You’ve started a fitness routine, you’ve joined a fitness club, you’ve been working but, are you getting the results you want… yes, no…. now you’re considering hiring a fitness coach.  What if the solution to getting the results you want is based in a different perspective.  Let’s start with seeing yourself as a whole person.  Seeing yourself as a whole person provides access to a balanced approach to getting those results!

Wellness Model rather than the Disease Model

Everything is connected. What you think and feel affects your eating, your relationships, exercise level, eating habits and affects how you manage stress. How you find meaning in life affects your personal and professional relationships as well as your attitudes and choices for health and wellness. During the past two decades, developments in biology, neurology, and psychology have clearly demonstrated the mind-body connection and proven that our total wellbeing must incorporate all dimensions of our lives. What we think and understand impacts our behaviour, and that determines our choices.

A whole-person approach is different and richer than other approaches. It informs and then transforms awareness into active personal responsibility. Not limited to diet and exercise, people are motivated to make changes that improve health and wellbeing in all aspects of their lives. And when they balance everything more effectively they learn and understand how and why they make the choices they do. Using this approach you can develop more clarity about your specific personal responsibility and motivations for change.  When a person owns their change, rather than following orders, that person is far more likely to be successful because you are making better choices for you – it could be weight, blood pressure, and stress level in addition to sense of self identity, personal and professional relationships, and meaning in everyday life.

 Darwin wrote, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Instead of focusing on your weight, blood pressure, or stress level, explore and learn to understand how your behaviour impacts the various dimensions of your life and your total health and wellness – mind, body, and spirit. Your physical and emotional wellbeing impacts your energy, learning, focus, motivation, time management, communication, as well as personal and professional relationships in addition to your waistline.  Once you identify your motivations (“I want to lose 15 pounds”), then a wellbeing program (in any modality) increases awareness and self-responsibility for making change. By understanding the whole-person approach, it’s easier to address core lifestyle behaviors that contribute to your self-identified problem and solution.

The choice of whether or not to have a fitness trainer could be improved by knowing your motivations and how you make choices you will be able to choose the trainer that actually helps you get the results you want!

Use your motivations to be a catalyst for your behavior!  Motivate yours self-responsibility.