FAQs About Alisa Turner and Nutrition, Health, & Life Coaching
Q: How does health coaching differ from dieting?
A: Health coaching is a holistic approach that goes beyond dieting to include all aspects of wellness, including physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, through personalized lifestyle adjustments and targeted nutritional therapy.
Q: What can I expect from my first session?
A: During our initial consultation, we will discuss your health history, lifestyle, and goals. This conversation helps lay the foundation for your customized health plan.
Q: How long does it typically take to see results?
A: Results vary based on the client’s baseline biology, knowledge, goals and commitment. Generally, clients start to feel better in as little as a few weeks to a few months as they implement their personalized health strategies.
Q: Why do people hire a health coach?
A: There are a multitude of reasons people walk in our doors but words I often hear are “stuck”, “confused”, “unheard” and “tried everything”. Or, “I know what to do, I just can’t seem to make it happen.” People also come to me because they’ve been told all their labs are normal but they still don’t feel well.
Q: Why do I need a wellness coach?
A: If you feel like you’ve lost your vitality, your energy levels are declining, your weight is increasing despite “doing everything right”, are getting sick more frequently or taking longer to recover, are struggling with worsened hormonal symptoms or GI symptoms or are experiencing more frequent but seemingly unrelated new symptoms. Maybe you’ve been told your labs are normal but you don’t feel normal so you suspect something has been overlooked like a pathogen draining the immune system, high toxin burden, nutrient deficiency, or hormonal imbalance. Maybe you feel your body is chronically inflamed but don’t know what is causing that inflammation or inhibiting the body from resolving that inflammatory process. We know that the body has a powerful innate healing mechanism, and if there is some form of dis-ease then something is getting in the way of that healing.
Q: Why should I hire a coach?
A: Most of the time there is no one single answer to healing because the imbalances are often multifactorial. A detailed health history, lifestyle evaluation, and symptom questionnaire help point us to a multi-pronged approach. But changing many things simulataneously can feel paralyzing without daily support, encouragement, and accountability.
Q: How effective is health coaching?
A: It is as effective as your commitment. We will leave no stone unturned in discovering the sources of imbalance and empower you with a roadmap toward healing but you have to communicate honestly and often and follow the recommended suggestions with consistency. Most health problems took years of sub-optimal choice to evolve to the tipping point which brought the client in. It will take.
Q: How do I know if I need a health coach?
A: Previously answered under “Why do I need a wellness coach”
Q: How do I get the most out of my health coach?
A: Check in through voice texts daily. Multiple times a day in the beginning. It should feel like you’re on a journey with someone who is helping you navigate challenges in your day in real time. If you wait a week for your next appointment, the opportunity for guidance, perspective shifts, wisdom and support will probably be gone. Use me as much as you can!
Q: What is the difference between a health coach and a wellness coach?
A: In my opinion those terms are interchangeable.
Q: What is the main role of a health coach:
A: We use information provided from a variety of sources (i.e detailed health history questionnaires, symptom burden analyses, nuttional assessment questionnaires, food journals, other testing, etc) as clues to help identify imbalances in the body that can be corrected through diet, supplement, and lifestyle changes allowing the body to heal from the inside out. Our work is to discover, unpack, and educate the client about the possible underlying conditions which allowed their body to get out of balance/what conditions might be blocking their body’s ability to come back into balance/heal, and then help correct those through customized diet, supplement and lifestyle recommendations. We then support, guide, mentor, and coach them on how to implement these recommendations in way and at a pace that is best for them to see incremental progress towards their goals and achieve sustainable results.
Q: What does a health coach not do?
A: We do not diagnose, treat, prescribe, mitigate, or cure anything. We operate in a completely different paradigm from conventional medicine, and we are viewing health from a different lense. We are not nearly as interested in a clinical diagnosis or disease/symptom management as we are in finding the root imbalances and correcting those to restore homeostasis, allowing the body to heal from the inside out.
If a client ALREADY comes to us with one or more clinical diagnoses we will certainly note that as one of many pieces of their overall health puzzle but what is far more pertinent to our work is to understand the conditions that allowed the body to get so out of balance that a diagnosis was given. We never prescribe anything; we make recommendations and educate clients about how best to diet, supplements, and lifestyle as tools to achieve whole body health because we believe health is not the absence of disease. You can treat a symptom and still feel awful. But if you correct the imbalance and allow your body to come back into alignment you will often notice many seemingly unrelated symptoms disappear.
We also do not work within the insurance framework that sets a very specific parameter for what is generally considered to be standard of care for licensed medical providers.
Q: What do people want in a health coach?
A: In my experience they want to feel heard, understood, validated, supported, encouraged and guided out of their pain points to a place of health and vitality by someone who has been where they are, clawed their way out, and now holds the rope and the flashlight.
Q: What problem do health coaches solve?
A: We help to identify Personally I use every tool in my toolbox to help with whatever problems they have related to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. This includes but is not limited to helping navigate struggles with metabolism, weight loss plateaus, fatigue, low mood, acute and chronic stress, and an entire array of symptoms from horomonal to GI. I help them listen to their bodies and learn how and when to eat, drink, move, sleep, and meditate to start feeling better. Occassionally this also requexperts like chiropractors, spiritual advisors, and licensed mental health.
Q: What do I talk to a health coach about?
A: Give as many detail as often as you can about how you are feeling mentally, physically, emotionallly, and spiritually. Communicate honestly about how the recommended changes feel as they are happening, if you are struggling to implement them and why.
Q: Can a health coach prescribe medication?
A: No. The services and guidance provided by the holistic practitioner is not medical treatment. Clients should always seek the advice of their physician or other healthcare providers with any questions they may have regarding the diagnosis, cure, treatment, mitigation, or prevention of any disease or other medical condition or impairment or the status of their health.