Health Coaching - Session 1

Wow! What a powerful experience this is turning out to be! I am really working to delve into what I as a client need most instead of trying to follow some generic outline that tells me what to talk about and what to recommend. What I really need most right now is help decreasing my stress level and learning to enjoy life. So this session's recommendations for me are to make time for my top two priorities (God and myself) every single day and to increase fruit and vegetable intake since I know good nutrition is a natural mood enhancer. I didn't do any specifics for this one because I really think the focus needs to be on relieving stress.

I had also created goals for this session, but after analyzing my needs and desires, I completely rewrote them to reflect my priorities. 

I am so excited about doing this! I don't want to have to wait a whole two weeks to have another session! I know that sounds silly since the session is just with myself, but this experience is giving me the opportunity to step back and look at my life from an outside viewpoint, and it's already helped me gain so much insight into myself. I foresee great things resulting from this. I'm already seeing improvements in myself, and I am feeling more confident in my abilities as a health coach as well.

Health Coaching 101

Does this health coaching thing really work? Can people really be helped by meeting with someone twice a month for 6 months to talk about their health? Well, I'm going to find out. While in theory I believe this is a good program, I can't in all honesty say that I have a testimony of it because I've never tried it for myself. But now I find myself about 40 pounds heavier than I was a year ago and not exactly looking the part of a health coach. So now is the perfect opportunity for me to test this theory. I'm going to be my own health coach for the next 6 months as I work to get into shape again. I'm going to give myself recommendations and then "meet" with myself every 2 weeks to review how I'm doing with those recommendations. I'm going to see if this really works.

As I go through this process, I'm going to really examine what works and what doesn't work in my program and start tweaking it where necessary. I feel confident that by the end of the 6 months I will not only be a happier, healthier individual but also I will have a solid health coaching plan that I believe in and that I know will be effective for those who come to me for help.

Today I am going to do a health history consultation on myself. I will report back as I go through this process, recognizing that there will likely be backslides now and then and the occasional binge here and there. But that's life. And that's going to happen. And I'm still going to be successful, even with my imperfections.

Todays stats:

body fat: 38.3%

weight: 153.8 lbs

I actually don't care so much about weight, but since % body fat is more difficult to measure on a regular basis (at least with any accuracy), I will include my weight to help gauge progress.