After 13 years of coaching, we had the opportunity to take the board exam to become nationally board-certified health and wellness coaches. Not only did it reinvigorate our passions for coaching, but we learned new skills and strategies that we are excited to use with our clients and groups. Listen to our board exam experience and how we are now, even better coaches.

(Podcast player below transcript) Transcript of Certified podcast. edited for clarity Nourish Coaches 00:04 Hi, this is Wendy. And this is Debbie. Welcome to nourish Noshes where we talk all things food and health and what's nourishing for us.

Debbie 00:15 And I'll tell you what was not very nourishing for us was taking a four-hour exam.

Wendy 00:24 If anyone saw our post exam photo, you could see how tired I was, this is Wednesday, by the way. It was quite exhausting. It was pretty intense process to study.

Debbie 00:37 Yeah. So, you know, some people might not know about that. But some people may know that we took an exam, just last Friday. So on the 15th of October, we took a national board certification exam for becoming health and wellness coaches. Now we already our health and wellness coaches, but this exam will, if we passed, which we assume we did, will certify us nationally--board certified for practicing.

Wendy 01:07 Yeah, it's upping our game. It's delineating us from many others, you know, health coaches down the street.

Debbie 01:18 Right, who might be perfectly good health coaches. But this is really, the idea behind this is to somewhat regulate the health and wellness coaching field to make sure that we're really doing our coaching, that we're doing what we're out there to do in a way that is consistent with what the national health coaches board believes are the best practices to help people.

Wendy 01:43 And I do believe at the end end of the day that I'm a better coach, because of all the studying we did. And the extensive program we went through back October through March of '20 to '21. Right? I do believe I have a better understanding of the motivational interviewing, you know, just the best way of being a coach, and the approach and the partnership that we have with our clients. Yeah. And one of the things you and I have talked about often is this idea that we're really drawn to the coaching model instead of some of the other models like the nutritionist model or the RD model, or you know, the dietician, model. And none of those, none of them are wrong models. They're all, you know, helpful models. The reason why we are drawn so much to the coaching model is because it's really a partnership and we so believe that you have, you know, most of the answers, you know, you might need some education, you might need some accountability, you might feel like you can't do it alone. And you might want some new information. And that's where we come in.

Debbie 02:52 Yeah, the idea is to really get people to be able to have a healthy lifestyle on their own, sustainably for the rest of their life--to not need us. And that's what coaching is about-- is to get people to be autonomous in their health and lifestyle skills so that they know the answers, and they trust themselves to know the answers of what works for them as an individual.

Wendy 03:14 So one of the things we did often during our conversations, when we were studying was think, oh, what a great question to ask our clients. And oh, do you remember when we had this conversation during our group, and we had a lot of good ideas? We got a lot of good ideas for upcoming group that is kicking off October 27.

Debbie 03:34 Yeah, we definitely we wrote a lot of good notes. And we're so excited--we're at our prime of coaching right now.

Wendy 03:40 Yeah, yeah. And that's what continuing education does for us, right? It's growth mindset. And I think that's why we love coaching, too, is that we help our clients rediscover that growth mindset that is intrinsic wit...