Happy Spring!

This is Annie-Rose Licht, the Health and Nutrition Coach at A Balanced Table, and I’m taking over Ellen’s newsletter today to talk to you a little bit about health coaching and why it’s so crucial for helping you to meet your health goals.

Health coaching is all about behavior change and helping to motivate people to start and stick to healthy behaviors. Health coaching is a huge trend in 2022, being called “the missing link in both healthcare and wellness” by industry experts. Why is this?

We are so accustomed to healthcare looking something like this: 

• You go see your doctor.
• He/she orders basic lab work.
• They review the “lab high” markers and suggest you make a few basic changes (or prescribe a medication)
• You are sent on your way to make changes on your own with a check-in in a year.

Does this sound familiar? While some people are able to do this (assuming they even receive good advice), most of us don’t make these changes. It’s too overwhelming, too different from what we’re used to; we simply need more support. And that’s where A Balanced Table is different.

At A Balanced Table, we don’t meet just once or twice. We meet regularly over the course of many months to ensure we provide you all the support, guidance, and consistency you need for success. Ellen does the in-depth lab testing, symptom analysis and sets the nutrition and lifestyle recommendations, along with your healing protocol, and I complete that puzzle by working with you to personalize this even further. 

We discuss your unique challenges and I help guide positive behavior change in a way that works for you. We spend time on your nutrition, but also work on equally important pieces in the health puzzle such as sleep, stress management, and movement. Let’s take a look at an example of this.

Have you ever read an article like “5 ways to get more sleep”? Articles like this can give some good ideas for sure. But how often do they apply to you and your unique situation? And more importantly, how often do you try the things they list? Often poor sleep is tied to nutrition, but frequently it is related to “sleep hygiene”, stress, or even meal timing or unbalanced meals, despite a healthy diet. When I work with a client who is continuing to have trouble sleeping, I start by asking questions like:

• Is your bedroom completely dark (are there any LED lights on? Blackout curtains? Light from the hallway?)
• Do you have trouble falling asleep or do you wake in the middle of the night? What time? How are you feeling during these wakings?
• How do you go to bed at night? What’s your routine?
• Are you using screens before bed? In bed?
• Do you have a partner who snores? A dog who walks around in your bed?
• When do you eat dinner? What do you eat at dinner?
• How much time outside do you get in the mornings/mid-day?

All of these questions give me a really clear picture of why you might be having trouble with sleep. Once we have clues to what the root cause of your poor sleep is, we can implement strategies and small habit changes that can create drastic improvements. 

Why small? Small changes lead to bigger changes, and when you start small, you feel success early on. This is key for sticking with these new habits. By improving your health from every aspect through habit change, it allows you better healing rather than if you just changed one thing, such as the food you’re eating or the workout you’re doing.

This model of pairing health coaching with the more traditional practitioner is becoming more common, as studies are showing really positive results. Our complementary set of skills and incredibly hands-on approach is why we see so much success in this practice. Ellen continues to meet with our clients regularly, so now you have the benefit of twice as many interactions to give you all the tools you need to set up life-long healthy habits and see real results. 

What habit would you like to adopt for your health? If you’ve never worked with Ellen, you can reach out to apply to work with her here. And if you’re a current client without a package that includes health and nutrition coaching with me, you can book with me a la carte as well. I’d love to work with you!

Annie-Rose