The Healthy Celiac Podcast

How a Health Coach supports people with Celiac Disease Ep. 52

• Belinda Whelan • Season 1 • Episode 52

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Today I am answering the question of what a Health Coach does and how a Health Coach can support you living with Celiac Disease.

Want to know how I've nailed living with Celiac Disease? Ultimate Celiac System has all my exclusive tips, secrets and insights.
Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here
https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

 Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes


And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac

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Now lately

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I've had a few people reach

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Out to me and ask me, what

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Is health coaching? Because I have talked

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A little bit on the show

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Over previous episodes

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About my health coaching. And I guess I haven't really explained it or talked about it too much in

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Depth. So I thought I would

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Take the opportunity to talk

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About it

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On this

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Episode so

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That you can learn a little bit more about what

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A health coach does in particular, what

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I do and how it's different from say something like a life

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Coach or a

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Personal trainer, or even a nutritionist or a dietician.

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So I

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Started my health coaching business back in 2013. It was, And

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I

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Absolutely

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Love health coaching. It's

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Probably the most rewarding career move I

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Have ever taken.

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Um, I actually stumbled across it one day on the internet. And as soon as I read the description about what a health

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Coach was,

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I fell in love with the idea and I could totally

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Visualize

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Myself doing that and helping others. And

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I, I basically

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Made it my mission to be

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Able to

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Grow a business and to walk away from my part-time job in an office space that

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I

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Absolutely despised.

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So, yeah, so I, I started

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To become a health And

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Yeah, to, to

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Say that it was life changing is, is basically an understatement because The amount of flow on effect from me taking that career move has just been astronomical. The amount of people that I've personally been able to help has been so

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Rewarding.

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Now, when I first started my career in, in health coaching, I was doing one on one coaching with clients and also

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Small group group coaching.

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And then I started to move into the online space and doing group coaching in, um, the online space via

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Zoom. So, yeah, so that's basically how it

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All started for me. So

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What is a health coach? So a health coach is

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Different from other type of coaching in that what

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I do as a health coach

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Is I encompass what's

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Called

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Primary food and secondary food. Now that might sound a little bit

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Crazy

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To you and what am I talking about?

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So

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I'll explain it to you

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Quickly. So primary food is basically

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Things that are going on in your life That don't revolve around food.

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So these areas are your career,

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Your, uh, physical

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Activity

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Or your movement, your relationships and your spirituality.

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So

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If something in those

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Areas is

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Out of alignment, it can

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Affect your life.

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So not only do I help

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With people with

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Their food and their eating and making sure they're on top of everything to do with gluten free and celiac

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Disease, I help

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People in these

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Key areas as well.

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Now, when we talk about spirituality, I'm not just

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Talking about

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God, you might not be spiritual in that way, but you might have, um, more of a new age awareness, or you might be into Something completely different. That's not anything to do

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With religion, but it's your spirituality. So it's where

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You fit in the, where

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You see yourself, things

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Like that. And then obviously when it comes to career, many people have changed their careers in the past couple

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Of years because they've realized what's

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Really important to them. And unfortunately it does take something like COVID

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And

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Lockdowns and things like that for

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A lot of us to realize

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That there's more to life than

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Just

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Doing the same old thing and the same old grind.

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So yeah, career's a big one physical activity. Obviously people

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That don't

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Look after their bodies,

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Um, by not exercising, That's one area that they fall down with. And then obviously

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Relationships is huge because

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You can have issues in your relationships and, and that

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Causes issues

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As well. And we, when we talk about relationships, I'm not just talking about, um, say

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A couple, it can be

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Your parents. It can

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Be your work colleagues.

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It can be your next door neighbor.

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If,

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If something's out of whack in your relationships, that

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Can also cause issues.

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So then we talk about secondary food. So

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Secondary food is actually food

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And water, things

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Like that. So

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Yeah, anything you consume and anything that you drink goes into

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Your secondary food. So what I do is

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I help clients work on creating a

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Basically as, as perfect of a lifestyle as possible

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Around primary food and secondary food. And what

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A coach does, which is

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Really different to

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Other people is a health coach helps

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Clients

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To achieve

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Their own goals.

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So

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When my clients came to me in a one-on-one basis, We would sit down at the first session and we would write

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Out goals, but

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I would not set those goals for my clients. They

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Would have to set those goals for themselves because

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There's no point in getting someone else to

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Tell you what you should be achieving. You need to work that out for yourself. So a health health coach actually helps you

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See that and, and work that

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Out for yourself. So, yeah, it's pretty cool actually, the way that

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I can,

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I guess, pull it out of people,

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What they wanna achieve and what changes they need to make. So

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I've

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Worked with many, many different clients from all different walks of

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Life,

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Different backgrounds, different health

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Issues, from things like ulcerative colitis to their

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Hair, falling out in clumps

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To

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Being

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Overweight

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And not knowing what the problem was. Cuz they

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Tried

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Every diet under the sun, it turned out they were in a really crappy relationship and that was holding them

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Back. So there's

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Lots of different things that

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I help people with.

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Um, but it's only really been in the last

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Sort of five

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To seven years that

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I've really focused

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On celiac disease and helping people with

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Celiac disease specifically Because

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It's something that I, I love the most. I love helping people the most with this

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Because I

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Have so much more of an expertise in our, and I love

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To be able to help people thrive with their celiac disease because I truly believe

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That when we get on top of it, we can feel so much better. We can feel so much more confident in ourselves. We can feel so much more happier and we can just live such a

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Better

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Life when we are on top of

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Every,

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Everything that encompasses

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Life basically. So yeah, it's

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All very well and good making sure that all of those things are lined up with gluten free and cross-contamination and all those

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Things. But

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The thing is, if something's out of whack

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Elsewhere

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Within your life, then that can

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Cause health

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Issues that you may not even be realizing, whether it be anxiety or

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Dress or

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You know, bloating. And you're not even realizing that it's actually

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From

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Stress belly and it's not from gluten.

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So

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I help my clients get to

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The root cause of all of

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These types of things and to improve and, and make these things better.

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So

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It's, it's an incredible

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Career.

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It's an incredible

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Job.

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If you wanna call it a job. And

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It

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It's just one of those things that

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When I first started, people

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Didn't know what

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A health coach was. They would say, oh, so are you like a

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Personal trainer? Oh, is that what you do? No, I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a personal trainer. I have nothing to do

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With

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Teaching people about

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Physical activity.

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I

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Help people, people discover the exercise or

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The movement that they enjoy the most

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So that they will

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Actually go out and do it.

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Because

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For me, I personally, don't like having someone yelling and screaming at me to do things. I don't work that way.

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So

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Personal trainers are not my gen. If you're a personal trainer, you've

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Obviously got people that

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Adore you and love you. And that's fantastic, but personal trainers are not for everybody. And I know they don't all yell and scream. Don't get me wrong. But in my experience, the personal trainers that I've worked with in the past

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Just

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Didn't work for me at all.

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So

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That is not what a health coach

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Does. A health coach helps

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You understand which

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Types of exercise works

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For your unique body,

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Lifestyle,

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Personality, things like that.

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So that's very cool as

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Well that you can find that out by working with a health coach. I have gone on since to do further

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Study.

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I've done study very recently about fo maps. Um, I've done further study to become hypnotherapist and I'm also currently studying further

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About the law

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Of attraction. So yeah, I'm always learning. I'm almost always growing and I'm always focusing on how I can become a better person so that I can become a better coach because in life I think we never stop learning. We're always learning. We can always be better and, and achieve more. And I feel that by helping others, it helped me so much as well. So if you've never heard of health coaching, I hope this gives you a good explanation of what a health coach does depending on where you live. You may be able to find a health coach that you can work with in a one-on-one basis. Or you may like to seek someone out that you can work with online. I am going to be very, very soon launching again, group program. So if that's something that you are interested in, you are more than welcome to send me an email or send me a D DM on Instagram. And just let me know that you wanna be on the wait list to find out more about that. Um, but yeah, I'm very excited to be doing group coaching again, because I did step away for a little bit from the coaching, just spend my family. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited to get back into that space again. And yeah. So I just wanted to share with you very quickly this week about health coaching in case it's something you'd never really understood when I've dropped it a mention of it in my episode. So yeah, if you've got any more questions, let me know. I'm more than happy to answer them. So feel free to hit me up on, um, either Instagram via healthy celiac, or you can send me an email info, Belinda wheel.com and I will respond to you there. So thank you so much for listening and I will be back to talk with you again next week. Have a fantastic week. I'll talk with you then. Bye.

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Belinda Whelan

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