"Are health coaches a real thing? What do they actually do? Something like that sounds really expensive.” In our survey two weeks ago you said the most helpful thing for your health improvement would be a health coach. Here is the lowdown on this very real and up-and-coming service.

There are a lot of coaches out there. There are a lot of health and wellness coaches out there too. As you know, I have hung out my shingle as an "evidence based" practitioner. Accordingly, if I were to get a wellness coach, I would want one that practiced evidence based coaching.

I have done a little homework on our behalf, and found that the American College of Sports Medicine certifies only one coaching program in the country at this time, wellcoachesschool.com. Lucky for me, the medical fitness center (health club) associated with my hospital utilizes wellness coaches certified by this school.

However, I too assumed this would be on the expensive side. Here's what I found out. First of all all, prices are cheaper if you are a member of the health club, which stands to reason. Secondly, they offered different packages. The cheapest package without membership was $200 and consisted of eight sessions over eight weeks. This would provide personal training in a small group. This sort of thing would be an out of pocket expense.

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the more extensive packages involving weight management and wellness coaching for those with serious or chronic medical conditions might be covered by insurance. These programs range from $250-$750 and take place over several months time. Of course any coverage by insurance would have to be determined beforehand and would have to be based on documentation in the patient's medical record by a patient’s physician, someone like me.

Although I was encouraged by all of this, I did come away from my fact-finding with the impression that my patients who need this most are simply not going to be able to have access to this, afford it or obtain coverage for it.

This led me to the idea of being your own coach. This is not my idea or a new idea. A simple Google search revealed several reputable sites which deal with this topic. I will share them with you now.

How to become your own life coach with 14 simple strategies

10 ways to be your own life coach

How to be your own life coach in four easy steps

And my favorite,

Tips from the pros: how to be your own life coach

I am thinking about getting wellness coach certification from wellcoachesschool.com. So much of what I do in the course of the day with my patients is wellness coaching. While it is true that I deliver babies and perform female pelvic surgery, I spend a lot of time and energy trying to get my patients to be well. I would like to be as good as this as possible.

Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life: Train Your Brain to Get More Done in Less Time

$12.96

By Margaret Moore, Paul Hammerness

Buy on Amazon

I looked into the course curriculum, and I noticed they had two key textbooks, one you get when you register for the classes, and is rather costly. The other is available on Amazon.com for a modest amount of money ( At this time a used one is $0.43 plus $3.99 for shipping. ) It is called "Organize your Mind, Organize your Life” with the subtitle,”Train your brain to get more done in less time”, by Margaret Moore and Paul Hammerness. I think this is a great place to start for people who want to be their own life coach. I know I am going to crack open this book as soon as possible.

Beyond that I am still going to be giving continued thought to what, in practical every day terms, could help people meet their basic health goals in nutrition, fitness, and stress management.

Stay tuned for more tips on achieving wellness on next weeks Wellness Wednesday.

Don't you like getting survey results? It's like getting the punchline to a joke or solving a puzzle. Basically you get to compare your anticipation of the results with the actual results. It's even more fun when the results you get are unexpected.

Many thanks to those who took the time to complete the survey. The number is small, but it is more than last survey I ran.

Here are the key results:

Approximately three quarters of respondents felt that their health was only somewhat where they wanted it to be.
The biggest health challenges were divided almost equally across nutrition, fitness, weight, and stress.
Most everyone who took the survey took the time to write a bit about the biggest obstacle to health maintenance. Time was the most common theme expressed in a variety of different ways. Some people referred to the time demands of their job, partner, kids, house and pets. I doubt very much that these things are ever going to go away. In fact, I hope all of us always have jobs, partners, kids, houses and pets. It sounds to me that concerted improvements in time management would be helpful across the board.
Respondents were uncertain and vague when asked open ended questions about what would help them the most with there health. However when given a choice of specific set of health related products, they were able to clearly choose what would help them the most. This is where the surprise came. It wasn't a product at all. Far and away the most often chosen product was a "health coach."

Fairly recently I ran into a physician friend of mine who I thought had retired. It turns out she had actually gotten certified as a health coach. She is loving it and and really feels like she's making a difference in her patients' lives. So after I saw the results of my survey I called her up to find out a little bit more. It turns out that health coaches are probably the next big thing in preventive medical care.

It turns out that there quite a few health coaches out there and it turns out there are a lot of courses you can take in person and online by a great many certifying organizations to become one. However, only one organization is approved by the American College of Sports Medicine, the Wellcoaches School of Coaching. (wellcoachesschool.com) It is an evidence based program which uses up to date behavioral, exercise and fitness science to help people improve their life and their health. Luckily for us, my friend was certified in this manner. She works at out local fitness center.

All well and good. But I called her later and grilled her about insurance coverage for such services. It turns out that, yes, many insurances do cover some health coaching, which struck me as a pleasant surprise. So I am going to start utilizing her and her team for my patients. I and many other doctors do a lot of office based health coaching, but in the setting of providing specialized medical care I can only give health coaching a limited focus.

I wonder about those without insurance, those with high deductibles, and those with insurance that does not cover health coaching. I still would like to know what resources would be helpful to people who wish to, in effect, be their own health coach. What do you think ?

Wellness Wednesday: Getting Real about Wellness Coaches

Wellness Wednesday: Survey Results for your Biggest Health Challenges