“Eat better, exercise more”
You go in to see your doctor for your yearly physical. Your weight is up, your blood pressure is high, and your lab work comes back showing high cholesterol. Your doctor tells you how to fix this, “Diet and exercise” “Eat better, exercise more”, or “Watch sodium and cholesterol”. That’s it. Your doctor then leaves it up to you to figure out what the means, implement new changes to your lifestyle, and hopefully have better results at your appointment next year. You are left feeling frustrated, defeated, and lost.
Where do you start? What do you do? Does this mean you have to eat nothing but salad for the next year, go for 6-mile runs every day, not touch a drop of salt, no dessert…sounds like it could be a lonely, miserable year?
A health coach can be a friend in your corner. You can make great strides towards improving your health and not be miserable in the process. A health coach works with you to develop plans to achieve your goals. A health coach supports you, encourages you, challenges you, and helps keep you accountable along the way. Is it likely that you will be able to get family or friends to suddenly jump on board with you to start adding exercise and better eating habits to their lives? Health coaches are the support that you need while starting down a new path toward wellness.
A health coach helps you navigate the direction you need to go and the steps you need to take to “eat better, exercise more.” A health coach recognizes that you are the expert on your own life and involves you in making decisions and setting goals that are attainable for you because running 6 miles every day isn’t likely something that is attainable or even something that a lot of people even want to do. A health coach helps you to obtain a healthier lifestyle by addressing your goals one at a time. Breaking down a large goal into small goals (baby steps) is a much more sustainable way to create healthy habits that lead to lifestyle changes.
“Eat better, exercise more” when working with a health coach, can look like adding a 10-minute walk two times a week to your routine, adding a vegetable to your dinner each evening, having smaller portions of desserts, and over time progressing to a 10-minute walk four times a week, adding a vegetable to lunch and dinner meals, and reducing desserts to only a few times a week instead of every day. The health coach works with you to discover your likes and dislikes, your time allowance, and your willingness to change and helps you build small goals within these parameters.
A few new healthy habits can make a difference in achieving better health. Better health doesn’t require salads for every meal every day for the rest of your life, it doesn’t require becoming a marathoner, and it doesn’t require not ever enjoying food again. Life is a balance, and a health coach can help you to find the balance that is best for you and your needs.
