“Do you offer coaching?”
I get asked this question often. Although coaching is a service that is not covered by American health insurance plans, I offer coaching services for a particular area of the health field that has seen high demand as we round the corner toward the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Counseling vs. Coaching
To understand the increased demand, it’s important to understand the difference between Counseling and Coaching, and then to further differentiate Life Coaching from Health Coaching.
Professional Counseling involves:
- state licensure required to practice
- graduate level completed at an accredited school
- meeting state requirements for hours of practice under supervision
- scope of practice limited to psychotherapy, unless further certification and training is added (i.e. Chemical Dependency counseling, Sex Therapy Counseling)
- a fundamental grasp of the DSM
- ethics and legal trainings, with CEU’s regularly maintained
- health insurance reimbursement (if the plan is accepted)
Coaching:
- no state licensure required
- certification encouraged but not currently mandated
- scope of practice cannot replace the counseling scope of practice
- CEU’s are not required at this time, but recertification may be required at certain intervals from a coaching training program
- health insurance does not cover coaching
Health Coaching (with or without certification)
- no state licensure required in most states (yet)
- certification is required to call yourself a health coach; sitting for a national exam satisfies organization’s requirements
- undergraduate degree completion preferred
- scope of practice has stated limits that do not replace the advice of medical practitioners
- recertification is often required
- health insurance does not always cover health coaching, although some employers hire companies that offer Health Coaching, and add Health Coaching as part of an employee benefits package. If you are a Board Certified Health Coach, your services can be billed to insurance
What Kinds of Coaching Does SDC&C Provide?
In the past, I have provided weight loss, study skills, and relationship coaching. In 2020, I shifted my focus to coaching those with Autoimmune Disease by earning a certificate from Autoimmune Paleo as a Health Coach, and in 2022 I earned my certificate from Precision Nutrition as a Level 1 Nutrition Coach (Pn1-NC).
On October 15, 2022 I joined a cohort of people in a 20 week program to earn a Master Coach Level 2 certification with Precision Nutrition, and then I will know if/when I can sit for the NBHWC exam (National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching) with additional preparation.
Why Nutrition Coaching?
As I work towards finishing the writing of my book, “Making Food Fun Again” about living with Autoimmune Disease, becoming a Nutrition Coach is the natural progression of years of work understanding the basic elements of health and healing:
Nutrition
Movement
Rest and Circadian Rhythm
Stress
Hormones
Mental Health
When any of these basic elements is negatively impacted, the other parts do not work effectively to bring the body and mind into balance, contentment, and vitality. To this list, I personally add the spiritual dimension, as our questions about our purpose, hope, the process of birth to death, and meaning can cause the body and mind to experience joy or despair.
My own personal journey with Food Allergies, Autoimmune Disease, low weight, and metabolic efficiency and inefficiency led me to focus on the one missing piece – Nutrition – for which I have always referred out to qualified professionals in the past.
Starting August 2022, I will be accepting Nutrition Coaching* clients. Look for this information on its own Page in the dropdown menu. Costs will range from $500 to $1500 (three months), with length of program, complexity, and number of checkins being determiners of cost. If you check current market value for the same services, I believe you will find this range reasonably competitive.
The initial interview cost will be approximately $175 and includes a thorough interview of goals, data collection, requests for appropriate medical testing and laboratory testing, and file set up costs.
The Coaching Page and fee schedule will include this year’s introductory pricing versus 2023. If you are thinking that Nutrition Coaching is something you could use to help you set your health in the right direction, I encourage you to take advantage of my introductory pricing.
Please note: Nutrition Coaching has different limits in different states in the U.S. In Washington State, Nutrition Coaches are not Registered Dietitians nor Nutritionists; we do not create meal plans, and we do not create specific meals to treat medical conditions directly. Instead, we work with the directives of medical professionals to help clients adhere to nutrition and lifestyle changes that help them achieve their health goals.