Lifestyle Counseling is an important part of my practice as a naturopath. In fact, it represents the basis of care that I provide to my patients—for me, it’s all about creating positive change. It allows me to understand you in the context of your life in order to put together the pieces to get you feeling better. While medications, herbs and supplements are extra modalities that help your body heal, true results are related to changes in diet, stress levels and lifestyle. Following your Comprehensive Health Assessment, we begin the crucial Lifestyle Counselling portion that helps you follow your prescriptions, make positive changes and set your Individualized Treatment Plan in motion.
A big part of my practice is listening, truly hearing you in order to understand you in the context of your life. Lifestyle Counseling involves working in close collaboration with you to understand which changes are realistic and can actually be undertaken. We’ll discuss what’s been done in the past, looking at what did and didn’t work. We consider managing stress, mindfulness, improving sleep, developing a joyful and healthy diet, as well as assessing the frequency and intensity of your exercise regimens. Beyond a regular health assessment, Lifestyle Counselling includes identifying coping mechanisms and developing specific strategies that you can use to remove the blockages that prevent you from living your best life. Part of this also includes education. In order to affect positive change, I’ll help you really understand what you’re doing and why; change doesn’t happen overnight.
In life, it’s normal to get busy, however, letting your health fall to the sidelines can have negative repercussions. Lifestyle Counseling, in combination with my other naturopathic therapies, can help you deal with depression, fatigue, seasonal affective disorder, work-related stress, life events, social support, relationship issues, and health problems—particularly chronic health conditions.
Through discussion and collaboration, we will identify which changes need to be made in order to improve your health and wellbeing. Using different strategies, including lifestyle coaching, we’ll have a clear plan moving forward in terms of treatment, approach, budget and timeline, so that we’re on the same page. Lifestyle coaching is about supporting you so that you see yourself as your best self. I don’t want to “fix” you—I want to inspire you to action. I’ve found tremendous benefit from working with a life coach – so much so that I completed a coaching certification to give me specific tools that I incorporate into my work with patients. If we realize that some of your needs are beyond the scope of my practice, I’m happy to refer you to my colleagues and group of trusted therapists, life coaches and social workers. While Lifestyle Counseling is always a part of implementing your Individualized Treatment Plans, individual sessions can also be booked as required.
Interested in learning more about naturopathy in general? Visit the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors (CAND), the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors (OAND) and the College of Naturpaths of Ontario (CONO).
