Episodes
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In this episode, Shivaun Conn talks to Ellie Thompson, an accredited practising dietitian and an accredited health and wellness coach, about health coaching and how it has changed her practice.
Ellie works in the corporate space as a health coach, as well as in private practice for Verde Nutrition Co. where she utilises both her dietetics and health coaching skills to empower clients to create long-lasting change to improve their health and nutrition.
Ellie's practice changed completely after becoming a health coach. At university, she was taught to follow the steps, educate clients, and follow her own agenda. Often she felt like she was trying to force people to change, not meeting people where they were at, and often wasting her own time as well as her clients. After adopting a coaching approach, she felt like she was walking alongside her clients, they felt heard and were able to achieve a successful end point faster.
Studying health coaching has been life-changing for Ellie and has transformed all her consults.
Although Ellie wishes she learnt health coaching within her university degree, she is so grateful she completed her health coaching training so early in her career. Integrating coaching into her practice has been rewarding for both her clients and herself.
Health coaching has made her practice easier, more relaxing, and has made work so much more enjoyable.
In this podcast, she discusses how she utilises health coaching, how its shaped her career and her life, changed the way she communicates, and in Ellie's words 'I don't think there is anyone that wouldn't benefit from health coaching. I couldn't recommend this training any more highly.'
When searching for a nutrition expert look for an Accredited Practicing Dietitian. To find out more or book with Ellie visit https://verdenutrition.co/
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In this episode of the Health Coach Show, Sharon Curtain, dietitian and accredited health coach is joined by Liv Brown, health coach and longevity and optimisation program lead at Melbourne Functional Medicine. Liv is going to be sharing her insights into the role that health data plays for clients, and how health coaches can use this data within their scope of practice.
In this episode, we discuss:
What is health data?
What is objective vs subjective data?
How data motivates some people, and plays a role for monitoring progress
How data may create anxiety in some people and the role of the coach may also be creating space to support the client to manage the emotional impact of results or data that are unexpected.
How health coaches can use data to generate awareness through use of tracking, food/mood diaries, and therefore generate insights into patterns, triggers etc)
With so much data at our fingertips, and as we work with other health professionals who are doing diagnostic testing it is essential that health coaches understand what is inside scope and what is outside their scope.
A coach should not interpret results - we help with the implementation
A coach should not provide advice regarding the results
A coach should not make any commentary about values or information on results
Data can enhance Personal Health Literacy- our ability to listening to our body (symptoms) and then decide what changes we can make in response to this insight.
Read more about data, lab testing and the role of a coach in this fantastic article "How lab testing can enhance the client coaching experience" written by Liv and fellow coach, Bee
Learn more about MFM programs: https://mfm.au/optimise-bridge
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In this episode of the Health Coach Show, Shivaun Conn, Dietitian and Accredited Health Coach, is joined by Elise Bialylew, a doctor trained in psychiatry, a well-known leader in the field of mindfulness, the Founder of Mindful in May, and author of the mindfulness guidebook, The Happiness Plan.
In this episode, we discuss:
What is mindfulness?
The relationship between mindfulness and meditation
The benefits of meditation and mindfulness
How being mindful can enhance your coaching practice
How long do you have to meditate to experience benefits and how to start
The Mindful in May program and The Happiness Plan mindfulness guidebook
Link to Mindful In May Program: https://www.mindlifeproject.com/mindful-in-may-2024/
Link to The Happiness Plan: https://www.mindlifeproject.com/mindful-in-may-2024/happiness-plan/
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, Sharon Curtain, dietitian and accredited health coach is joined by Christine Boucher, a former ICU nurse who discovered health coaching and has not looked back, forging an impressive career in Workplace wellness.
Christine was awarded the Health Coaches Australia New Zealand Association 'Health Coach of the Year' in recognition of her contribution to the health coaching profession, and in this episode, we talk about the opportunities for health coaches to break into the corporate space as well as why Christine is passionate about self-care when you’re running your own business.
Christine shares how constant patient readmissions and a lack of preventative care led her to study health coaching, what led her into corporate health, the process and lessons she has learned, and her advice for those wanting to move into this area.
She generously shares her wisdom, time and resources to support other health coaches both in a free Facebook group and in a membership program, The Wellness Business HUB, where she supports Health Coaches, Wellness Consultants and Healthcare Professionals to connect, collaborate & learn how to grow a wellness business and break into the corporate or community health space.
If you want to connect with Christine you can visit her website wellnessworx.com.au to book a Coffee & Chat
OH&S, People & Culture, CEO's check out Workplace Wellness Workshops & Strategic Wellness Programs
Please share this episode with your friends and colleagues, and head over to our Website accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au where you’ll find information about our courses in behaviour change, as well as more episodes of the podcast and free resources. You can email us or message us on Linked in or on our social media.
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, I'm joined by Jason Stuart.
Jase is a dietitian, personal trainer, and coach with 20 years experience in the healthcare industry. He is the founder of the Better Body Academy, a successful group coaching program with 300 members and a team of 6 coaches, of which he is the lead coach.
Join us, as we unpack how to structure and deliver a successful group coaching program and the many benefits from switching from a 1-1 client approach to a group approach. Jase shares his learnings, challenges, as well as future plans to hit his target of changing 1 million lives!
Connect with Jase on Facebook under his name Jason Stuart or The Better Body Academy.
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, we take a deep dive into how to navigate nutrition and what Health Coaches can do to support clients in the area of Nutrition.
We discuss our scope of practice as health coaches and answer the question "Do I need to be a nutrition expert be be effective as a Health Coach?"
Clients need health coaches to support them with implementation, not information! We can direct them to credible sources of information and help them gain clarity.
As Coaches, we approach our clients with curiosity and can support them to gain awareness about current choices, habits and what needs might be driving behaviours
We consider:
What do our clients really need? Is there an information gap? Is there a skills gap?We can always refer to Dietitians and Accredited Nutritionists for personalised meal plans and advice on chronic disease management.
Food tracking App - Easy Diet Diary
Scope of Practice as a Health Coach - https://youtu.be/DpcqtFkMrkI
HCANZA Scope of Practice: https://hcanza.org/policies
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, I'm joined by Bee Pennington.
Bee is a HCANZA Accredited Health and Wellness Coach and the head coach at Melbourne Functional Medicine. She was awarded Coach of the Year in a healthcare setting by HCANZA, our professional body, which demonstrates just how exceptional she is, and how lucky we are to have her with us, sharing her knowledge.
Join us, as we take a look at boundaries, something Bee felt so passionate about, that she wrote a book called ‘A Health Coaches Guide to Healthy Boundaries’
What are healthy boundaries? Why do we struggle with them? Why do coaches need boundaries? What lead Bee to write this book (hint- seeing the same issue over and over again!) Ways that coaches and their clients can put some healthy boundaries in placeYou can purchase Bee's book here:
Amazon
https://beepennington.com/
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, we take a closer look at goals: what they are, what is their value, and what makes goal setting effective vs ineffective - and therefore achieved or not!
We discuss our role as coaches to help clients set valuable goals that are likely to be achieved and provide our top tips to prevent falling into the vague 'New Year's Resolution goal trap and create a meaningful, actionable goal instead.
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In this episode of the Health Coach Show, we look at accountability and tracking and discuss:
What is tracking? What is it good for? When is it useful? When is it not useful? And how can we put these into practice in our consultations.People often come to coaches because they say they need accountability and while health coaches can provide accountability, the goal of health coaching is to move our clients from being accountable TO US, to being SELF ACCOUNTABLE, and tracking is a way to achieve this.
Tracking can be useful for promoting self accountability and awareness. When we track our behaviour, we become aware of our patterns, thoughts and triggers.
Tracking can also be useful when you have started a new positive behaviour and tracking the behaviour or outcome creates positive enforcement.
Checking in about whether a client would like to track and how they would like to track can be incorporated into the action planning part of the consultation.
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In this episode, we are talking about how you can use stages of change to meet your clients, where they are at, and what to do so you don’t inadvertently push clients further away from change.
Health professionals can assume clients are ready to change simply because they booked a consultation, or they are discussing changing. The reality is people can be at varying degrees of readiness for health behaviours, and they may need support with tapping into their motivation or overcoming barriers before they are ready to take action.
If we don’t take the time to assess a client’s readiness to change, and mismatch our communication and approach we can risk pushing clients further away from change.
How can we tell where someone is at? What language gives clues? How do we tailor our approach? In this episode, we provide strategies, tips and tools you can implement in your practice to ensure an effective client-centred consultation where change is way more likely to happen!
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In this episode, Sharon Curtain talks to Dr Shami, an integrative GP who is the Director and co-founder of the MINT clinic, about health coaching and how it changed her practice.
Dr Shami has been a GP for 23 years and has been an integrative GP for 10 years. She has seen first hand how burnout can happen in a system that creates co-dependency when the GP is supposed to provide the answers/fix the medical problems while patients are passive and not encouraged to take responsibility.
Her approach changed completely when she started with ACNEM to have an emphasis on empowering patients to take responsibility for their lifestyle behaviours. She noticed how her patients flourished when they were encouraged to create a plan based on what they think would work for them.
Studying health coaching was life changing and has transformed all her consults. Clients leave feeling empowered and happy as they come up with their own solutions, matched to where they are ready to start.
Dr Shami looks forward to her consults, and is always curious about her clients and what might work for them. She discusses the simples changes she's made and the difference they make. She also discusses how the enviroment set up also leads to collaboration.
Dr Shami is the Director and Lead General Practitioner at MINT Clinic https://www.mintclinic.com.au
Follow Dr Shami's Podcast SIX HATS PODCAST
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, we discuss the importance of silence in consultations and why clients should be doing most of the talking in conversations and not the health professional and/or coach.
We discuss the concept of "holding the space", allowing clients time to process their thoughts and emotions without us feeling the need to jump in and provide solutions or advice.
We may fear silence and assume a need to fill it with ideas and answers. However, coaching is not about fixing or rescuing clients, but rather about facilitating their growth and learning.
We also discuss how the provision of information or opinion which may have the intention of being inspiring or empowering can in fact create discord, as the coach grabs the talking stick and takes the focus away from the client.
Coaches need to stay present, curious, and allow our clients to do the work. Holding the space is where the magic happens: clients begin to understand themselves and their behaviours, and what it takes to create sustainable change.
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In this episode of The Health Coach Show, Sharon Curtain and Caitlin Cotter talk about the coaching competency of being calm, present and emotionally available.
Caitlin is a health coach and graduate of Accredited Health Coaching Australia, a mental fitness coach, and a weight management practitioner.
When we start our coaching consultations, it’s important that we’ve put our own thoughts and concerns to the side, and have created a calm environment, free of distractions for our clients, allowing them to be present and providing space for insight, reflection and growth.
In this episode, we discuss why being present is so important and also give you some tips and techniques for how you can be more calm and present and emotionally available in your consultations.
These techniques help us drop into level 3 listening and also create a space for our clients to look deeper.
These techniques are useful before and during a coaching session, and can be used to help centre/ground/calm clients who might be feeling, overwhelmed, distracted, or frazzled when they arrive at a coaching session.
It’s great to develop a practice of mindfulness to reset your focus between clients and ensure you are fully calm present and emotionally available. We take you through a short mindfulness breathing exercise that can help ground you and bring you into the present, and can be used to recentre at any time.
Caitlin can be found on Instagram as Zesthealthcoaching.au
To find out more about Positive Intelligence: https://www.positiveintelligence.com/
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In today’s podcast, we’re talking about rapport. Are we doing this well as practitioners or are we just making small talk?
Rapport is the foundation of all therapeutic relationships. It’s the way that we communicate we are listening, connected and interested in our clients and provide a space that is safe for them to open up.
Rapport is defined as a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well.
Health practitioners can attempt to build rapport by using 'strategies' - for example ensuring they have an open body posture, maintaining eye contact and asking the client questions about themselves, their family and interests.
Client consultations often start with small talk to ‘establish rapport’ and in this episode, we challenge whether this is the most effective use of our time.
We explore and what rapport is and why we need it, the ways that we might try to establish rapport with clients and why these things may/may not be helpful. We also discuss effective ways we can establish rapport, allowing our clients to feel heard, understood and connected.
CONTACT:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @accredited_healthcoaching_au
Facebook: Accredited Health Coaching Au
Web: accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Courses: Creating change in 15 minutes. Health Coach Specialist, Health Coach Mastery, mentoring and Gap training.
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In today’s podcast, we talk about precontemplation, and how to manage our clients and ourselves when they are not ready to change.
Clients in precontemplation may not be thinking about changing their behaviour because they don’t think they need to, or may not be considering change because it feels impossible.
Our current approaches may lead to frustration, conflict and the client feeling judged, pressured and misunderstood.
We explore what we often do as health professionals when we are faced with a client who is pre-contemplative, and why these approaches may not be helpful. We also provide some suggestions for what we can do instead.
CONTACT:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @accredited_healthcoaching_au
Facebook: Accredited Health Coaching Au
Web: accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Courses: Creating change in 15 minutes. Health Coach Specialist, Health Coach Mastery, mentoring and Gap training.
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In this episode, Shivaun and Sharon discuss ways we can assess and build confidence.
The confidence ruler is a great way of assessing your client's confidence in changing their behaviour. Asking rating questions helps your client to explore what is helping them feel confident (eg previous success) and what is holding them back. By exploring external and internal barriers, we help clients get clear about what is holding them back. Once all the barriers have been identified, we can support clients to create a plan to deal with barriers to change and to enhance/strengthen facilitators for change. Knowing the way forward and anticipating obstacles builds confidence. Underpinning it all is a mindset of curiosity and compassion. We encourage trial and correction and support clients to see how small steps lead to big changes.
CONTACT:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @accredited_healthcoaching_au
Facebook: Accredited Health Coaching Au
Web: accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Courses: Creating change in 15 minutes. Health Coach Specialist, Health Coach Mastery, mentoring and Gap training.
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In today’s podcast, we talk about how to blend expertise and coaching.
We explore the concept of switching hats versus integrating approaches and how being client centred means we are always coaching.
We assume people are coming to see us for our expertise and feel that giving value means delivering an in-depth education and an action plan.
In fact, we are more efficient and effective and provide more value when we use coaching to explore what a client wants from us, what information they know and what they want to know, and help them create a plan matched to their state of change.
We do use our expertise, of course, however we provide information, with permission, when our clients have a skills or a knowledge gap. It’s about delivering what they need, when they need it, and checking in, is that enough or would they like more detail or additional information. -
In this episode Sharon and Shivaun, dietitians and HCANZA accredited health coaches, explore common excuses, what we may feel or do when we hear our clients give us 'excuses' for why they haven't made a change.
Excuses are in fact valuable, as they are the client telling us exactly why they are stuck, or feel unable to take action.
What can we do when we do hear excuses? Get curious, acknowledge and validate the client's experience, support them to discover all the barriers so they can evaluate and sort them, and then explore what can they do to overcome these obstacles.
The final step is to support clients to come up with a plan.
At Accredited Health Coaching Australia, we've developed health coach training courses, incorporating evidence based health behaviour change interventions and techniques that promote self-efficacy, self-determination and self-responsibility. You'll be introduced to a toolbox of motivational interviewing, positive psychology, the transtheoretical model and health and coaching psychology to assist you in supporting clients to achieve sustainable health behaviours and outcomes.
HCANZA approved program provider.
You can learn more at https://www.accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accredited_healthcoaching_au/
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In this episode Sharon and Shivaun dig into what motivation is and how we can harness it to achive our goals.
We discuss the role that external and internal (intrinsic) motivators can play on behaviour change,and how we can move along the spectrum from external motivation, to the place where our identity shifts and we become intrinsically motivated.
Sometimes we wait for motivation to hit before we take action, although we can find motivation comes from the actions we take! We can support people to explore how values can drive our behaviour and find their deep 'why' for changing a behaviour.
Helping people imagine their future self and linking to values and identity creates an energy around what is possible that can drive changes in behaviour.
CONTACT:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @accredited_healthcoaching_au
Facebook: Accredited Health Coaching Au
Web: accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Courses: Creating change in 15 minutes. Health Coach Specialist, Health Coach Mastery, mentoring and Gap training.
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In this episode Sharon and Shivaun talk about common roadblocks to effective communication.
There are a number of commonly used communication strategies that we think are helpful, however can often do the opposite of the intended action. Thomas Gordon came up with 12 roadblocks that get in the way of effective communication. We'll go through 8 that we find get used a lot in conversations around changing health behaviours and explain why they aren't helpful.
Telling, directing or ordering Warning & threatening Advice giving, providing solutions and suggestions Judging, blaming, disagreeing Lecturing, judging, disagreeing Reassuring, sympathising & consoling Distracting or diverting Praising, approving, disagreeingWhich ones do you notice you use?
What to do instead?
Take off the expert hat Get curious Be open Help people find their own motivation and solutions Affirm their strengths, efforts and progress Communication is a foundation skill of supporting clients to change behaviour.If you're looking for strategies to be more effective in consultations, join us in one of our training courses!
CONTACT:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @accredited_healthcoaching_au
Facebook: Accredited Health Coaching Au
Web: accreditedhealthcoaching.com.au
Courses: Creating change in 15 minutes. Health Coach Specialist, Health Coach Mastery, mentoring and Gap training.
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