How Health Coaching Found Me

Me and Husby at my 30th Birthday party

I had recently turned 30 and felt like a real adult. I was energized by the wisdom I felt coursing through my newly-30-year-old veins (but it could have also been the alcohol consumed at the party).

I decided that it was a great time for a new beginning, to really kick my life into a higher gear. I had spent my 20s doing college and first job and all the associated stuff and left the part where I paid attention to myself and what I really needed at the door.

Plus, I had found a really great guy (or maybe he found me…) who actually liked me for all that I was. That was great.

So I vowed to take care of myself, for real, for the first time in my life.

While looking for some fun stuff for me and my guy to do together upon his next visit, I stumbled upon an advertisement for a detox seminar. Detox? Hmmm. Sounded interesting. I supposed that maybe detoxifying was something that I could use. So I signed up.

And that’s how I met my Health Coach. She gave a super interesting talk and invited us for a 1-on-1 consultation for coming to the talk. I figured that I had nothing to lose but weight, so I scheduled one.

And that was the kicker. I had chosen to make changes in my life to become a happier and healthier me but I was having trouble making the changes stick. Weight Watchers worked for a little while, but I got bored with my limited veggie cooking skills and always resorted back to my old habits, inevitably regaining my weight. I thought that the Health Coach would probably be just another version of the same.

She asked me what my goals were, and of course, I told her I wanted to lose weight. But during our consultation she asked me a question that connected some dots in my life that I had never even knew were on the same plane. This one question completely changed the way I thought about my fat and the reasons it was there on my body.

You read everywhere that the key to losing weight is “exercise more and eat less.” But if it were that simple we’d all be thin and never have a problem. What my Health Coach showed me was that my health challenges were not really about the weight. My challenges stemmed from the fact that I did not take very good care of myself and was ignoring a lot of my needs. She introduced me to the idea of Primary Foods, the foods that feed your soul.

I tell you, my soul was starving!

And through our conversations I learned how to turn all of that around. We worked on the deep stuff that kept me stuck, trudging through the stories I used to keep myself from reaching new heights, the reasons I was such a skilled self-saboteur.

I came out the other end with a new respect and love for vegetables I had no idea even existed before. My LDL cholesterol dropped 23 points. I was able to eat a meal without meat and actually feel satisfied.

And, most importantly, she helped me understand that I was an emotional eater and gave me tools to support me when I was eating my feelings. That alone was huge.

My life was so different! I slept better, my skin was clearer, my digestion worked better than ever. And I was happier with myself than I had ever been.

But mostly, I loved her job! I wanted to do for others what she had done for me.

So I signed up, yet again.

And here I am today: Tiana the Fat Health Coach, at your service.