My goal and impact as a health coach is to help you reach your goals as efficiently as possible. There are a few times when that might be as fast as possible. I’ve been willing to help clients drop weight quickly for an upcoming surgery since the anesthesiologist thought that would make the surgery safer, or for an important event like a wedding or work performance. But, to be clear my standard approach is to emphasize achieving the goals efficiently, and in an effective way. Reaching a goal, only to lose the progress months later is a huge waste. You may be back where you started, e.g., the same weight; or even backslide further and weigh more than when you started. And in either case you will have wasted time, money, energy, and likely be experiencing stress. Effectively reaching your goals with me, means we want the skills and strategies to enable you to maintain your achievements and continue to make progress. I emphasize giving you the tools, so you can do the work on your own, and make them habits, part of an overall lifestyle change, so that your new behaviors and goals will be with you for years to come.

Health coaches are as diverse as the restaurants in NYC. While health coach certification exists, it isn’t required, and health coaches are not professionally licensed by New York State. That means anyone can call him or herself a health coach. So, health coaches can base their approach on any theories, philosophies, or scientifically sound practices they want. Many may have an educational background that might make sense given the needs of health coaching clients. There are health coaches, like me, who are certified health coaches, psychologists, personal trainers, dietitians, yoga instructors, or others who have health care related educational backgrounds. There are also people unlike me, who have just been interested in the field of health, weight loss, lifestyle change and have educated themselves. For good or for bad, there are many kinds of health coaches to choose from. Regardless of your goals, you want to be sure the person is going to be reliable, professional, and a good personality fit for you. Your specific health coaching goals should match the health coach’s capacities, education, certifications, training, and experience. I highly recommend learning about his or her certifications, education, training experiences, positions held, and the kinds of health coaching clients he or she has had. The important thing is that you speak directly with them about if they are a certified health coach, what that certification covered in terms of the kinds of issues addressed, and if they aren’t certified what education or experience equips them to effectively coach.

As I mentioned, in terms of finding the right health coach for you, you want to be sure there is expertise that matches your health goals. While your health coaching goals may change or grow during your time in coaching, you will likely layout your goals with the health coach during your first meeting. And that is when you can ask questions to be sure you have an idea of how your health coach is prepared to help you achieve those goals. What certification, training, research, etc. contain the techniques, information, and models that your health coaching work will be based on? The other factor that is critical to successfully reaching your goals with a health coach is a goodness of fit. What I mean by this is that you genuinely like working with the person. That doesn’t mean the work will always be pleasant or easy. It does mean that especially when the work is challenging, or the information is difficult to understand that you are glad you are working with this health coach. You want to be sure the coach is as patient, warm, funny, intelligent, knowledgeable, etc. as you would like. Overall communication and even things like rate of speech are important. If you don’t want to talk to this person, if you don’t trust this person knows what he or she is talking about, or is motivated to go and find out what you need when you need it, or communicate it to you in a way you can understand, you won’t get very far- no matter how experienced the coach is. And I’ll say again that even things like sense of humor can be really important. This isn’t an improv class, but believe me, in my work, if we can’t laugh (a lot), it is going to make the frustrations harder to work through.

Health coaching in New York City can be very expensive. Rates can vary from $50-$400 an hour. Health coaching may be provided in-person; however, it is frequently done by phone or remote video. Before you call to make an appointment, it is a good idea to decide what kind of rate you think you can afford. The last thing I ever want is my clients to become stressed by the financial commitment. You want to be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Remember there is a big range of prices, so you may be better off trying one at a lower rate rather than starting with someone (even, or especially if you find it to be effective) you can’t afford, only to have to discontinue after 8 weeks and start over, or taking a break until you can save enough money to begin again.