12 common barriers to making healthy changes...& 9 ways a health coach can change your life

“Frequent flyers” are those patients that come and go on a regular basis. They are the patients that return to the hospital over and over, often being treated for the same problems each time. Only difference with this type of frequent flyer is there are no points to be made and no real perks either.
 
Our frequent flyers’ typical problems include: high blood sugar, diabetes complications, uncontrolled hypertension, chest pain and heart-related issues, etc. During my hospital nursing days, it wasn’t uncommon for some of my admissions to be familiar faces. It’s always nice to see a familiar face, but never in a hospital setting! Familiar faces are never welcome at the hospital…
 
We’d review the same discharge instructions each time these frequent flyers were getting discharged. We’d do a crash course on all the things that they could do to better manage their condition at home. In reality, it was just one more task I had to check off on the nursing chart. After all, we were just going through the motions. But we all knew that a quick 5-minute lesson wasn’t enough. Medication compliance was a biggie. Lifestyle changes were just an unlikely afterthought.
 
Rather than send them on their ways and then wait for my patients to be readmitted, I so badly wanted to continue that 5-minute lesson with them. I wanted to follow them home and continue to support them. I wanted to prevent these terrible things from happening to them again. And mostly, I wanted them to want to prevent these things too.
 
But as a nurse all of that was beyond my scope. So instead I just helplessly pondered their outcomes after they returned home. Chances are that without sufficient insight and without at least some support, change didn’t come easy (or at all) for many of those people.
 
Change doesn’t happen overnight
Which would be easier?                                                                                          
A.) Making a healthy lifestyle change?
                             OR
B.) Losing a leg and not being able to walk?
 
You’d think that if a doctor told you to choose between quitting sugar and losing your leg, you’d choose the former. You’d think that a quadruple bypass would be motivation enough to start caring for your heart. You’d think that the threat of stroke, heart attack or organ damage caused by high blood pressure would be enough to get things under control.
 
But change doesn’t happen just like that, it’s more complicated. Logic and reasoning don't always come before feelings and emotions. There are stages of change and it’s not always a linear predictable process for everyone. For this reason, a “one size fits all” approach simply doesn’t work.
 
I used to grow frustrated with my patients. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just change their ways in order to avoid these terrible circumstances they kept finding themselves in. But becoming a health coach taught me to alter my perspective and to start thinking differently.

Barriers to change
It was only after I delved deeper into the subject of behavior change that I began understanding why change isn’t so simple. Despite a serious health threat, there are multiple factors that may be preventing us from changing:

• We don’t know what to change
  
• We don’t feel ready to change
  
• We don’t know how to change
  
• We don’t know who can help us change
  
• We feel we don’t have the time to change
  
• We don’t see how the change will actually benefit us
  
• We don’t know how to overcome the obstacles to change
  
• We don’t think our health is really within our control
  
• We don’t have the confidence to change
• We don’t have a role model to emulate
  
• We don’t think the threat is scary or serious enough to warrant a change
• We feel we don’t have the energy to sustain a change
• We believe medicine will fix us so why even bother with change?

 
Do any of these factors resonate with you? If so, you’re not alone. These are the most common reasons people resist change. It’s a fact that the most prevalent, most debilitating lifestyle diseases can be managed with lifestyle modifications. But simply knowing this fact is not enough to prompt change. If it were enough then no one would ever succumb to any of these lifestyle diseases.
 
Doctors don’t have the time or the training to review and address all of these barriers with us. They’re busy enough as it is. So it’s up to us to seek these answers from within. And this is how health coaches can help.

What is a health coach?
A health coach is a mentor who empowers you to be healthy on your own terms. A health coach is a guiding force. A health coach is someone who genuinely cares for your well-being but believes that only you are the expert of your own body. We help you answer the questions listed above. Most importantly, we help you find your reason for change, your North Star, your WHY. We are unbiased, non-judgmental sources of support.
 
Benefits of health coaching:
A health coach can help you:

• Formulate personalized step-by-step plans
• Set effective goals that are aligned with your interests & strengths
• Uncover unproductive thoughts & overcome barriers
• Build resilience with stress management practice
• Build confidence
• Find your WHY
• Discover the bigger picture by taking a holistic approach
• Serve as accountability partners
• Consolidate all that confusing health info for you

 
Change happens in the mind and it all starts with a plan. Health coaches don’t just remind you that to be healthy you have to eat healthier and exercise more. Even though humans are highly adaptable beings, our bodies have clearly not been able to keep up with the world’s fast pace of change. Our bodies have not yet evolved to keep us healthy despite feeding them junk. Our bodies have not yet evolved to keep us fit without us having to exercise.
 
Navigating a world where our bodies are not aligned with their environments isn’t easy. A health coach can help bring things back into alignment. Yes, it costs money to hire a health coach. But any money spent on preventative measures to maintain or improve health is an investment. Pay something now or pay a whole lot later in co-pays and medical bills. If you’ve tried but have been unsuccessful at making changes, or if you simply don’t know how to start, consider bringing a health coach into your life.
 
Takeaway
There is hope. For every “frequent flyer” patient that I cared for, there were so many patients that I never saw again. I’d like to think many got better. Some of them I still wonder about to this day. When you’re a nurse, you forget names and details. But you rarely forget the faces of some of the patients you cared for.
 
Did that guy with the quadruple bypass return home and change his lifestyle? Did that morbidly obese lady with chest pain and dangerously high blood pressure decide to lose some weight and make healthier choices so this would never happen to her again? Or how about the man who was warned that if he didn’t start to control his diabetes he was going to lose his entire leg? Did he end up losing his leg or was he able to make healthy changes and save it?
 
I can only hope that they all went home and had the support they needed to make healthy changes for a better quality of life. Our healthcare system is more reactive than it is proactive. It’s focused more on damage control than on prevention. But fortunately our society is beginning to see the enormous benefits of wellness and prevention. Emerging fields like health coaching are helping to guide the way. There’s hope on the horizon.

Are you considering making a change but not really sure where to start? Click here if you'd like to learn more about how an AndiamoFit health coach can help you today!