...I actually have a health coach. I know, that sounds horribly yuppie-esque, but it's something my employer offers to all employees. I've resisted it for years, but I finally gave in and started to use the service. My first experience with the health coach wasn't very good, truth be told: she had an accent and seemed to be just reading a script. As a result, I was less than motivated to actually keep my phone appointments with her. However, Catholic guilt being what it is, I called back and finally got a new coach who:
a) Has a good command of English
b) Also seems to be working off of scripts, but at least makes it sound like she doesn't
The scripts part is interesting, because as a professional trainer, I can pretty much tell when someone is reading printed material, regardless of how good they are. Now given the subject matter, someones health, I'd expect anyone other than a doctor or a nurse to be working from a script. Anyway, my new coach, Jenn (from San Diego no less) seems to be pretty good at making it seem extemporaneous.
Anyway, my last appointment was yesterday afternoon, which was very good timing, as I had just gotten blood work back. The blood work news was almost all good:
Total Cholesterol was 175 (a little higher than my normal 165), which is still pretty good
HDL/Good Cholesterol was 51, which is good
LDL/Bad Cholesterol was 95, which is ok
Triglycerides were 146, which is ok
Glucose was 84, which is excellent
Even my blood pressure was pretty good, at 132/78 (in fact, that's so good that maybe the nurse made a mistake...). Note though that I've been better at exercising, so that could be the reason why the BP was actually ok. And for the record, I don't use any tobacco products and I don't drink (well, maybe one drink a year), so the news on balance isn't all that bad.
Anyway, all the good news aside, I still struggle maintaining a healthy weight, and that, in my mind, is joined at the hip at my ability (in inability) to manage stress very well. So that's where the discussion yesterday went: I need to control stress a bit better and that, I think, will help me control some of the unhealthy eating. Now my next session with Jenn is next Monday (I think...my schedule is "complicated"), so my take-away was that I would write down instances when I felt under stress. The theory is, I think, that identifying the situations will help me better control the stress. Now I already have an entry for this list, but I do have to write it down.
All told, I was pleasantly surprised by this session with the coach. Who knows...it might actually help.
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