Posts from — January 2011

Precisely how to Take Control of Stress and Improve Your Wellness

What’s Stress?

Stress is the emotional, physiological, and psychological effects caused by internal or external mental pressure. It is an unavoidable part of life, but despite its negative connotation, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Stress might even be beneficial in cases when it enhances performance and assists individuals  to achieve difficult objectives. Notwithstanding, when stress is excessive and causes a personal to feel loss of control, health problems can occur like headaches, tension, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, irritability, and digestive problems.

When stress levels elevate to this point, wellness is compromised. Person may seek the assistance of a stress management coach for help them take control of their lives and improve their wellness.

Who are Stress Management Coaches?

Stress management coaches are educated specialists who create wellness programs to assist person in developing coping strategies to manage stress and minimize the presence of stressors in daily life.

Coaches explore the reasons why a personal may react in certain ways to various situations by using health assessments in addition to depression and anxiety screenings.

After deciding an individual’s causes for their feelings, stress management coaches are better able to develop wellness programs tailored to meet specific needs.

Coaches set attainable goals, act as a mentor and a support system, and use techniques that are most suitable for each specific individual.

There are many effective methods to reduce stress, and stress management coaches can help you to achieve your goals to make yourself happier and healthier.

Exactly how Controlling Stress Improves Your Health

When individuals are faced with chronic stress it starts to cause physical symptoms which could range in severity.  Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, hence making the individual more susceptible to colds and the flu in addition to more serious health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

Wellness may also suffer because of the maintenance of healthful habits is often diminished in priority in the presence of stress.  There are lots of helpful techniques that a stress management coach can help you develop to protect your health from the dangers of excessive stress.

Take Control

Stress can be as detrimental to individual health as a poor diet or even tobacco use when it is out of control.  Managing stress is an achievable goal and will certainly be a reality with the help of a specialist.

With a stress management coach person may work to accept that stress and act to manage it.  Learning to effectively deal with stress will improve current daily life and protect your wellness in the future.

Do you find it difficult to stay excited when attempting to make changes to your health? Are you aware that changes ought to be made in your daily life but you don’t know where to begin?

Wellness coaches are trained professionals who work with you individually to help you reach your wellness goals by developing and beginning personal wellness programs.

They motivate, guide, and support you to reach sustainable behavioral changes by offering creative wellness solutions.

Health Promotion coaches provide individually designed wellness programs to meet your unique needs by focusing on physical, mental, and emotional health.

They help you become proactive in your life by eliminating unhealthful behaviors and making wellness a priority.

Benefits of Wellness Coaching for Your Employees

Workers may benefit  greatly from wellness coaching in a variety of ways. Health Promotion coaching is one aspect of a wellness program that can help person decrease major health risks in their lives by changing high risk behaviors.

Some of the many reasons why personnel work with wellness coaches are to get in shape, lose weight, reduce stress, quit use of tobacco, and create balance in their lives. Wellness coaches assist individuals with current medical problems as well as preventing future wellness issues.

Because each wellness program that a wellness coach creates is unique to suit the needs of the patron, they can be certain that it’ll be a wellness program that is right for them.

Many busy workforce may feel that they do not have the time to spend working individually with a coach so these wellness professionals offer coaching sessions in a variety of ways.

While electronic coaching through the use of e-mails and instant messaging has become a popular method as a result of its convenience, telephone and face-to-face interactions might also be used.

Workers have the ability to achieve their wellness goals and improve their health and well being through the assistance of their wellness coach.

Advantages of Wellness Coaching for the Company

The overall benefits of wellness coaching for a company are remarkable. Worker high risk behaviors like use of tobacco and obesity cost companies millions of dollars every year.

These high risk behaviors often cause preventable disease and keep employees from coming to work. Wellness coaches guide, support, hold patrons accountable, and ensure that they receive continued motivation to help them achieve their wellness objectives and eliminate unhealthful behaviors in their lives.

By implementing wellness programs and using wellness coaching in their companies, businesss reduce the risk of preventable disease in their companies.

This improves the overall health of workforce, decreases healthcare and insurance costs, decreases absenteeism, and ultimately enhances performance and productivity.

When staff members experience the advantages of higher levels wellness in their lives it causes an improvement in job attitude, energy, and morale.

Businesses that utilize wellness coaching for their staff experience the advantages of higher productivity.

Hiring a health coach will affect your life in more ways than you can imagine.  The advantages of hiring a health coach are so great that even the biggest organizations in the world are getting in on the action.

But before you get began, you owe it to yourself to consider the ways that your life will change. After all, anytime that you are faced with a major life change you should really consider everything that is going to be brought to the forefront.

There are three primary ways that a wellness coach will affect your life. of course, everybody is different, but in most cases these details will come into play.

And the good thing is that they are all beneficial to your life in one way or the next. In other words, hiring a wellness coach is not something that will have a negative impact on your lifestyle.

A wellness coach will help you to take the way that you look and feel to the next level. Not only will this help with the way that people  perceive you, but it’ll also do a lot for your inner emotions as well.

When you look better and feel good about what you are doing, this is going to show in the way that you act as well as the way that you see yourself. All in all, a wellness coach will allow you to gain more self esteem than you ever thought possible.

You only have one life, so making the most of it’s important. A health coach will make certain that you are doing what’s best to help you live a long and healthy life.

This could  be the biggest impact that a health coach has on the way that you live. After all, when minor changes in your lifestyle can help you to live healthier and longer you would be a fool to pass this by.

In most cases, working with a health coach will change the way that you see the world around you. Don’t forget, not only do they take great pride in shaping your body but the same thing holds true when it comes to your mental state.

Not everyone could be a model, but everyone can feel good about themselves. With a wellness Coach, you’ll realize the good that is within as well as the good in others.

A health coach can and will affect your life from day one. When you’re looking for a positive influence to shape your mind and body also help you to live healthful, a health coach is right for you.

How can a health coach help me? This is a question that many people  ask themselves time and time again. After all, the thought of having somebody to help reach your objectives has to be somewhat appealing, right?

But with that in mind, until you know what a wellness coach can do for you, you will probably never move forward with hiring one. Luckily, with a bit of research and soul searching you will be able to determine the advantages of working with a wellness Coach.

Normally speaking, the most basic way that a wellness coach can help is by helping you in reaching your health and exercise related objectives. While it’s easy for people  to set objectives, when it comes to actually carrying out the work to reach them things can get a bit more difficult.

This is where a wellness coach can come into play. They will be able to assess your objectives, let you know when they are feasible, and then work with you every step of the way. This way, you won’t be on your own when times get tough and you feel like throwing in the towel.

Now that you know the general details, the next thing is to consider the more in depth areas in which a health coach can assist you.  As you can imagine, a health coach devotes most of their time to coaching others as far as their physical and sometimes mental health is concerned.

Many people  decide to hire a wellness coach because they need simple help in getting their body back in shape. After all, as you begin to get older and time gets tight, keeping in shape isn’t always the easiest thing to do.

This is in particular true if you spend the majority of your time at work and/or with your family. But luckily, a wellness coach can work with you either in person, on the phone, or even online. This makes it easy to get the assistance that you need without really changing your lifestyle.

One thing that you need to know about hiring a wellness coach is that they will work with any type of patron. When you think that your problem is too simple, you’re wrong.  And in the same thought, there’s no issue that is too big either.

The fact of the matter is that a health coach takes excellent pride in helping whoever who needs it. So before you pass this opportunity by, keep in mindthat no matter what you’re up against you’ll qualify for help.

To find out exactly what a health coach can do for you, touch base with one of them to discuss your situation. From there, you will have a much better feel for how to move forward.

Individual Benefits of Fitness

Do you want to get fit, lose excess fat, or have more energy?  Most individuals  would answer “yes” to this question. It is hard to imagine why anyone would not want to achieve fitness in order to become a healthier person.

If you’re overweight or obese, have a family history of heart illness or diabetes, have high cholesterol or blood pressure, or simply feel that you may be a healthier you, then you can benefit  from a fitness program.

Regular exercise is an easy way to help prevent many diseases by eliminating the major risk factors such as obesity and lack of movement.  A combination of aerobic activity and strength training is the best way to achieve your fitness objectives while improving your health.

When selecting  a fitness program, the most difficult aspect may  be locating an activity or exercise that is fun as opposed to one that doesn’t motivate you.

Individuals are excited in different ways which is why there are so many exercise plans out there. If you attempt something that you don’t like, you can always move on and attempt something different until you discover a certain activity that appeals to you.

A lot of times, individuals create their own plans for exercise but lose interest in the health promotion program and hence find themselves steering away from their good intentions.  This is why a health coach might  be exactly what an individual needs for keep them on the right track to achieve fitness for life.

How a Health Coach can make it Possible

Health coaches are trained experts that assist customers in achieving fitness for life in a variety of ways. a personal can hire a personal trainer to work with them at the health and fitness center and help them with their fitness goals; notwithstanding, a health coach does a great deal more to help their customers reach success.

A wellness coach uses a health risk appraisal to determine the individual needs of the patron and uses this information to develop a while action for their fitness plan.  Because everyone has unique fitness objectives, each fitness program is customized to fit the needs of the patron.

A wellness coach not only excites you to achieve your fitness objectives but also teaches you to motivate yourself.

Wellness coaches understand that individuals  have busy lives and require convenient ways to exercise.  That is why a health coach develops personalized health promotion programs that will work with an individual’s busy schedule.

They are also available 24 hours a day through online communication and hold sessions as often or as little as the customer needs. Wellness coaches may assist their customers by telephone, e-mail and instant messaging, or face-to-face meetings.

Despite the fact that health Coaches focus on other aspects of a person’s wellness such as nutrition, stress management, and sleep management, it’s crucial that you understand that each of these aspects of a health promotion program intertwine to assist a individuals in becoming the healthiest individuals they can be.

Before you call it quits and decide to give up on having a healthier lifestyle, you could want to consider what a health coach can do for you. A lot of individuals  get so frustrated working out on their own that they give up before they really have a chance to succeed.

Luckily, by hiring a health coach you can avoid this issue, and end up with the body that you’ve been dreaming of. But before you jump forward too far, you need to know what a health coach is as well as what one can do for you.

Ordinarily speaking, a wellness coach is a fitness trainer, dietician, and much more all rolled into one. While this may sound like an impossible job on the surface, the fact of the matter is that wellness Coaches are very good at what they do.

These specialists have many years of experience in the health industry, and have a knack for communicating what they know to others on a very personal level.

The main goal of any wellness coach is to work with you so that you are able to reach the objectives that you have set forth for yourself.  And guess what?

When you do not know what you want to accomplish your wellness coach can help in that area as well. Simply put, they are there to be certain that you are on the right path to success.

Wellness coaches come from a selection of different backgrounds. Although most people don’t go through schooling thinking that they want to be a health Coach, over time they begin to transform into this career.

For example, many wellness Coaches have backgrounds in personal training, bodybuilding, health and nutrition, exercise science, and much more.

As soon as you hire a health Coach, he or she will be at your disposal day in and day out. Many people  rely on coaches to help them on an individual basis.  And although this is a good idea for some, online health Coaches are becoming more and more popular as a result of busy schedules.

So before you think that you don’t have time to work with a wellness Coach, you should really reconsider. They will be willing to work with you in the capacity that best suits your lifestyle.

While working with a wellness coach you’ll be able to get specialist advice on reaching your objectives. If you want to lose weight, you’ll be supplied with an exercise plan  that’ll get you moving in the right direction.  The same thing holds true for those individuals  who want to eat healthier, get in better shape, etc.

As you can see, a health coach is more than just your average Joe. They are trained in multiple disciplines, and work with customers for help them reach their objectives.

Health Promotion incorporates many facets of our daily lives. From the amount of sleep to the water we drink, to the food that we eat and the activity that we maintain, our health is dependent upon many factors of our lifestyle.

Working to improve our wellness could be difficult to achieve on our own. That is why we can utilize the assistance of a health Coach.

What is a wellness Coach?

A health coach is a highly educated expert who’s trained in behavioral change. They hold degrees in Exercise Science, Health Education, Exercise Physiology, Counseling and Education.

A wellness coach assists person in recognizing current health concerns in addition to preventing future health related issues. These specialists work with clients in a selection of ways including; face-to-face, telephone, instant messaging and / or via email.

The latter of those is also referred to as electronic coaching and is the most efficient and cost effective method of working with a health Coach.

No matter what method is used for communication a health coach provides a customized program namely designed to address the needs and concerns of each individual client.

How can a health coach help me?

A lot of individuals maintain a few healthful habits in their lives. One individuals may  be a fitness enthusiast; another may abstain from alcohol and tobacco; while another might maintain a healthful daily diet.

Notwithstanding, overall wellness is much like a puzzle, and a high level of health is only achieved when each piece of this puzzle is in place. A health coach will assist an individual in correcting his or her missing piece of the puzzle.

An web-based wellness coach may address the needs of sleep deprivation, stress management, diet, or any number of health related issues.  The wellness coach will motivate, guide, and provide valuable resources to provide patrons with the necessary tools to make life changes.

Exactly how is a wellness coach unique?

A health coach serves a distinctly different purpose than a fitness trainer, a counselor, or a supportive family member or friend. First, a health coach is an expert in his or her specific field.

When a customer determines the need for a wellness coach he or she will complete a health risk assessment. Based on this assessment the customer will be assigned a wellness coach particularly selected to address his or her individual needs.

Next, a wellness coach is available electronically 24 hours per day. Through internet based communication patrons have the opportunity to contact a wellness coach as much or as little as he may like.

Communication with a wellness coach may range from daily to weekly, and can occur by e-mail, journal or a combination of both. Lastly, a wellness coach is trained to assist in changing the way that the customer thinks and the way that they view themselves.

A wellness coach maintains the purpose of helping the customer to work towards achieving a higher quality in life. This happens by addressing the cause of a certain problem rather than simply addressing the effects of a problem.

A health coach will help person recognize their needs, determine goals, and take the necessary steps towards achieving these goals.

While wellness are growing concerns in our daily lives, it may seem difficult to make the time to educate oneself and address the needs or our well being.

Working with the assistance of a health coach enables us to focus on our specific needs and make progress towards changing.

Do you find it challenging to stay motivated when trying to make changes to your health? Are you aware that changes ought to be made in your daily life but you don’t know where to begin? When so then wellness coaching might just be the solution you have been seeking.

Health Promotion coaching is a service provided by trained professionals who work with you individually to help you reach your wellness objectives. Health Promotion coaching motivates, guides, and supports individual’s to reach sustainable behavioral changes by offering creative solutions to their problems.

Wellness coaching provides individually designed health promotion programs to meet your unique needs by focusing on physical, mental, and emotional health. They help you become proactive in your life by eliminating unhealthful behaviors and making wellness a priority.

Benefits of Health Promotion Coaching for Your Employees

Workers may benefit  from wellness coaching in a variety of ways. Health Promotion coaching can help individuals decrease major health risks in their lives by changing high risk behaviors.

Some of the many reasons why personnel work with wellness coaches are to get in shape, lose weight, reduce stress, quit smoking, and create balance in their lives. Health Promotion coaches assist individuals with current health problems in addition to preventing future health issues.

Because each wellness program that a wellness coach creates is unique to suit the needs of the patron, they can be sure that it will be a program that is right for them. A lot of busy workers mistakenly believe that they don’t have the time for wellness coaching.

Fortunately wellness coaching professionals can easily provide their services in a selection of convenient ways. While electronic coaching through the use of e-mails and instant messaging has become a popular method due to its convenience, telephone and face-to-face interactions may also be used.

Employees have the ability to achieve their objectives and improve their lives through the assistance of wellness coaching.

Advantages of Wellness Coaching for the Company

The overall benefits of wellness coaching for a organization are remarkable. Worker high risk behaviors like tobacco use and obesity cost businesses millions of dollars every year.

These high risk behaviors often cause preventable illness and keep personnel from coming to work. Health Promotion coaching guides, supports, hold patrons accountable, and ensures that they receive continued motivation to help them achieve their wellness objectives and eliminate unhealthy behaviors in their lives.

By starting health promotion programs and using wellness coaching in their corporations, corporations reduce the risk of preventable disease in their corporations.

This improves the overall health of workers, lowers healthcare and insurance costs, lowers absenteeism, and ultimately enhances performance and productivity.

When workforce experience the benefits of higher levels wellness in their lives it causes an improvement in job attitude, energy, and morale.

Organizations that utilize wellness coaching for their workers experience the benefits of higher productivity.

In today’s fast paced world our busy lives leave little time, energy, or motivation for people  to focus on their own needs.

Those that do seek to improve their wellness traditionally turn to friends, family, professionals and published materials for support and information. All too often those support structures fail to make a lasting difference.

This happens for a number of reasons. Friends and family might not be capable of helping. Working with professionals is time eating and expensive and very few of us are effective at taking published, generic information and applying it to our own lives.

Gold’s Gym Winston-Salem has created a new online health promotion program that expands the range of support available to those wishing to make healthy lifestyle changes.

The wellness program, Gold’s Fitness Center Wellness Coach, focuses on the daily challenges of making positive lifestyle changes and has the benefits of being more customized and efficient than generic, published information and less intense and costly than professional face-to-face counseling.

Utilizing a collaborative problem-solving model the goal is not to give advice, but rather to help individuals think through the issues and come to their own conclusions.

The coach offers ideas for consideration, assists the individual generate ideas of their own, assists the individual consider the various ideas, pick a direction, and then supports them in the implementation of their decision.

Challenging the conventional wisdom that relationship formation requires in-person interaction; Gold’s Health Club has found that members and coaches can easily build significant relationships via web-based communication.

Utilizing industry leading technology a Gold’s Fitness Club Health Coach is able to offer members a secure, user-friendly personal website where they can access their coach in a real-time or via email with responses delivered in less than 24 hours.

The site authorizes coaches to hand choose relevant articles that are written on a consumer level and that are targeted to the issue at hand and add them to a member’s internet based personal library.

The site also contains various wellness programs and tools which are designed to assist the coach and member to set, implement and track specific objectives.

The collaborative relationship formed between member and coach enhances the quality ice and efficiency of service.  The familiarity that a coach develops with a member’s circumstances and significant relationships allows them over time to more quickly offer useful ideas and assistance.

With traditional call-in assistance lines, the time intensive exercise of getting background and contextual information is repeated each time. IN that scenario efficiency is lost.

Furthermore, Gold’s Gym Health Coach has developed a protocol based on key principals from the field of psychotherapy and behavior modification.

The protocol is embedded within a proprietary problem-solving that is based on the concept that individuals  often act without a good understanding of a problem. Their responses then complicate matters and often make matters worse.

Gold’s Health Club Wellness Coach offers the opportunity to step back, take a second look at what’s going on, and rapidly asses the factors influencing the situation. But, having an idea of “what” to do is very different than actually “doing” something about it.

People  need help with the follow-through. Now, after figuring out “what” to do, Gold’s Fitness Club Wellness Coach focuses on implementation.

Here Gold’s Health Club Wellness Coach builds on sound research and experience from the field of behavior modification that has to do with goal-setting and with implementation support.

The end result is a highly personalized, effective, user-friendly way of bettering the wellness of an individual.  The efficient nature of the online relationship allows Gold’s Health Club Wellness Coach to keep the price point within reach of virtually anyone.

Information to evaluate your wellness program comes from routinely gathered screening and follow-up data of your wellness program that look at process and outcomes of your program.

The Employee Health Program has available a computerized case-management system which includes queries that allow easy assessment of process and outcome results at any point in time.

Process Examination

Process analysis looks at the wellness program’s impact as seen at various points in time.

Information that is collected from the various forms that wellness personnel fill out should supply you with the following -

o  Exactly how many workers were screened?

o  Precisely how many workforce who were referred to a doctor went?

o  Exactly how many staff members who expressed interest in wellness programs went?

o  Just how many staff members who were referred to wellness programs went?

o  Exactly how many workforce who went to wellness programs completed them?

o  Exactly how many employees are in follow-up caseload?

You can use this type of process examination to evaluate and learn about the health of your health promotion program.

Health Promotion Program Outcome Examination

A central objective of the wellness program is to enhance the health of staff. Information on how to judge how well your wellness program is meeting this objective is called “outcome examination” because you are investigating  the results or outcome of your wellness program.

In health promotion programs, goals are measured by specific (outcomes) behavior changes and reductions in health risk levels. Have workers reduced their blood pressure? Have they lost weight? Are they exercising more? is alcohol consumption at a safe level?

For  instance these are the types of questions you can ask to figure out when you are reaching your goals -

o  For employees with high blood pressure (BP) (140 / 90 or higher or on medication) at screening, what percentage have it under control (below 140 / 90) a year later?

o  What’s the change in average blood pressure (BP) levels among all workers with high blood pressure (BP) 1 year after screening? Two years later?

o  For employees with high blood cholesterol levels (above 240) at screening, what percentage has lowered their cholesterol to borderline-high levels (200-239)?

o  For employees with borderline-high blood cholesterol levels, what percentages have decreased their cholesterol to the desirable range (below 200)?

o  What is the change in typical cholesterol levels among all workers with high and borderline-high blood cholesterol levels 1 year after screening? Two years later?

o  For workforce who were overweight at screening, what percentage have lost 20 pounds or more a year later? Ten pounds or more? What’s the typical weight loss?

o  For personnel who were smokers at screening, what percentages have quit tobacco use? for at least a year?

o  For personnel whose level of alcohol consumption put them at-risk at screening, what percentage have quit drinking alcohol? Are eating alcohol at levels considered safe by CDC guidelines? Have reduced their drinking, but are still at-risk?

o  For personnel, what percentages are exercising at least three times a week for at least 20 minutes?

o  When levels of fitness were measured, what percentages have improved fitness?

Be sure to set a regular time like every 6 months to look at which personnel your wellness program is reaching and how effective it is at helping them reduce their health risks. Use this information to make new decisions about how to direct your wellness program efforts. Then make the change you need to improve your wellness program.

Some may feel that analysis is a frill; it’s not. Examination is a necessary part of a health promotion program. You will need to know what is working and what is not.

Decision-makers who fund the wellness program need to be updated on the performance of the wellness program. Evaluation will provide you with necessary data to maintain and expand the wellness program and convince upper-level management to continue to support the wellness program.