Health Coaching with Leila Finn

"The Health Coach is the person who is the expert in health behavior change"
Linda Smith, Duke Integrative Medicine*

Health Coaching

Much of what makes us ill can be prevented or improved with lifestyle change - and that's exciting because we all have the ability to change. It's really about how and why. Health coaching works because it taps into each person's unique set of abilities, helping clients create a customized plan that works for them to create the changes they want for their health and well-being.

Health coaching is about empowerment. It’s a life skill. While working with me, I want my clients to learn the coaching skills I have so they have them to use for the next change they want to make or challenge they need to manage.

Training and Consulting

I’ve developed curriculum and taught health coaching at Emory Continuing Education, Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies, University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and at the American Council on Exercise. I can offer coaching advice and critique and demystify the jargon and strategy in motivational interviewing and coaching or help develop or improve health and wellness coach training programs.

Culinary Coaching

Healthy eating is one of the primary reasons people come to health coaching. Eating delicious, healthy food is one of the most powerful things we can do to improve and maintain good health but we have a food crisis. Calorie-rich, nutrient-poor, highly processed foods are making many of us sick. It's becoming more and more difficult for people to eat well. Culinary medicine is an evidence-based field that proves what I think we already know: cooking and eating real food (the kind your great grandmother would recognize) improves good nutrition and fosters good health. Yet cost, time, and skill are barriers that keep many people from cooking and eating well. Culinary coaching pairs health coaching with improving cooking skills and knowledge. Time, skill and knowledge are common obstacles to cooking from scratch yet cooking from scratch - making your own meals with fresh and minimally processed ingredients - is both healthier and cheaper than eating highly processed convenience foods and mixes or take out. Eating delicious, healthy food is one of the most fundamental and powerful things we can do to improve and maintain good health.

*Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 2013;2(3):12-24