***Health Coaching

Are you conscious with how you are currently looking now?

Getting heavier every day?

Afraid you are being unhealthy?

Then, maybe you need a health coach to help you with all of those!

Health Coaching is a process wherein a coach facilitates your health, helps you with your struggles and drives you forward to make your goals into reality.

A health coach draws on positive psychology and uses motivational interviewing and goal setting as the main process to help you.

They…

• Identify your goals
• Helps you with creating small steps forward towards your goal
• Improves your self-management
• And, teach you how to stay motivated

The process of health coaching involves establishing relationship, motivational interviewing, wellness vision and goal setting.

ENGAGEMENT AND BUILDING TRUST

A health coach would first establish a relationship with a client through building rapport. However, they cannot become too emotionally attached to the clients as that can greatly affect their decisions or actions in helping them achieve their client’s goals – they can either fall into assumptions or have personal agendas based on personal relationships or experiences.

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING

Once the rapport has been established, building strong communication strategies is the next step. Motivational interviewing is a client centered type of conversational approach which is non-judgmental, non –confrontational and non-adversarial – the core principle would be negotiation rather than conflict. In this step, the problems, causes and consequences will be discussed so the client will be aware of the results of their actions but rather than being confrontational, both the client and the coach will tackle the problems together. Instead of trying to fix the client’s problems by forcing them to change, coaches will empathize with the client through reflective listening, encouraging change through problem recognition, concern, desire, intention to change and ability to change as well as respect to persuade the client to want to change.

WELLNESS VISION

After discussing what the problem is the next step would be envisioning the future. Imagine what you would look like in the next few months after following with the advice a coach has given? Imagine how amazing you’d feel in your cloths, mirror, or even in front of your co-workers. What would it be like after a week or a month that you both have started working together? By envisioning what is to come, motivations and obstacles would be identified and long-term behavioral goals are set which would align with the client’s vision. After the “WHY” has been established then the “HOW” will be addressed in detail.

GOAL SETTING

After you have envisioned the future, then you would have clear, realistic and well-defined goals to set. The coach job would be to encourage clients to stretch him or herself just enough to feel challenged. The success from these challenges helps the client feel accountable thus builds their self-confidence and self-esteem. Before long, clients would improve their self-efficacy, which supports change for the better.

Who can benefit from health coaching?

If you are not too old or too sick to exercise then you can be an ideal candidate! It all depends on how motivated you can be and how strong your desire is to change.