What is a Functional Medicine Health Coach?

Coaching sessions allow you the opportunity to explore your goals to reach optimal health while focusing on the whole self. At Optimally You, your coach works in tandem with your health care provider and collaborates with you to create a personalized plan to fit your specific needs on your health journey based on lab values and provider recommendations. A functional medicine coach also spends time exploring the areas you declare most important while encouraging you to discover a course of action for your topic of focus. The time spent with your coach gains you access to a variety of resource and education to help reinforce the plan you co-create during your sessions.

Functional medicine health coaching helps clients reboot their health through personalized motivation. Clients can experience their full potential by addressing uniquely designed goals to move from surviving to thriving. Coaching packages create moments to construct a comprehensive journey to vibrant health. Exposure to functional medicine health coaching sessions will provide education necessary for sustaining the desired established goals. Client empowerment through the coaching process is a priority for maintainable lifestyle or nutritional modifications.

Your Health and Wellness Coach partners with you seeking self-directed, lasting changes, aligned with your values, which promote health and wellness and , thereby, enhance well-being. In the course of your work the health and wellness coach displays unconditional positive regard for you and a belief in your capacity for change. The coach honors that you are the expert in your own life while ensuring that all interactions are respectful and non-judgmental.

Coaching sessions help you address barriers to health improvements, implement physician recommended lifestyle changes, engage you in your own health care plan, help identify obstacles to change and create strategies for forward movement, helps facilitate behavior change in a structured, supportive partnership between you and your coach. Functional medicine health coaches are the wellness authority in combatting chronic illness and disease through customizable implementation of minor adjustments to stimulate major change in health outcomes for the client.

As a functional medicine health coach, focus will be applied to helping the patient to understand how functional medicine differs from traditional medicine by finding the root cause of the disease instead of matching a pill to the ill. Functional medicine understands bio individuality and builds a health plan based on your lifestyle, chemistry, needs, and labs to optimize your wellness. The coach provides additional support for compliancy and integration of new health regimens with the same approach…unique to the individual and their existing lifestyle.

The use of positive psychology during sessions helps to promote your strengths in the achievement process of health goals. The positive psychology concept is founded on the basic principle that the human race desires to live meaningful and fulfilled lives, foster their positive strengths to enhance their lives, and magnify their experiences of love, work, and play. The idea is that we innately seek joy in life and base our decisions on achieving joyful outcomes. This idea allows the client to make changes to maintain a course in life that increase the moments and feelings of happiness. Optimal health and wellness fosters happiness and positive outcomes in life so daily healthy decisions should be made. A functional medicine health coach facilitates the discovery of positive strengths in the client to make the journey to health and wellness more achievable and sustainable.

A functional medicine health coach spends time with the client focusing on mind-body medicine as well. Mind-body medicine is a field of study recognizing the connection between the mind, the brain, the body as a whole, and behaviors. The notion of this field of study believes emotions, behaviors, mental state, spiritual life, and social life impact our physical health. For example, anxiety is perceived as a mental state but will manifest with physical symptoms like rapid and irregular heartbeats, shortness of breath, nausea, and trembling. Building a plan to address the state of mind, harness emotions, create healthy social support systems, and raise spirituality will increase the success of physical health.

Functional nutrition is a foundational principle of functional medicine and encouraged by a functional medicine health coach. Nutrition from a functional approach considers many areas of your life such as diet, health, and overall lifestyle when designing personal recommendations. Examining the interrelations of every part of the body helps to understand the best approach to restore physiological function and imbalances through food and lifestyle management. In order to maximize the impact of functional nutrition on health, the coach and client will co-create a nutrition plan respecting the client’s unique nutritional requirements as well as the symptoms being experienced.

Coaching sessions create opportunities for client discoveries of connection between multiple areas of their lives. Exploration of healthy relationships allows the client to acknowledge their support system and avoid potential challenges or sabotage of their health plan. Past successes or obstacles are also investigated to bring awareness to patterns and behavior to strengthen the resolve of the client and increase the odds of a positive outcome for the client.

Balance is key! Sessions are intentionally focused on encouraging foundational transformation to honor balance through seasons of transition while implementing lifestyle changes. Working with a functional medicine health coach fosters a relationship and environment for the client to fully surrender preconceived or projected expectations of self and fully step into alignment with true self. This alignment helps strengthen the adoption of change and compliancy. Recognizing healthy boundaries of impact guides the session in the development of goals. For example, if proper customized nutrition cannot be completely committed to by the client then the goals focus on bolstering other areas so the nutritional impact on health is minimized.

Working with a functional medicine health coach provides access to expert counsel in areas such as:

ACHIEVING OPTIMAL WEIGHT

REDUCE FOOD CRAVINGS

ESTABLISH RESTFUL SLEEP PATTERNS

MAXIMIZE ENERGY

CUSTOMIZE NUTRITION

STRESS RESILIENCE

HYDRATION

HABIT REFORMATION

PERSONALIZED MOVEMENT PLAN

SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABILITY

BALANCE

TOTAL TOXIC LOAD

TIME MANAGEMENT