People often wonder why I don’t coach even though I trained as coach with The Coaching Academy and have worked as their Course Manager at Latimer Place for nearly 10 years. Well I do, so there. You just won’t find me listed as a ‘Coach’ anywhere.
Firstly let me tell you how I got into coaching. I was nearing the end of my training as a Nutritional Therapist and it struck me that apart from HR experience in my ‘proper jobs’ I’d only ever worked with employees and colleagues on a very superficial one-to-one level.
I was sitting at my desk on a sunny Friday afternoon in the summer of 2005 and realised I had a free weekend (which was pretty rare for me). I jumped on the computer, Googled coaching, booked the course and attended the next day… the rest is history!
Although I don’t work as a coach in the traditional sense I do a serious amount of coaching – working one-to-one with clients and leading nutrition courses and workshops. What better way to help people make significant changes to their health than by using simple, structured techniques like the good old GROW model!
Food and health have huge social, psychological and emotional connections and delving into people’s values and beliefs surrounding their concept of wellness can make the difference between making a few short term changes and making changes that will last a life time!
I spend a great deal of time challenging my clients.
And from them, even the really focused ones, there’s often a great deal of:
If you work as a coach I bet you hear these excuses day in day out – and what do you do? You coach them through the process of building support, improving their confidence and initiating accountability. That’s exactly what I do every single day with my clients.
The main difference between me, and a more “traditional coach” I guess, is I give advice and a lot of it! A big no-no in most coaching circles, but pretty essential when it comes to my work as a Nutritional Therapist. People book appointments to address everything from digestive problems and food intolerances to autoimmune disease and metabolic disorders.
From their perspective they want to ‘fix a problem’ and get results so information, advice and guidance is of paramount importance. Coaching supports them to make sense of this and give them the tools to implement the necessary changes into their life in a realistic and sustainable way.
The other big difference is that we don’t spend much time setting client goals, as by the time they get to me they know exactly what they want to achieve. What we do spend time on is breaking the goal down into a ‘treatment plan’ over a series of three or more sessions thus establishing short, medium and long term goals.
I get the best of both worlds – I provide scientifically proven medical advice along with the motivational beauty of coaching. The perfect combination!
Charlotte Hunter is a highly experienced and qualified nutritional therapist whose mission is to provide people, parents and families with fresh, simple, healthy & YUMMY eating options, that are also delicious to eat and simple to prepare. Charlotte believes that eating healthily should not be a chore but a chance for you to explore food and enjoy what you eat.
You can connect with Charlotte at @charlhunt
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