If Your Body Is a Temple, the Latest in Luxury Is a Health Coach

From Town & Country

If 2019 was the year that made spiritual enlightenment the new status symbol, then 2020 is the year that the nutritional health coach becomes the new guru for the upper crust—and the ultimate luxury. With the wellness movement on the rise, and self-care as fashionable as ever, routines are turning inward towards the ultimate temple: the body and its internal function. Enter: the health coach. T&C sat down with Jim Curtis, the head of brand for the Institute of Integrative Nutrition to get the skinny on why the chicest new guru to have at one's disposal is a nutritionist.

What typically causes people to reach out to a nutritional coach for help, and how does that process differ from a traditional registered nutritionist? What role do they play in the overall wellness journey of clients?

Health Coaches can play such an important role in the wellness journey of their clients. Typically, when the client finds the health coach, they’re feeling sick… maybe they’re frustrated with their experience with the healthcare system—doctors aren’t listening to their non-acute problems or they’re throwing prescriptions at the issue.

Often, doctors like Frank Lipman and Mark Hyman have health coaches in their offices, as well as institutions like peacehealth and THE WELL. Clients may say they’re not sleeping well and they’re in pain. Or maybe they’re feeling ashamed of the weight they’ve put on because of stress or poor eating habits, and that shame is permeating into other areas of their mental and physical health. These are all typical catalysts for clients to reach out to a health coach.

At IIN, we take a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, which means we’re not just looking at the food on your plate. Coaches will work with their clients to look at all the other things that can nourish you–your relationships, spirituality, career–the metaphysical things that can have physical consequences on your body. We call this “primary food,” and the food on your plate is actually “secondary", and those choices are often a result of the "primary food."

Health coaches also make sure to emphasize bio-individuality, which is the concept that what works for one person doesn’t always work for another. That’s why health coaches are never going to “prescribe” a diet plan for someone, or create strict guidelines by which their clients must follow. They act as a guide to health and wellness so that the client start to navigate what works for them.

A good health coach creates a safe space for their clients to talk about their health concerns. They help them set goals and navigate lifestyle-change options, including what their doctor, nutritionist, or RD have provided for them.

What does nutritional coaching entail?

Each client is different. The IIN program teaches health coaches how to guide conversations that allow the client to come to their own answers, and even when it may be time to refer their client to another healthcare professional.

When a client first comes on, they’ll fill out a health history, to give the health coach an idea of where the client currently is, and what concerns they have about their health, which will help inform the coaching sessions. These sessions can be held in person or virtually, it all depends on the setup of the health coach’s practice.

As the process unfolds, how does that coaching become embedded in the client's day to day life?

The coach is embedded in day-to-day life and routines by guiding their clients through not only food concerns, but other areas of their life as well. Through their sessions, the expert teaches their clients a variety of different tools and practices that they can take with them throughout their day.

An in-depth example would be a client who is having trouble sleeping because she can’t calm down from her anxious thoughts. This client often comes home from work late, so she eats dinner late, and can’t unwind from her hectic day.

Her health coach would ask her about what makes her anxious, and why she feels that way. The client expresses that she gets anxious about her to-do list the next day, because she didn’t get to everything on her list today. The coach can suggest re-structuring her to-do list, to break it down into “must get done today” and “can wait another day” so she can quickly and clearly see what work is the most urgent.

Her coach will also ask about what she’s eating for dinner, and the portion. The client says she doesn’t have time to eat lunch on these long days, so when she gets home, she’s ravenous. Her coach can recommend packing a fiber and fat-filled snack, such as almonds, to stay satiated between lunch and dinner, so she doesn’t feel so hungry when she gets home. She explains that her large dinner can impact sleep, as her body is focused on digestion instead of winding down. Another recommendation would be trying to get into bed earlier, with no TV or phone, to try to physically relax even if her mind hasn’t relaxed yet.

It’s really about giving the client tangible, step-by-step tips to help alleviate a problem that might not seem directly related to another issue. Oftentimes, when you’re so wrapped up in your day-to-day routine, it’s harder to see simple solutions to problems you’ve been dealing with for a long time.

Typically speaking, why are people approaching nutritional coaching?

Clients are approaching health coaches for a multitude of reasons, but in this context, we’d say both as the logical next step, as well as a gateway to other healing modalities.

A lot of clients have made their way through the Western medical system and are feeling frustrated and like they need guidance. Alternative health practitioners will absolutely provide that guidance for them, in addition to becoming part of their healthcare team. We’re so adamant that health coaches can play a pivotal role as part of a team, working alongside a client’s nutritionist/RD, medical doctor, etc.

Through their health coaching experience, clients can also be introduced to other healing modalities, such as meditation, mindful movement, and even alternative practices like acupuncture.

A coach's main goal is to create a space where their client can explore all the areas of their life that need nourishing—whether that is helping them improve their relationships, their self-love and relationship to themselves, their spirituality, or even their environment.

We also have a graduate who started a service called Wellory–which is a text-based health coaching service that people check in with multiple times a day–sometimes whenever they eat!

From a holistic standpoint, what other practices are clients encouraged to undertake while they are working with a coach?

It’s all about bio-individuality. Coaches can give recommendations to their clients about different practices. Often, it’s what seems like the simplest practices that are the most effective–move more, take a walk after meals, get a standing desk at work, be more mindful when you eat, know when to drink water, take up a meditation practice, start a yoga practice, establish a more consistent gratitude practice, journal what you are grateful for, etc.

For people who know nothing about nutrition, what is something every nutritional coach would want a person to know about their food intake?

We teach health coaches not to prescribe diets or write meal plans that a client must follow. Health coaches guide clients in the major tenets of nutrition that everyone could benefit from:

Drink more water. Eat more whole foods. Consider if you can pronounce the ingredients in your foods, cut out refined sugar, and stay away from processed foods as much as possible in your daily routine. Veggies are your friends. These things seem simple to some but in practice, they often take a support system to implement.

Taking a step further, it’s important to note that our coaches will always emphasize bio-individuality, and that applies to every kind of decision a client can make. Everyone talks about eating only organic, non-GMO foods, and that’s a great goal if you’re able to make that happen. However, organic foods are more expensive than non-organic, and if someone can’t afford organic produce, we advocate for choosing produce over none at all. Financial bio-individuality is strongly tied to food bio-individuality, and this is something a health coach would also work with their clients on.

What is the long-term goal of working with a nutritional coach?

The goal is to have a client feel empowered and to be able to understand the tidal wave of wellness information out there. They should be supported in making good decisions for themselves to support a lifestyle that has them feel physically and mentally fantastic.

Small steps can lead to big change, and health coaches are there every step of the way to help their clients reach their health goals. Every client’s needs and goals are different, but the common thread between the work of health coaches and the results of their clients is the empowerment to make change and the feeling like they have control of their health again.

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