The Benefits of Health and Nutrition Coaching

By Lesley Langfeldt

Personal Trainer

Health & Functional Nutrition Coach

Imagine this. You walk into your doctor’s office and explain the symptoms you have been experiencing for quite some time now. After doing testing and not really coming back with any concrete diagnosis, your doctor tells you you have IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is actually a very generic diagnosis given to a set of symptoms when the doctors can’t really pinpoint anything specific).

He then says it’s more than likely inflammation from something you’re eating and that you will just need to take the time now to figure out what foods are causing your symptoms. Good luck.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened to me once upon a time. I left the doctor’s office feeling more hopeless than ever. For over a year, I’d been experiencing stomach aches, nausea, fatigue, among other symptoms. And now he was basically telling me I had to come up with the solution on my own? I had no idea how to go about figuring out the foods that were causing my symptoms. Luckily for me, I was aware of our very own Sandy, and knew that she was a Health Coach. I reached out and instantly became a client. I was so relieved to know that I now had someone on my team who could help me maneuver through the ins and outs of figuring out what was triggering my symptoms. 

This is exactly what Health and Nutrition Coaches are for. Traditional doctors and physicians contribute to healthy living, but they don’t necessarily have the time or resources to help their patients build healthy habits and change their lifestyle on a day-to-day basis. Health & Nutrition Coaches can help bridge that gap. We work with clients one-on-one and in group settings to help them come up with and implement a plan that is specific to their needs. 

Being a healthy individual is about so much more than just what we eat and how much we exercise though. There are several other areas of life that come into play as well, such as relationships, career, spirituality, finances, and home environment, to name a few. Health Coaches consider all areas of a person’s life to address a wide variety of wellness factors. And although a Functional Nutrition Coach may focus on the nutrition aspect, they also know how other areas of life can have a huge impact on the overall wellness of a person.

Health & Nutrition Coaches are accountability partners. We are supportive mentors, wellness consultants and educators. We are motivators. We walk alongside each and every one of our clients to help them find the foods, relationships, fitness, and lifestyles that will help them feel their best and accomplish their goals, whether those be to lose weight, increase energy, sleep better, or feel more in charge of their life.

There is a lot of contradictory health-related information out there. It’s about finding the things that work best for each individual because every person is different. Health & Nutrition Coaches help strategize through barriers and challenges. After all, the road to good health is not always an easy one. However, if you have the right people on your team, it is possible to live your best life.