Shocking News: I Didn’t Use a Program to Become a Health Coach

Texas Cowspokes dipping our wheels into the Mississippi after riding across Iowa on RAGBRAI

Health coaching is not regulated. What this means is that my 15 year old could print some business cards and throw the title “health coach” up on her social media and voila, she’s a health coach.

I’ve looked at health coach certification programs for years and just couldn’t pull the trigger. Why? The list of “what you’ll learn” was 95% of what I knew already. I would paying for a piece of paper saying I’d completed a program and some business tips.

The truth is, I’ve been health coaching for a long time, I just didn’t call it that. A large part of a midwife’s job is to coach her clients in optimal health for a low-risk birth. Our text books aren’t titled Health Coaching 101 but instead are all about nutrition, herbs, emotions, stress, laboratory tests, and of course pregnancy, birth and postpartum.

Not all midwives are holistically minded. Actually to be honest, in my circle of midwives, I am the most “hippy” and get teased often about it, except when a midwife or OB friend wants info for natural minded clients.

But my holistic leanings started well before I ever became a midwife. They started before I became a doula in 2009. When I was still in college at Texas Woman’s University, where I obtained a degree in Family Studies (which laid a strong foundation for health coaching and midwifery), I met a natural minded nurse as part of a required practicum. She introduced me to whole foods and taught me about the dangers of sugar.

Into my twenties and thirties I continued to buy book after book that would form my natural philosophy. Nourishing Traditions, What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations, Herbal Antibiotics (yes I pulled this one out a lot in 2020), Easy Homeopathy, The ABC Herbal: A Simplified Guid to Natural Healthcare for Children as well as a dozen more herbal and other health related books. We had a daughter diagnosed with eczema (actually misdiagnosed first) at 3 months old. She’s now 21 and she and I have spent years digging into gut health for her.

Right now on my shelf to read is Dirty Genes by one of my favorite resources, Dr. Ben Lynch and I keep going back to Aviva Romm’s books on thyroid and hormones. I have to narrow it down to one book for our upcoming camping trip!

Health coaching is not all about nutrition, herbs, and vaccine decisions though. Moving our bodies is a HUGE part of wellness, of course. While walking and running and gardening are my current ways to move, I have hours and hours logged on my Cannondale and I’ve started to rack them up on my vintage steel Centurion. I’ve done a century ride (100 miles) on the Hotter’N Hell 100 and come close to another couple centuries when we rode across Iowa for a week in 2019 at RAGBRAI.

I couldn’t cycle those long rides without learning all about what endurance athletes should do to train and stay healthy-especially as females. I love Dr. Stacy Sims and use her book ROAR as my training Bible. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what she’s doing for female athletes (women are not small men!)! I can’t wait to own her menopause book (I have to pace myself)!

Slaying the mental health dragons is also a large part of our wellness. Midwifery training has taught me well what natural options are available for women struggling with mild depression and anxiety. I have faced off with my own traumas and anxiety the last two years and have many tools in my personal and professional arsenal.

Stress reduction is one of the most important but least appreciated aspects of wellness and I am focused deeply on that as my family has gone/is going through some major transitions. Because of my foundation in wellness, I am feeling hopeful and joyous during a rough patch. I am thankful I can benefit from my wellness practices and teach these practices to my clients.

Would the Type A person in me love to have completed a program? Sometimes. But I just don’t think it can truly compare to the strong course work obtained at TWU, the rigorous midwifery program, or the two plus decades of nutrition/herbalism study. And nothing compares to the first hand training that came with riding 100 miles in the Texas heat in August or eating and cycling across Iowa (food trucks are part of a wellness program, right?).