The fitness industry is set up like a snake eating its tail. It gives certification and requires cecs to keep that certification and then offers limited sources of those approved credits. New trainers and educators in the wellness space are conditioned to believe that if it doesn’t give us some external validation through approved CEC’s or the magic of letters after your name then it’s not worth the time to study. So we look for more and more of what to teach clients instead of developing the skills to better communicate what we know.

Today I’m talking about coaching. When I say coach I’m talking about anyone who educates others about anything. From preschool to post doc, little league to pro athlete, boutique studios to big box gyms, school counselors to corporate consultants. Coaching of any kind is a business of change making and you can make it big or you can make it small and everything in between. But without courage, creativity and collaboration you can get lost in that cult of mediocrity filled with all the weight loss gurus, self love sisters and money making motivators out there.

Ideally we would all get everything our body needs to function optimally from real, whole food. Theoretically if we did that then we wouldn’t need to count calories. Or even watch portion sizes because the body has built in on and off switches for our appetite and is brilliantly designed to find the perfect energy balance. Sadly I think we can all agree that the standard American diet is deficient on many levels.

Our modern life of convenient hyper palatable food consumption has disrupted that delicate balance and led to food addiction, gut dysfunction and metabolic disease. Today, the lack of nutrition awareness and just basic general activity in modern life and you see most people deficient in many micro nutrients, using food as therapy on some level and desperate for a quick fix to fill in the gaps. That’s where supplements come in.

The fitness industry is notorious for fads. Fad equipment, Fad formats and especially fad diets and supplements. Each one with claims that this will finally be the thing that will give you the results you have been searching for. Even if nothing you’ve tried has worked before, THIS will. Every few years there’s new science, new understanding, new technology, new supplements and it can be as overwhelming for fitness professionals as it is for our clients. So how do we filter and curate that information in meaningful ways and stay within our scope of practice.

That’s our Work IN today. And we’re going to start with the diet piece.

Taylor Byrer is a holistic nurse coach and owner of Byrer Integrative Wellness . She is a former ICU nurse who after suffering from burnout for years, shifted to travel nurse and finally left the ICU to be a post surgical recovery nurse in an attempt to try to escape chronic stress and physical dysfunction in her body.

She was forced to take a step back and truly listen to her body. During the process of healing herself through many different modalities, Taylor discovered integrative wellness coaching. Her background and experience as an ICU nurse, journey of self healing and her passion for serving others has given her a unique perspective and mission of advocacy for her clients helping them become their own best advocate.

As fitness professionals and coaches we watch for the latest information and do our best to curate and explain it to our clients and students. As consumers of that information it can be so confusing to try to understand what the latest science actually means for our day to day lives. For a topic as complex as chronic pain that becomes even more challenging. On the one hand it’s great to get new science, new understanding about the body and nervous system so we can make the best choices in care. On the other hand, what does that mean for what we knew before? Does it all go out the window? How do we integrate new understanding of pain care science in meaningful ways and share it when it comes to posture, alignment and movement therapy?

My friend Colleen Jorgensen reached out to me a few weeks ago with this question as a topic for the podcast. And I thought it was a really great idea. I love bringing clarity to topics like this and I always learn so much from Colleen.

She’s been on the podcast before. We have talked about chronic pain, the nervous system, pain care aware language and the importance of professional communication skills. She is an osteopath, yoga & pilates instructor and a teacher trainer with a specialty in Pain Care Aware language.

She’s the one I trust to help translate some of this new information. I’m so happy to have Colleen back on the podcast to talk more about this topic and I think in the course of the conversation you find new ways to evaluate other areas of health and wellness science.

Let’s start our work IN with Colleen Jorgensen