EP42 Coaching Explained: No Meal Plans, No Bullsh*t

What exactly does a health and life coach do—especially one who doesn’t hand out meal plans or workout routines? In this episode, Heather breaks down the real heart of coaching: partnership, perspective shifts, curiosity, and the sometimes-messy middle between where you are and where you want to be. She shares how her style of coaching blends teaching, truth-telling, mindset work, BodyTalk, and practical support so you can create sustainable change without relying on willpower or “just try harder” advice. If you’ve ever wondered what coaching actually looks like, why it helps, or how it’s different from therapy, this episode gives you the clear, down-to-earth explanation you’ve been craving—served with honesty, humour, and zero meal plans.

Sometimes you just want to read, so here’s a transcript:

Hello and welcome back to the Wellness Ninja Podcast. I'm your host, Heather. And I am so excited and delighted to be back in your ear holes. Yet another week of me nattering away in your ear holes. But that is not a sentence that you thought you would hear so frequently. But if you are a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I use it a lot. Anyway, I digress as per usual. Today's episode is, I think it's an interesting one because I'm talking about what I do. Last week's episode was all about the technique of body talk.

Which is, I've been a body tech practitioner for 10 years. And so I did my best to kind of try and explain it. I don't know if I did a great job or not, but I did do my best.

It is a difficult, to me, I find it a little tricky to explain. And I also didn't want it to be like, oh you just need to experience it. Because the truth is that if you experience it, it will still remain tricky to explain.

I have been doing it for over 10 years and I'm finding it difficult to explain. So, hence I did a whole podcast on it. Go back and listen to episode 41.

Let me know what you think. Let me know what your questions still are. This week I'm moving to the other part of what I do.

Which is the health and life coaching. And it occurred to me that while I share about the coaching work I do. Some people might not be familiar what coaching in this context is.

Particularly in health and life coaching sense. And extra particularly in the way that I do it with how I integrate body talk into it. And some other things that I know.

And it gets even more confusing when I explain that as a health coach. I do not give meal plans or workout plans. I mean realistically I will give some suggestions on things.

But I'm never going to give an actual meal plan or an actual workout plan. This is because I am not a nutritionist. Nor am I a personal trainer.

I am not qualified in those two areas. I know lots of things and I use them to help myself and my family. But those are not my areas of expertise.

So I actually don't do that. And I think a lot of people are confused by that. Because the common understanding of a health coach.

Is someone who gives you meal plans and gives you workout plans. That's not what I do. So today I'm going to try to flesh it out for you a little bit.

Give you a little bit more understanding. Just so that you understand. Because there are many health coaches out there.

There are many life coaches out there. There's lots of people like me who kind of do this combination of both of them. I'll kind of explain why.

And so you may find yourself wanting to have that kind of support. Once you understand what it actually is. To begin I would say pretty much everyone is familiar with sport coaches.

Someone who instructs or trains. I actually looked it up in the dictionary. You know the dictionary guys.

I looked up what the definition of a coach is. And it says one who instructs or trains. Or helps prepare someone for something.

Which is kind of interesting. So like coaching and sports has been around for since sports began. Like there's been business coaching.

That's kind of a thing I think people are more familiar with. But it's a more recent thing to be a health or a life coach. Or as I say a health and life coach.

Because I use the terms interchangeably for myself. Because my view is that all the aspects of your life are part of your health. And your health is a part of all aspects of your life.

And you can't separate them. And so when I started doing this work. I really struggled with like what do I call myself? What do I call this work that I do? And after a number of maybe unnecessarily complex explanation.

I just went back to I'm a health and life coach. And I help with all aspects of those areas. So the International Coaching Federation defines coaching in this context.

As partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process. That inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. That's a bit of a mouthful don't you guys think? I think that's a bit of a mouthful.

I consider myself. I like the partnering part. Because that's the most important part to me.

Is the partnering. I'm not here as someone who's got it all figured out. I'm not here as someone who has all your answers.

And if you just follow my XYZ. Then you'll have perfect health. You know I say this in every episode.

Health is a direction not a destination. And I am along on the journey with you. I go through my own things.

I don't take my own advice. I struggle with my own health and my own life and my thoughts. And so I really do partner with people.

And I really sort of see myself as a partner in helping you achieve your goals. Whatever those goals are. Because it actually doesn't matter what the goal is.

Usually all the things getting in your way. Or the things that you need to sort of shift perspective on. Are pretty similar.

Whether that's a health thing or like a life achievement goal. Or any kind of thing like that. So I kind of made a list of like how it works.

So a lot of. I don't want to say I'm the same as everyone else. Because I kind of am not.

I do see things differently. I have the engineering background. Which makes me a little bit more analytical than a lot of people.

And then I also have the body talk background. Which makes me a little bit more open to the energetic side of things. And so when I refer to myself as a coach.

I do this sort of mix of things. So as I partner in helping you achieve your goals. Sometimes this means stepping into a teacher role.

And teaching new concepts. And teaching new techniques. Sometimes this is like asking hard questions.

Sometimes this is just literally sitting with you in partnership. In the discomfort that growth always brings. And then sometimes this is being a practitioner.

And using a variety of modalities. Techniques. To bring awareness to new ideas.

To blocks. To get more information and data. And to start moving things forward.

So I spoke last week about our bodies talking to us all the time. And we take it really personally. When really it's just data.

And what I help people do is to first recognize the data. And then start to understand the data. And then figure out what to do with that data.

And it takes time. It's kind of the same as sports. In that you're building your skills and your confidence as you go.

And you kind of level up as you get more competent. And more confident. And the coaching process is this really interesting mix of like easy and hard.

Because a lot of the things. So say like getting a body talk session. Or coming and answering some questions.

Like that's an easy thing to do. But at the same time it's also hard. Because you do have to face those hard things.

Or hear some things that maybe you don't want to. Or you're just challenged in general. And change is hard.

It's supposed to be hard or it wouldn't really be change. And gaining a new understanding of how to approach things in your life can be hard. And I think that's where I personally have found having a coach in this context.

As someone who is a partner with me. As someone who is both cheerleader and truth teller. There's that beautiful middle spot of like I am always on your side.

And I am your cheerleader. And also I am not going to bullshit you. And I am going to be a truth teller.

And I'm going to tell you the truth as I see it. I mean you don't have to take my words as truth. But the truth as I see it.

And I will call you out on things. But I will also call you out on the good things. Like hey notice all these awesome things.

And I have found that to be. I've had many coaches. Let's just say that.

I've had nutrition coaches. I've had training coaches. I've had business coaches.

I've had life coaches. Different stages, different things. I'm also a perpetual learner.

So I liked learning about all these different styles of coaching. And getting sort of immersed in that world. As I built my own skills and became a coach myself.

And so my own experience is what has influenced my work right now. And what I mean by that is I started out as a body talk practitioner. So you would come.

You would get a body talk session. You would leave. You'd book another one.

You'd come and get a body talk session. You would leave. And what I was finding was that while people were getting really great body talk sessions.

And they were having good change. And they were having some, you know, realizations and some new perspectives. And it was really helpful in the session.

The changes would stay for a bit. But they wouldn't stick. And I found that very frustrating.

And I just was like, okay, how can I, you know, better questions lead to better results. So instead of why isn't this working better. I asked a better question, which was how can I support people better between body talk sessions.

And what I found was the same thing that I wanted was a little bit more guidance on how to implement changes. How to create lifestyle changes that supported the changes that were happening in the body talk session. Lifestyle changes that supported the new things that I wanted to invite into my life.

And how to let go of the things that I was ready to let go of. And I just needed guidance in that. It couldn't be this sort of, you know, wipe your hands and you're done your session.

Okay, now go on with your day. Because my regular life was pulling me back to the way it was. And change in health and change in life happens faster and happens in a much more enjoyable way.

When we set our life up to support the changes that we want to make. So like if you are trying to cut out sugar, you don't keep a lot of candy and desserts and things in your home. Because that's not going to support the changes.

Because you're in the messy middle of trying to help your body not crave sugar so much. To, you know, crave things that are healthier for you. And you don't want to rely on willpower.

Because willpower is a muscle that gets worn out pretty quickly in our world. And that's not the best method. And so you have to set up your environment so that you can start to build the skills.

And build the health within your body and your mindset and your cravings and your taste buds. In a way that is supportive of you before you're exposed to a lot of sugar. And now you're really challenging yourself.

I hope that makes sense. The sugar, you know, like I never want to demonize a food. Like sugar in and of itself is not bad.

But if you are trying to make a change and stop doing something. It's like a smoker. Although I don't know many of them anymore.

But like someone who smokes a lot. And they want to quit smoking. And then they like go hang out at places where all the people are smoking.

There's never going to be an environment, at least in the beginning, that will help support you. So you want to create environments that support you. With the type of work that I do.

A lot of the environment that we're trying to create to support you is in your head. It's in your mind. It's in your body.

It's in your energy. It's in your belief systems. It's in your perspectives and the way that you see the world.

That's the environment that we're working with. We also do work with your actual physical environment and things like that. And I support people in making those kind of changes too.

But really it's that internal stuff that we need the most support with. That's what coaching does to me. It's a person who is alongside you to help wade through the messy middle of where you are and where you want to be.

And it's a hard place to go through and everybody has to do it in their own way. But we are not meant to do life alone. And we're not meant to do hard things alone.

I really believe that. Burdens are lightened with each other. So that's why I like coaching.

When I started implementing coaching aspects into my body talk sessions. If you've been a body talk client of mine, you know. Like I'm asking questions.

I'm giving suggestions. I slip in. The coach teacher line for me is very blurry.

I swing back and forth because I have a lot of information that I want to share with people too. And help them digest it and kind of get new ideas. So if you've ever had a body talk session with me, you know.

It's half doing the body talk technique and half asking questions. Having conversations. Finding out information.

Giving you new points of view. Helping you come up with some things that you want to try. I like to call them experiments.

Like what's an experiment of like something new you want to try. And let's see how it's going to work for you. I find that health experiments are the most fun.

And the least amount of pressure. And the most interesting ways to make changes in your life. I will probably have a whole podcast episode about health experiments.

And also I really promote New Year's experiments versus New Year's resolutions. So stay tuned for some more episodes about that. And a fun challenge in January.

Again, I digress. Back to coaching. What coaching is not is someone telling you what to do.

That's what the internet is full of. If you want to just be told what to do. Go on the internet.

Find somebody's plan. And then just do it. I don't find that that's super effective.

But you can try it. What I do is coaching is about helping you figure out what you want to do. And then trying some things out.

Assessing how it's going. And then adjusting as needed. It's really a large part of the evaluate and evolve of my vibe process.

Which is like let's try this thing. We think it's going to work. We think it's going to produce this result.

Let's create a circumstance that will test that out. And then let's assess it together. Evaluate it.

And then evolve, change as needed. And it can be really helpful to get that outside perspective. Because we do not.

Nobody I know. No coach I know has a great perspective on their own bullshit. Like we just.

Even if we can see some of our bullshit. We can't see all of our bullshit. And I think half of our problems in our life are just like figuring out how to get over our own bullshit.

And I don't use that term like flippantly. I just mean it in terms of like it's just a lot of outside influences. It's a lot of life influences.

And when we get through it and we're on the other side. We're like oh yeah. I have no idea why I held onto that for so long.

When we're in it, it feels impossible. But once we're through it and past it. It feels like oh yeah okay.

So please know that I do not mean to be flippant when I say the word bullshit. Particularly if you're going through something really hard and just want support in that. I just want to take the this is forever-ness out of it.

And I feel like bullshit feels like less this is forever trauma that I will have forever. Or the way I'll think forever. Or the way my life will be forever.

Because nothing is forever. Not the good. Not the bad.

That's another key point of coaching which is really interesting to me. And what's difficult for me to learn was that part of a good coaching relationship is like helping you plan for it to not go well. And also plan for it to go well.

Brene Brown says that one of the hardest emotions for humans to have is joy. Which is a real mind fuck when you think about it. Like we have a hard time with joy.

Yeah we do. I see that in a lot of my clients. The really good things, the joyful moments, they quickly bypass.

And so part of my job is to like bring those to awareness. And so that there's this sort of 50-50 like no actually there's also really good things. And are you noticing that too? And yeah these other things you would prefer not to have happen.

Okay let's work with those. And we'll make a plan and we'll see how it goes. And also I will say I have enjoyed, how do I say this? Like on really shitty days when I'm just like what am I even doing? Just having that one person who knows how hard I've been working.

And knows that it's just a shitty day. And they can like really say that to me with this sort of, they're not invested in my life the way say like my family or my friends are. And they can really look at it and go no like Heather you're working really hard and you're doing a good job.

And I know it doesn't feel like that today. And I know that it's not turned out like you thought. But you're still doing a really good job and you're not broken.

That can be, that means a lot. So in a coaching relationship you sort of build that relationship together. I will preface this with of course coaching is not the same as therapy.

It is absolutely not the same as therapy. Life and health coaches are not qualified as a psychologist, as a social worker, as a clinical counselor. Like the skill sets are different.

And the way that you're working through things is different. If you are coming in because you need to work through some trauma. You need to work through some relationship issues.

You need to work through things like that. That is not the job for a coach. A coach is here to help you make lifestyle changes.

At least from my perspective of like a health and life coach. We're here to help you make lifestyle changes. We're here to help you get through your own bullshit and witness it.

Part of my work is to recognize when it is time for therapy and not for coaching. You can do both at the same time, absolutely. But we tackle things differently.

So I just always want to make sure that people understand that. I am not a therapist. I don't play one on TV and I don't play one on a podcast.

That is not my role. I do not give medical advice. And all I'm doing is teaching some new ways of thinking about things and encouraging you to explore them for yourself.

Okay. I hope that that explained a little bit about coaching. Because I'm in the world of coaching so much, I just assume everybody knows.

But I have been having a lot of conversations lately where people are like, I don't even know what you mean by when you say that you're a health coach or a life coach. Other than like you would give me a meal plan and you say you don't do that, Heather. So what the hell do you do? I hope that the last 20 minutes have given you a little bit more perspective on it.

I can't give you like we do this, then this, then this, then this, because everybody's different. And everybody's coming in with different struggles and different goals. And so we tackle them very individually.

It's much like body talk in that it's very personalized. It's not a one-size-fits-all. It's not even a five-steps-fits-all.

It's really very, very personal to you. And that's what we spend a lot of time asking questions. Curiosity is the key to everything.

Curiosity is my superpower. It's your superpower. It's what keeps life interesting and keeps us from being too hard on ourselves.

If we just have curiosity because curiosity is by definition non-judgmental. And I think we all judge ourselves way too much. Okay, I'm going to take it.

Stop there because I could probably babble and babble and babble about this because I just love this topic. That is my colesnose version of what is coaching. So I hope between last week's episode of what is body talk, how's my body talking to me, what does that even mean, and this week's episode on what is coaching, you're kind of getting a better understanding of the work that I'm helping people with and the help that is available to you and kind of what I'm trying to do here.

As always, thank you so much for letting me into your ear holes, for taking the time out of your day to listen to me talk. Give me questions. Give me feedback.

If you like today's episode, please rate and review it on your podcast app. That is a wonderful way to support this free medium for you. If you did not like this episode, you know, you can keep that to yourself and you don't have to listen anymore.

Once again, thanks guys. I hope you have a wonderful week. Stay kind.

We'll see you on the next episode. You'll hear me on the next episode of the Wellness Ninja Podcast.