make diet changes that quickly reduced my symptoms while we worked to convince my GI specialist to order the testing Jen recommended. She was right! I was diagnosed, treated, and am feeling better than I have in probably two decades. I am so grateful to her for her insights, encouragement, and guidance!” ~LeAnne
Hormone Health - This is a focus area that impacts all of my clients in one way or another, because we all have hormones! Depending on client age and stage of life they are in, this can become one of the prioritized focus areas for clients. Perimenopause, menopause and post menopause in particular can be a very difficult time and can be especially tough for clients to navigate. Coaching in this space tends to focus on the symptoms and implementing techniques and tactics to help alleviate those symptoms. It’s important to know you are not alone and you don’t have to white knuckle your way through!
“I'm so grateful to Jen and Abundant Health Coaching! The amount of knowledge I gained through the course on hormones is priceless. I didn't know what I didn't know, but now I know, and I feel prepared for whatever mother nature plans to throw at me as I enter my 40's. I will most certainly be back for more and completely trust Abundant Health Coaching as a great resource” ~Carrie
How does the coaching work?
We begin with a comprehensive (free) discussion covering your overall health history. This gives me a detailed understanding of your overall health and gives me an idea of areas we may end up wanting to work together. I will then offer suggestions on where you may want to start, based on what your overall goals. Our conversations include education (how much protein do you really need?) as well as becoming your voice of reason to help you figure out ways to achieve your goals in a way that feels manageable to you. I become your accountability partner and your place for support. When you leave each session, you walk away with a plan of action for small tweaks and changes to implement into your life….include a plan for how to do that. Then during our next session we discuss how things went since we last met and how to move you forward to your goals again. Often times, what you wish to focus on will change direction through the course of us working together which links back to the desire for help in your holistic health.
Our Approach
Evaluate
What are your symptoms?
You’ll be asked to complete a health history form, and we’ll perform an initial consultation to discuss your goals.
Explore
Personalized suggestions.
You’ll walk away from your initial consultation with 1-2 recommendations to implement.
Examine
Evaluate outcomes.
During our ongoing sessions (and email connections) we’ll analyze your outcomes.
Engage
Modify and solidify.
Based on your outcomes we’ll fine-tune inputs to get the best results.
"The jolt I needed. When I first began work with Jen a few short months ago, I was stuck. Stuck in a job I hated. Stuck in my personal relationships. Stuck in terrible nutrition patterns. In a handful of sessions, Jen taught me effective tools and provided the accountability needed to radically recreate my life. After digging me out of such a negative headspace, Jen suggested that I was ready to start working on my physique. It had been so long since I had exercised last, I was terrified to go alone. Jen happily stepped up as my workout partner and volunteered to accompany me at the gym. Her knowledge in this space, paired with her positive and friendly demeanor has aided me in beginning to rebuild my confidence in the gym, and in life. I now walk taller, and a whole lot more confidently. Jen has hands down been the most impactful person to enter my life."
— Lauren H., ABUNDANT HEALTH CLIENT
FAQs
What do Dieticians, Nutritionists, and Health Coaches do?
Per the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, the outcomes may be the same - weight loss, more energy, improved mood, better digestion, clearer skin - but the ways the outcome is achieved may differ. Dieticians are food and nutrition experts, who complete rigorous training and satisfies national standards to practice. They may prescribe certain diets and supplements. Nutritionists focus on the dietary aspect of a client’s well-being. They create meal plans based on specific needs and look into whether nutritional supplements would be of benefit. Health Coaches provide clients with a safe, supportive space to explore their health issues and goals. They encourage clients to focus not just on the dietary aspect of their health, but other areas of their life, such as quality of relationships, satisfaction in job/career, home and environment queues and how all of those areas are interconnected and imperative to overall health.
What are the worst diets for your body?
I try to steer people away from diets that focus on significant food restrictions where people are left feeling like they must do without, especially for longer periods of time. Something will eventually trigger that person, possibly a stressful day or an emotional event, and they binge on all the “bad foods” they crave but have been going without. This can then leave that person feeling negative feelings and emotions, and they beat themselves up for what they just ate. It becomes a cycle and can lead to not only a very unhealthy relationship with food, but can trigger anxiety, depression and very negative thoughts.
Can diets negatively affect people's mental health?
The desire to lose weight can stem from several different reasons, however often it’s either due to an unhappiness in the way we look or driven by an underlying medical condition and weight loss is a recommendation of a doctor. Whatever the driver of the desire to lose weight, simply having the pressure to do so can negatively affect a person’s mental health. If the weight doesn’t come off fast enough, or if someone “breaks” their diet and ate something they consider bad they can easily beat themselves up and the cycle continues. Tied into all of this is that as we grow older our metabolism changes, our hormones fluctuate and various additional stress factors come into play, and then the ability to lose weight and how our body responds to our diets change. All of this can drive ongoing negative self-talk, increase a person’s anxiety and can cause depression.
Rather than focusing on the need to diet, I recommend people flip that desire around and focus on the desire to improve their general wellbeing and health by crowding out the foods that provide less nutritional value and adding more of those nutrient dense and unprocessed foods.
Where do I start?
I recommend we meet for a free 15-minute Discovery Call to discuss your high level goals, or book your free 60-minute Initial Consultation where we’ll go through your health history in greater detail to determine next steps.