6 Reasons Why You Should Become a Certified Health Coach
by Erin Nitschke, PhD
Health coaches empower people to make meaningful and lasting lifestyle changes that will positively impact their wellness, fitness and quality of life. They connect their clients’ values to their behaviors and collaborate to find a path forward that will deliver the desired results. What could be more rewarding than that?
If you are on the fence about whether to take the leap and become a health coach, consider the following reasons why health coaching is such a dynamic and rewarding career.
- Encourage holistic lifestyle change. The many demands of modern life create barriers to a healthier lifestyle, including a lack of physical activity, sedentary lifestyles, poor nutrition, high stress levels and lack of sleep. A health coach’s scope of practice allows you to address those perceived barriers in a way that encompasses a client’s entire lifestyle and, perhaps most importantly, the behavioral psychology driving the habits and choices clients make on a daily basis.
- Be a part of a more collaborative approach to healthcare. Health coaches are important members of the allied healthcare continuum and they have the ability and opportunity to work in tandem with other allied healthcare professionals to influence change within an already complex system. Health coaches, physicians, registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs), personal trainers and other health and exercise professionals can collaborate to focus on the prevention, rather than the management, of chronic diseases.
- Experience variety. A health coach has opportunities to work in a variety of settings, such as fitness facilities, corporations, hospitals, medical clinics, wellness centers and naturopathic clinics, with RDNs or independently in private practice. A health coach can also work in small-group settings, one on one, face to face or via online coaching platforms. The explosion of online health coaching has forever altered the landscape of the profession, allowing health coaches to expand their reach and work with clients around the world. The opportunities are truly limitless.
- Enjoy a dynamic career. Health coaching as a field and professional practice has gained enormous momentum over the past several years. As awareness of the dangers associated with living a sedentary lifestyle has grown, more people are looking to enhance their overall health and wellness by making positive changes to their existing lifestyle practices. Health coaches can help people understand the connections among the various pillars of wellness and empower them to make small changes that can drive big results.
- Become a master of client-centered habit change. The more we grow in our understanding of behavior change and human psychology, the more we understand that successful and long-lasting change comes from modifying lifestyle practices. A health coach is a client-centered professional who works alongside their clients to identify areas of potential change and uses motivational interviewing and other behavior-change strategies to facilitate sustainable changes.
- Provide a service that works! Changing one’s behavior is a difficult task, but the evidence shows that health coaching is an effective method of helping clients identify behaviors and achieve goals that align with their values and lifestyles. For example, one review of the effectiveness of health coaching found that it led to improved self-efficacy, decreased HbA1c levels, decreased body mass index, decreased dietary fat intake and increased physical activity. Other studies have found that health coaching decreased outpatient and total medical expenses, improved health habits and decreased blood pressure. Demonstrating to clients and potential clients that the services you provide are backed by science lends credibility to your work and to the health coaching profession.
