A health coach is a person who motivates individuals to inculcate positive health choices. Health coaches act as a mentor to educate and support their clients to accomplish their health goals. They achieve these usually through lifestyle and behavioral changes.

There are a lot of reasons for having a health coach monitor you. Health coaches make sure that they bring about positive health changes in a individuals life. They formulate a lifestyle for their client, through which stress can be managed easily, weight can be controlled and monitored, and fitness is a regular feature on their to-do list.

Led by York University’s Faculty of Health, clinical trials were done on healthy students, patients with diabetes and hypertension, and also on their own employees. These trial studies proved that keeping a health coach for fitness and lifestyle changes are really a value for the money.

When a person employs a health coach, they are kind of dependent on the coach for bringing about certain beneficial lifestyle changes. It is the sole duty of the health coach to make sure that the client reaches their health targets in a progressive and healthy manner. The coaching methodology employed will vary from person to person depending upon their individual needs. Researchers from the Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center point out that health coaches play a vital role in chiefly helping individuals fight obesity. Apart from obesity, accredited health coaches are individuals or professionals from the healthcare industry who have excessive training in behavioral changes. Since many of these coaches are rich in knowledge about the healthcare industry, they can make invaluable contributions to your health regimen and be worth the money for their professional services.

The health coach does a thorough assessment of each individual before they start-off planning his or her fitness regime. They ensure that they do a complete examination to know the problems and concerns of their client. Once that has been identified, they formulate a disciplined plan that would enable one to reach their health goals. Besides helping lose weight or fighting obesity, health coaches are a great value when it comes to helping clients manage several medical conditions and (chronic) diseases as well.

A health coach also referred to as wellness counseling, does not stop with just making sure that their clients have reached their goals, but they also work alongside to help the client overcome ‘food’ temptations, manage behavioral changes, and modify their attitude towards eating habits. Taking all of this into consideration, having a health coach deal with obesity or other chronic health diseases is a positive encouragement for the person to help overcome them. Finally, health coaches make sure that there is a marked change in one's attitude and behavior (with respect to mainly food and health) by setting realistic health targets.

In short, it can be said that a health coach can indeed play a prominent role in managing one's lifestyle changes and is real value for your money.

References:

http://www.fightchronicdisease.org/sites/fightchronicdisease.org/files/docs/Thorpe%20-%20Care%20Coord%20Savings%20-%20Final-1.pdf (accessed on 02/11/2015)

http://www.chwp.org/transformation/health-coaching-research/ (accessed on 02/11/2015)

http://www.aafp.org/fpm/2010/0900/p24.html (accessed on 02/11/2015)

http://www.jmir.org/2014/6/e149/ (accessed on 02/11/2015)

http://www.miriamhospital.org/health-coaches-could-be-key-to-successful-weight-loss-study-suggests.html (accessed on 02/11/2015)

http://www.imconsortium.org/prod/groups/ahc/@pub/@ahc/@cahcim/documents/asset/ahc_asset_147576.pdf (accessed on 02/11/2015)

Helpful Peer-Reviewed Medical Articles:

Steventon, A., Tunkel, S., Blunt, I., & Bardsley, M. (2013). Effect of telephone health coaching (Birmingham OwnHealth) on hospital use and associated costs: cohort study with matched controls. BMJ, 347, f4585.

Leahey, T. M., & Wing, R. R. (2013). A randomized controlled pilot study testing three types of health coaches for obesity treatment: Professional, peer, and mentor. Obesity, 21(5), 928-934.

Olsen, J. M., & Nesbitt, B. J. (2010). Health coaching to improve healthy lifestyle behaviors: an integrative review. American Journal of Health Promotion, 25(1), e1-e12.