How I Work

What You Can Expect

Here's what you can expect when you work with me as your personal wellness coach.

• You’ll become very clear about what a healthy life means to you.
• Your personalized wellness plan, which we'll create together, will include specific goals that are meaningful to you. You’ll know the smaller steps that will move you toward your goals, and you’ll have the knowledge and support you need to follow through on your plan.
• You’ll learn strategies to incorporate healthy choices into your life in ways that fit with your values, your needs, your individual health situation, and your other activities and priorities.
• You’ll learn how to make sense of the often conflicting and overwhelming volume of health information available in the media.

Other specific results will depend on your goals, desires, and needs. For example, one client might lose weight, another might complete a century (100-mile bike ride), and a third might experience improved stress management and increased energy.

My Guiding Beliefs

As a busy physician, spouse, and mom of a young child who has struggled with many of these challenges in my own life, I’ve learned that:

• It doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Wellness has become big business. The more difficult and complicated it appears, the more money you will feel obliged to spend on special products, foods, exercise equipment, and supplements. Often, though, wellness is about making the simple, inexpensive choice. A walk outside costs nothing, and vegetables cost less than Twinkies.

• Wellness is about your whole life.

Wellness is more than “not being sick.” It’s also about doing things you love and having relationships with people you care about. Other areas of your life also determine which strategies will be the most effective for you in developing healthy habits.

• Wellness requires taking responsibility for your choices.

Healthy habits result when we make healthy choices over and over again. Our choices either support or sabotage our healthy habits. We often say (to ourselves or to others), “I didn’t have a choice.” Our options may be limited by the circumstances, but we almost always have some choice.

• Every choice matters, but no one choice is the end of the world.

So you ate the whole bag of chips, laid on the couch instead of taking that bike ride, or stayed up too late. Is it time to give up? No way! Just start again with the next choice you make.

• Different people need different solutions.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” program that will help everyone achieve wellness. What’s necessary is to assess your starting point and consider the circumstances of your life. This allows you to clarify where you want to go and how to get there. The journey, and the destination, will look different for each person.

• It’s about finding joy, not about deprivation.

The keys to a healthy lifestyle are choosing healthy foods and activities that you love, and learning either to make unhealthy favorites healthier or to make them occasional indulgences rather than everyday staples. Wellness is not about never eating your favorite food again.

• A coach complements the role of your doctor.

In a perfect world, you would get this information, guidance, and coaching from your personal physician, but today’s reality is that most doctors do not have the time to do this. In addition, medical training focuses more on illess than on health, so a coach with expertise in health and wellness is a valuable addition.

My Approach

Explore. Educate. Create. Inspire.

• Explore: I listen to you. Each client is different, and I will help you discover what wellness means to you, not what I think it “should” mean.
• Educate: I share my knowledge when you want it, and l also support you in brainstorming to find your own solutions. I help you cut through the garbage. There is a lot of questionable and unscientific information about health and wellness out there; I use my background in medicine and health to help you find good information and apply it to your own situation.
• Create: I add a focus on making mindful choices to evidence-based information about health to help you develop healthy habits that will last. With this information, we work together to create a wellness plan that incorporates goals that are meaningful and achievable, and will bring joy, abundance, and health into your life.
• Inspire: I provide ongoing support and accountability to keep you on track, help you celebrate your successes and learn from setbacks, and champion you in moving forward. The ultimate goal is for you to connect with your own internal motivations for wellness so that you choose a healthy lifestyle because it brings happiness and well-being into your life.

I do NOT give specific medical advice. While my medical training informs my approach, coaching is not medical practice, nor is it a substitute for a physician-patient relationship. As a coach, I do not make diagnoses or recommend specific treatments. I will encourage you to address medical questions with your doctor and will be glad to talk with you about how you can get the most out of your communications with your doctor.

What Makes Promote Health Consulting Unique

My background, as a physician with training and practice experience in emergency medicine and integrative medicine, gives me a foundation of knowledge about health and wellness which is both deeper and broader than that of most coaches.

My medical training has also taught me how to evaluate and assess scientific studies so that I can help you identify information about health which is scientifically valid.

My coach training has taught me to work with all aspects of my clients’ lives and has given me the skills to help clients look deeply into their values and into what lies behind the obstacles that get in their way. Our work together is about choosing a life that promotes health in order to be fundamentally more fulfilling, not simply about narrow goals like losing the proverbial “last 5 pounds.”

I do not advocate any one specific “program” for my clients but rather work with each person individually to choose goals and strategies that suit their values and needs.

As a busy working mom, I have experienced first-hand the challenges of consistently making healthy choices in my own life and for my family. I’ve invested much time and energy in finding my own solutions (which continue to evolve and improve!), and I know that this can be difficult without adequate education and support.

Many wellness professionals sell supplements and health products; I do not. I believe that to do so creates the potential for conflict of interest. If I make a recommendation to you, you can trust that it comes from my own research and experience.

Continue by clicking here to learn more about the services and programs that I offer!