Grow With The Institute For Integrative Nutrition

Healthie recently hosted a webinar with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). Read on for a recap and to see why fitness, nutrition, and wellness professionals are incorporating health coaching into their work. You’ll also meet three Healthie members who used their IIN training to grow their businesses.

Why Health Coaching Matters

Whether you help your clients reverse diabetes, increase muscle mass, or prepare for a marathon, you want the best for the individuals you work with. You want them to reach their goals and sustain results. Because of you, clients improve their quality of life, gain the ability to be active with their kids, and find more fulfillment every day. Your role is much more than a job or even career. You help transform lives. That’s why so many Healthie community members got into nutrition, fitness, and other wellness professions — to make a difference.

Sometimes, though, working with a client doesn’t go as planned. The following situation may sound familiar: A client enthusiastically signs up to work with you, but after a couple sessions you can feel their motivation waning. They’re not sure their efforts are worth the changes they need to make. They don’t follow through on your protocol, so they don’t achieve the results they wanted. With Healthie, this relationship can be reinforced by checking in with clients through convenient client messaging or by setting up food, lifestyle, or activity journaling. Click here to learn how to set up these features with Healthie’s Free Starter Plan today. 

Or, maybe all your clients are reaching their goals (high five!), but you know if you offered additional services you could expand your business and make the income you really want. You could develop programs that incorporate new ways for clients to work with you. You could consider quitting your other job to work on your business full-time.

These are just a couple reasons why fitness, nutrition, and wellness professionals are adding health coaching to their repertoire. Health coaching is a quickly growing field that many professionals are going back to school for. Whether you choose a virtual, private sector certification or university degree, the options continue to grow — and for good reason.

Research now shows the efficacy of working with a health coach. Evidence-based coaching skills transcend telling clients what to do. You begin walking alongside your clients, where they are the expert rather than you. Research shows that when clients are in the driver’s seat, compliance increases and they’re more likely to reach their goals. Our free Starter plan helps with online scheduling and can send appointment reminders, so if you meet with clients weekly , it gives them time to become acquainted with the plan and identify any issues or changes that need to be made by the next check-in. The International Consortium for Health and Wellness Coaching (ICHWC) is at the forefront of evolving and standardizing health coaching, and thus far over 1,100 professionals have taken the Health & Wellness Coach Certifying Examination to become the National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches (NBC-HWC).

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) is one of ICHWC’s Approved Transition Programs, so graduates are eligible to sit for the Health & Wellness Coach Certifying Examination. IIN’s unique approach teaches an integrative perspective to health and wellbeing, where “primary food” is defined as everything that nourishes us as humans besides actual food. This includes things like our relationships, career, spirituality, and exercise routine. If these primary foods aren’t in balance, clients may struggle to reach their goals or sustain them. An unfulfilling and stressful work situation may produce excessive cortisol that negates the perfect macro and micronutrient intake. Lack of close relationships or poor communication with a partner can cause a person to skip exercising and grab a bag of chips and movie instead. Fitness and nutrition don’t stand alone when it comes to behavior change.

By merging primary food, evidence-based coaching skills, and an integrative and holistic approach to nutrition, IIN teaches that optimal health and wellness requires a holistic perspective.

There are many IIN graduates in the Healthie community that have used their IIN certification to grow their businesses and better support clients.

Healthie recently hosted a webinar with IIN to share three Healthie members’ experiences with their health coaching training. You can read some of their stories below, or watch the full webinar replay here.

Cody Sanders, ACE & NASM CPT, HHC

Soul Happy and Healthy // @soulhappyandhealthy // Holistic Nutritionist, Fitness & Health Coach

Cody Sanders has been in the health and fitness industry for 20 years. She’s a certified personal trainer and received a comprehensive education in client exercise program design, detailed anatomy and physiology, proper nutrition for fitness, performance, and general health.

Cody decided to take her business a step further and enrolled at IIN because the school’s philosophy fit well with her business. She also loved the IIN community. Cody learned to incorporate things like relationships, mindset, and goal setting into her sessions in addition to nutrition, lifestyle, and exercise. Before IIN and Healthie, Cody saw personal training clients in her yoga studio and gym. With IIN’s training, and the capabilities of Healthie, she simplified her business while reaching more clients. Instead of training clients 1-1 in the gym, she continues to help people, but now online. She launched her online studio through Healthie where she interacts with her clients daily all over the country, delivers exercise videos and meal plans, and runs her business all in one place.

"I’m passionate about approaching health and fitness through a holistic perspective. You can’t only focus on reaching a specific number on the scale and expect that the number will magically create a blissful life. I believe each area of your life affects your personal health and fitness goals. To create a lasting healthy and happy lifestyle, you need to go deeper. IIN gave me the tools to help people in a way that is lasting and empowering."

Xavier Smith, NCSF CPT, INHC

Xcellent Solutions // @thefitnessdungeon // Personal Trainer & Health Coach

Xavier Smith is a veteran who served in the US Air Force prior to entering the fitness and health world professionally. After several health scares, including suffering a heart attack at the age of 29, Xavier took charge of his health and habits. He went on to become a certified personal trainer and founded his gym, The Fitness Dungeon, which now offers modalities including personal training, yoga trapeze, boxing, deep breathing, meditation, and more.

Xavier later decided to enroll at IIN. He resonated with the school’s integrative and holistic philosophy, and he wanted to learn new ways to make an impact on his clients. After IIN, Xavier expanded his business as Xcellent Solutions, which now includes fitness, nutrition, and life coaching.

"Just like I have a unique fingerprint, the people that I serve have different ways of processing food and seeing life as a whole. I learned to meet people where they are mentally, spiritually, financially, etc., on their terms. It’s important that people know that they’re in control when it comes to coaching."

Karissa Long, INHC

Clean Keto Lifestyle // @cleanketolifestyle // Global Health Coach & Clean Ketogenic Expert

Karissa Long’s path to becoming a health coach started when she was diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disease in her early 20’s. It was a major wakeup call for her. She began to examine how she was living and what she was feeding her body. After the diagnosis, she went on a ten-year discovery journey with the goal of putting her disease into remission. Karissa cracked the code for her personal health and achieved her goal.

This fueled her interest in learning more and changing careers. As she began helping others, health coaching became a natural extension to what she was already doing. Karissa then enrolled in IIN to learn the best techniques to ensure she could help as many women as possible attain their weight-loss and wellness goals. Through the program, Karissa identified her niche and developed her “Clean Keto” program for clients. She’s grown her following to over 17,000. If you’re unsure of how to start offering these additional services to your clients, click here to explore how Healthie can help you build out your offerings.

"IIN teaches that if you know your niche, you can use a limited marketing budget while getting good results. You can identify and target your potential clients so much easier. The marketing gets easier because you can attract the right people. It’s a very small segment of the population, but they’re looking for exactly what you offer. They can find you easily through a Google search. The more specific you get and the more unique you are, you end up having less competition which is a great thing."