Why this is confusing
Everyone online will “help you with your health,” and the titles blur. Here’s the honest map, including the lanes I stay out of. I’d rather you hire the right person than hire me for the wrong job.
What a health coach does
A health coach works on behavior: the habits, systems and daily actions between you and the life you want. Not what to eat in the abstract, but why the thing you already know to do isn’t happening on Tuesdays, and what to build so it does. A good coach is trained in how people change, gives you honest feedback, and is in your corner between sessions.
What a coach does not do: diagnose, treat, prescribe, or write a medical nutrition plan. If your coach is doing those things without the license for them, that’s a flag.
Credentials to look for: a certification from a body with a real exam and practice hours (Precision Nutrition, ACE, or the NBC-HWC board certification), and plain words about what they’re trained in. Mine are on the About page.
What a registered dietitian does
A registered dietitian (RD or RDN) is the licensed professional for medical nutrition: eating-disorder recovery, prenatal nutrition with complications, food allergies, gestational diabetes, GI conditions, a plan around a diagnosis. They can assess, prescribe and adjust in ways a coach cannot and should not.
When to see one first: any time food is tied to a medical condition, a history of disordered eating, or pregnancy with complications. A coach can help you keep the dietitian’s plan running in real life; a coach should not be writing it.
What a therapist does (and why coaching is not therapy)
A therapist diagnoses and treats mental health: depression, anxiety, postpartum mood disorders, trauma, an eating disorder. That work needs a license and clinical training, and it is not what a health coach does.
Coaching is forward-looking and action-based. We assume you’re a capable adult who wants to build something, and we work on the building. If what’s in the way is a mental-health condition, the kindest thing I can do is say so and help you find a therapist. Many of my clients will have both; the therapist holds the healing and I hold the habits. Nobody has to choose.
When a pelvic-floor PT comes first
If you’re pregnant or postpartum, or you leak, ache or don’t trust your core when you lift, a pelvic-floor physical therapist comes before any training plan, including anything you and I build. A six-week “all clear” is not an assessment. A pelvic-floor PT does an actual one, then gives you a progression. Coaching then makes the progression survive your week.
I get it: you want to get back to moving. (Heck, even lying on my stomach again felt like a win after pregnancy.) But you can go too fast for your pelvic floor, so check in with the experts about any symptoms.
How they work together
Think of it as a care team with one non-clinical member. Your doctor, OB or midwife, dietitian and pelvic-floor PT handle assessment and treatment. I handle the behavior-change piece: what you’ll actually do between appointments, and how to keep doing it when the week falls apart. I stay in my lane and refer to the experts, and I’ll tell you on the free call if what you need isn’t me.
Questions to ask any coach
What are you certified in, and by whom? What won’t you do? What happens on the first call, and what does it cost? How do you support me between sessions? What happens if I need to stop? If the answers are vague, or the price only comes after a sales call, keep looking.
Mine are all on the coaching page.
