The New York Times recently published an interesting article about the growing popularity of wellness coaches.
Dr. CJ Fitness has blogged a series of articles about my current favorite TV show: The Biggest Loser. His three posts talk about reality TV Deception, behind the scenes of TBL, and some of TBL secrets. They’re a pretty good read.
And Time recently published an article that talks about how hard it is for the contestants on TBL (and everyone else for that matter) to keep their weight off.
Check them out.
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Here are some quotes from the “TBL Behind the Scenes” article, which is completely fascinating.
This is an exercise physiologist named Lyle Richardson, commenting on comments made by a former TBL contestant on the workout and eating routine: The TBLer said that the contestants worked out 4 hours a day. Richardson says, “Research in general has not supported exercise having a humongous impact on bodyweight.”
The TBLer says that the coaches were insistent about the importance of eating, and when a contestant failed to drop very much weight, it was usually because he or she was restricting their caloric intake too much. Richardson says, “The combination of lots of exercise with big caloric deficits tends to work extremely poorly and seem to slow instead of hasten fat loss for some reason.”
The TBLer says that the exercise routine was 75% cardio/25% weight lifting. Richardson says, “I think it’s interesting that the main focus is on cardio training especially with the recent tendency towards weight training based fat loss approaches. No matter how you cut it, 3 hours of cardio per day burns far far far more calories than 45 minutes of weight training, regardless of the type.”
Don’t believe everything you read. I read the wellness coach article, and the guy doesn’t understand wellness, coaching, wellness-coaching clients, or even the yearly take-home pay. He even stated that most coaches are not medical doctors (true).
Am I making $75,000-125,000 per year that he stated? No. That’s because he took the average hourly fees and guessed ’40 hours per week’. That is different than how most clients pay, and how many clients a wellness coach may have, AND how many hours it takes for a coach to support a client who only pays a flat fee monthly. Wow, I’d like to be making $125,000 per month.
This author also implied that didn’t think that a coach who is trained in physical training (which includes exercise science), multiple certifications in health coaching, and years of coaching experience (not to mention ongoing study of psychology and health) could be worthy. He didn’t say this outright, but he used the magic words, “They don’t have medical training”.
The funny thing is that many doctors, after having listened to me, worked with me, or consulted with me, have said that I know more than many [medical] doctors they know.
The fact is, that wellness coaching is COACHING, which is a type of [beneficial] behavior enhancement. Truth is, I can coach almost anything, because the key aspect is to get the client to discover his own issues. Most of the clients sticking-points may be from habit, or lack of quality resources, or not knowing the fulness of health details.
Example: (and JD already mentioned this online, so I’m not spilling any beans):
JD’s secret wish was to run a marathon. However, he had foot or leg pain when he tried to run or even walk too much, so it stopped him from trying to run. In fact, this pain deterred his walking as well. I suspected that his running shoes were very old and didn’t support his feet anymore; so he agreed to visit a running shoe store to investigate. Sure enough, his shoes were many years old, and not only was he fit for new shoes, but he was given a lesson in running from the running store guy.
Of course, my knowledge about this comes from my daily research of wellness (and psychology) issues. (Not paid by any client, of course)
Could JD have done this on his own? Sure – but it would have taken him a long time (!!) to correlate his foot pain with shoes. It took a personal-trainer-wellness-coach who was mindful of JD’s dreams and can help teach JD how to be mindful of himself.
So if the author of the article thinks wellness coaching is stupid, then he shouldn’t get one
Oops… I meant “$125,000 per year”, not per month. (in my 2nd paragraph). Sorry.