You Can Transform Health Through Habit Change

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

There was no one aha moment. In my early twenties I was dancing full time but had started to struggle with my weight and felt that the support and guidance I needed was more then a diet plan so I made an appointment with Joshua Rosenthal who was still health coaching at the time. After meeting Joshua, we became good friends and he mentored me for the next 4 years. Because I was not ready to leave my dancing career, I went back to what I knew best.

A couple of years ago, after two kids, and a hand full of personal training clients, I craved getting back into health coaching. I wanted to help my clients make a deeper change outside of fitness and I wanted to get out of gyms.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

I felt insecure and out of practice with health coaching, and in my search for some extra training I found Stacey Morgenstern. This was before she partnered with Carey. She was offering a very inexpensive CTD training class and I signed up for it. Although her training was pretty short, I followed her advice and got my first health coaching client! Unfortunately, it had been over a decade since I went to IIN and I had no idea what to do with him, so within a month I lost him as a client. I knew I needed extra training to make it work. It took 2 years before I decided to invest in the training with Carey and Stacey because I had sticker shock… but what a silly waste of time! Every cent was worth the training.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

I went from working 7 days a week, and running from home to home as a trainer to working from home, 100 percent online, 5 days a week while making more on average per hour. As a result of the success, I have been able to buy my first home in the country, move out of NYC, and feel more satisfied by my work.

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I actually went to school for photography and media communications, and I never dreamed I would be a health coach.

Right before I moved to New York for my photography career, I had an experience of traveling to Thailand and my whole life did a 180 degree turnaround. I went from being really unhealthy to all of a sudden wanting to become healthy. I lost weight, I also had been doing drugs, so I was wanting to clean up my act and move towards having a healthier lifestyle.

So when I moved to New York, I decided the best place I could be is to work in a health food store, so I could learn how to be happy and healthy. And that’s when I found out a little bit more about what health coaching is.

I also remember reading something about health coaching online, and I almost cried – I was just so moved by the idea that I could help someone like me, someone who has been really at the lowest of the lows in their life, become happy and healthy. And I could help them in a way that was really simple.

I’d personally been to doctors, I’d been to therapists, I’ve been to all these things, and many of them had helped me, but what I really wanted was someone in my corner to be my coach to just be happier and healthier.

I was so excited by health coaching, and I remember thinking, and thinking, and thinking about it, and over and over, and I was like, “This is it.” And I was like, “Thank you god, this is my calling and I didn’t even know it was my calling!”

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

I didn’t have any money to do it and nothing in my life said it was the right time… except for my heart. I was really excited about the idea. It was the first time I was that excited about anything in a really long time. It felt like there was a certain synchronicity – they say when the time is right the future appears, and that was what happened for me.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

Oh my gosh, I make the joke that I would probably be a hot mess if I wasn’t a health coach!

My life in many ways has become so much more rich, I’ve gotten the honor to know so many hundreds of women, get to know that we’re all similar, our fears are the same, our excitements are similar.

I’ve personally been able to continue my health and personal growth journey, learning how to love myself, being confident in who I am – these things are not the typical things you get in a career. But in health coaching, if you ask health coaches, they would say that their career is closely connected with their journey of themselves, and becoming better people. I don’t think that’s something you can say about every career.

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I was trained as an occupational therapist, so I always had the mindset of wanting to help people. But it wasn’t until I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 — it was such a dark time, and I was searching for answers, searching for hope, and support, and community, and just someone who could help guide me along the way.

And there was nothing I found out there at the time. So it just felt right in my body and in my heart when I thought about wanting to support people who were going through the same experience that I had. I feel like I was given cancer for a reason, and as long as I could make something positive out of that completely miserable experience, then I was totally fine with it.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

I started my health coach training just five months after I was diagnosed. It was a short time, but it was long enough to know how low and unsupported and discouraged I felt with the answers that I was getting from my oncologist and in the medical community.

I just felt like there was such a huge gap in knowing what I could do to feel better, to have more energy, and just making sure that I was giving my body the best chance to fight the cancer. So when I started school, I wasn’t in remission, I was still fighting cancer myself. But I just knew that there were answers out there and I wanted to find them myself, and then that jump-started my passion to help others too.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

It’s been an amazing journey, and it’s really given me purpose for what I do on a daily basis. I wake up every single morning so excited and ready to make a difference in the world. But it also started with me, because I feel so much more educated now on how to listen to my body, not only with what food fuels me or drags me down, but also in all aspects of my life, mind, body and soul. I’m just so grateful for the knowledge, so I can raise my three little kids with that information, so that they can feel happy and healthy.

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I was in a different career – I was a human resources executive. I was working in helping people, but nothing related to health, right? But I have always been interested in nutrition and well-being, because it was a family value when I was growing up. I am from Spain, and when I moved to America and I saw how differently people eat, it was a trigger to pay even more attention to nutrition and the way food made me feel.

But it was not until I met a health coach that I knew I wanted to become one. I was taking a raw foods chef certification program, and the coolest and most knowledgeable and, by the way, cute people in the course were health coaches. I’m not kidding. They were mostly women, and they had an energy that was immediately attractive.

So I asked them, “What do you do?” And they said, “I’m a health coach.” I’m like, what? A health coach? I have never heard of that in my life. They were younger than me, full of life, but that day, I knew I wanted that. I wanted that. I knew this was going to be my path, I had no doubt–I immediately started making plans to find out more about where I could get the type of certification I needed so I could help people successfully.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

After I met these health coaches, I was forty six years old. So my initial plan was to retire in ten years, at 55 years old. I told this to my boss, and after I did that I decided to hire a health coach myself. I met her at one of your events, and she was trained in your Transformational Coaching Method. And bam, I was like, screw the fifty five year old thing, this is happening for me much sooner!

So I enrolled right there and then when I was forty six years old. I knew it was the right time because it spoke to my heart—it was a big part of my career that was missing. As an HR person you’re helping people all day long, you’re helping them with their job, meeting their goals, public speaking training, you name it, but if their health is deteriorating, it’s really hard to take them to the level they want to be, right?

So this was the part that was missing. When you start getting better, when your energy improves, everything else falls in to place, and then a door opens for a lot of other possibilities, promotions, a different job, and in my case a new career.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

My life changed 180 degrees. And the first thing that changed was that one of my four children was very sick. I had taken a lot of nutrition courses throughout my life before going to health coaching school, so I combined those things with the little bit of coaching that I learned, and I put my daughter through a three month health coaching program, and she was able to manage her disease to the point where she’s not medicated anymore.

So that was life changing, and was the trigger to take some time off from my successful HR career. Once I did that my life really started to change, because I began improving my own health after a host of health problems a few years ago. From then on I knew that health coaching was my path, I had no doubt.

And I’m bringing all my previous life experience into my coaching – your HR career, being a mother – I bring this whole tool box full of tools, values, and things from when I was growing up, from my engagement, and that is not related to nutrition necessarily, but it’s wonderful to have. It makes me a well rounded health coach, and I speak around the country, and even internationally. My relationships are better, my family life is better, and now I want to live instead of feeling like I didn’t have control over my lifestyle.

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I was always interested in health and wellness, and the body, and the mind, ever since I was a kid. I became a personal trainer after spending four years in the Marine Core, but I got frustrated because a lot of times I could sense that what my clients needed was to think about what they were eating, think about their lifestyle, their habits, their mindset and how to handle stress. So I knew that I needed to do something more with them, more like coaching, where I could talk to them and get clear on what is important to them. I’ve always considered myself a coach.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

One of my core values is freedom, and I never liked the dependency model that personal training engenders – I didn’t like having to show up at the gym. I liked the idea of having the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere, any time, with anyone no matter where their geographical location was. Now I have clients all over the place, and I really enjoy that.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

What’s exciting is that I actually love, love, love – did I say love? – LOVE what I do. I love preparing to talk to my clients, I love talking with my clients, and I love the way I feel after talking with my clients….I really enjoy the process. I realized that no matter what I do for a living, I’m going to be spending a lot of hours doing it. So I wanted to enjoy the daily process, and I really enjoy the daily process of coaching people. And I get better results from clients coaching than I ever did personal training alone.

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I don’t remember how I first heard of health coaching, probably an ad online or through a friend. I don’t know, but I knew it was right for me because I’m totally a crazy foodie who wants to be healthy, and I want all the people around me to be healthy, and I want the planet to be healthy. I’m crazy about all those things. And it was just the perfect way for me to feel juiced everyday about being the change I wished to see in the world.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

Great question! I don’t think you ever really know for sure. I remember feeling like it was scary, and my brain was like, “there are a lot of reasons not to do this sort of thing!”

I remember really, really mulling it over, and my brain kept going back and forth, like “it isn’t the right time, but I really want it, but it’s too much money, but it’s really calling to me….”

I was vice-president of sales for a winery, and when I got pregnant with my son, I knew I wasn’t going to want to travel as much as I was required to for my job. So I enrolled in school, sort of planning to transition to health coaching so I could live my best life – for me and for my family.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

My life has changed so much. I think the best way I can say it is that I feel freedom and purpose every day now. I almost give myself the chills with that answer, because it’s true. And how cool is that?

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

When I was in college, I was training for a marathon. There was a weekend workshop where a health coach came in and gave a talk on how to eat and train for the marathon. I started following her, because I thought her job looked really fun.

As soon as I graduated college, I went into finance for six years. But health coaching popped back into my life and I had this feeling that it was what I wanted to do.

I think what attracted me to health coaching is that I’ve always been a really good listener. I’ve always loved solving problems, and I love helping others wake up to what turns them on in life, and in that sense I felt like coaching was a really nice fit for me.

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

I’ve had a couple of “now or never moments” in my life: one was when I was working and I decided to take a leave and do a yoga training, and the other was when I enrolled in health coaching school. Somehow an advertisement came to my email inbox and I was like, “You know what? I don’t care about how this is going to work or all the details, I know that this is something that I want to experience and be involved in, I’ll let it unfold.”

I just knew it was the right time, and I signed up. I went through it and I loved every minute of it.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

My life is completely different today than it was three years ago. On the most basic level, my training taught me what it truly means to eat healthy, and it helped me understand my relationship to food.

From there, I learned how to relate to myself better and how to relate to others better. I learned how to get into rapport with myself and with what I want in life, and that completely changed my whole experience of life.

If I could put it into one sentence, before I was a health coach it was like I was totally turned off and numb to life, I was in a soul-sucking job and working all these crazy hours. And now, as a health coach, it’s like I feel alive every day.

Even my relationship with my husband is a lot different, in such a good way

How did you know health coaching was right for you?

I was in college to become a doctor, doing all my pre-med stuff, and I was sitting in organic chemistry with a bar of chocolate and a latte, daydreaming about my future doctor’s office.

I was imagining my patients coming in to see me, and sitting on that starchy paper on the exam table, you know? All these little fantasies, and then I pictured myself writing a prescription for my patient, and then it was like a record-scratch. “Eeeeeeerrrrrhhh!”

Because I honestly hadn’t thought of that before that moment, and I realized that writing prescriptions for me was against my values. I had studied herbal medicine in the past, but I could never figure out how to take it off the ground and work with people.

And in that record-scratch moment, I went and did some research, and was led into the whole beautiful world of health coaching!

How did you know when it was the right time to start your health coach training?

I pretty much just went for it. It was such a strong instinct and such a strong pull, and everything about the idea of it was perfect for me. There was just so much there that I believed in, and always have, and that’s what I was now going to get trained in. So, I used my student loans that I had for college for my health coach training.

How has your life changed as a result of becoming a health coach?

One of the big changes is that I do work that is rewarding, I love my work. The other way my life has changed is that I was really, really sick when I started doing my work as a health coach, and I had done a ton of research and personal experimentation to heal my own body, and I’ve just continued to do that work.

So, in some ways my work has led me into deeper healing for myself. I keep getting to a healthier state of being the more I do this work, because I have to maintain my stance as a role model for my clients. I don’t have to be perfect, I don’t have to be not eating ice cream or cupcakes, but I have to be somebody who does walk their talk, or somebody who can stand up and say, “Yeah, I eat ice cream and cupcakes sometimes.”

Health coaching has really taught me so much about being authentic and being real.