What is trauma-informed, body-neutral, non-diet coaching? 

Over years of working with strong, fun, funny, kind, amazing folks (maybe people like you!), I have developed a set of coaching principles that I describe as trauma-informed, body-neutral, and non-diet.

Trauma-informed coaching with me encompasses the principles named below, and signifies my commitment to meeting you with humility, curiosity and responsiveness. I will partner with you to build physical strength, confidence, self-trust and resilience through intentional weight lifting and movement. 

Here are my commitments to you when we work together:

Collaboration: We’ll work closely, as a team, to create and progress a training program that makes sense for your life. I’ll help you explore the edges of your comfort zones as you build strength and confidence with training and beyond. I’ll help you get curious about the ways you relate to movement and food, so you can feel good about fitness and nutrition. Your feedback and your active participation in creating and adapting training and nutrition habits is a cornerstone of our work. We’ll establish expectations around communication, and communicate in a way that meets your needs.  

Affirmation: I have an inherent positive regard for you as my coaching client. I’ll work to build trust with you, take a holistic view of your well-being (including your physical, mental and emotional well-being), and meet you where you are. I’ll celebrate who you are NOW (not only when you achieve an aesthetic or performance-related “result”). My hope is that working together creates a soft landing for you, where you can feel comfortable to show up as you are, and I can help you relax into the coaching process. I commit to being responsive to your needs, and validating and considering your lived experiences.

Flexibility: In my opinion, flexibility is a requirement for consistency. While we may work on more specific goals together, I will prioritize the health of your relationship with fitness and nutrition, and work to promote the healing of those relationships. Making adjustments to programming, adapting training and nutrition protocols to your life changes, and reevaluating goals are a natural part of the coaching process. I’ll help you challenge the all-or-nothing mindset that’s pervasive in the fitness and nutrition industries–because flexibility leads to long-term consistency, and allows you to reap the benefits of that consistency for the rest of your life.

Accountability: We are accountable to each other when we enter a coaching relationship. I commit to holding you accountable in ways you want to be held accountable, and to showing up for you as the best version of myself possible. I commit to working within my scope of practice and taking accountability should I cause harm to you or our relationship in any way.

Empowerment: Over time, I aim to help you learn and integrate the tools you need to be able to coach yourself, and help you hone those tools. My hope for you is that you can eventually become your own coach, if that’s something you want.

Safety: Your safety is my highest priority. And while I cannot guarantee your safety, I can communicate with you to prioritize and uphold your safety, and support your regulation within the parameters of our work together.

Autonomy: Your agency is my second highest priority. Your goals and priorities are up to you. I’ll ask you questions, hold you accountable in the ways you ask of me, and provide my expertise, and you will always have space to make final decisions about fitness and nutrition programs.

Body Neutrality: Our work together de-centers aesthetic goals. While you may experience body change and even have aesthetics on your list of training goals, they are not the primary focus of our work together. Bodies naturally change, especially when you start lifting. You will build strength and muscle. Centering body neutrality helps us appreciate our bodies for the ways they physically support us and all the wonderful activities we love to do, instead of hyper-focusing on conforming to body and beauty standards under white supremacy. Our work may prioritize, for example:

• Building physical strength and improving mobility
• Functional training: lifting that prioritizes YOUR function (daily life movements, supporting athletics, supporting the way you’re required to move at work, etc)
• Injury prevention through proper dosing of strength training and corrective exercise
• Lifting as a grounding practice
• Working on the skills of auto-regulation and adaptation, meaning you meet yourself where you are each time you show up to train; helping you unlearn the obsessive, all-or-nothing training mindset
• De-centering fat loss/weight loss to work toward healing your relationship with fitness and movement
• Increasing your connection to your body, including how you connect to your muscles and internal physical sensations
• Pain management: easing pain, working with and around pain
• Training as a form of play: we may integrate more playful movements into your program
• Building resilience to stress
• Building self-trust

Non-Diet Nutrition Coaching: I will take a non-restrictive approach to nutrition coaching, and work with you within my scope. We’ll engage in non-diet, habit-based nutrition coaching by:

• Recognizing food as fuel that supports your training, and also recognizing food as meaningful beyond simply providing your body energy.
• Working together to challenge diet culture thinking, including exploring internalized fat phobia, assigning moral value to foods, and restriction.
• Considering the context in which you make decisions about food, recognizing social determinants of health that exist as a result of white supremacy.
• Practicing unlearning the “all-or-nothing” mindset.
• De-centering fat loss/weight loss as nutritional goals.
• Working to ensure you’re eating enough to support your training, and prioritizing nutrients that will aid in your recovery from training.
• We’ll prioritize sustainability in making nutritional habit changes: can you continue this habit for the rest of your life?
• Prioritizing your long term health and well-being, and the health and healing of your relationship with food.

Folks who work with me might be..

• Beginners to strength training who feel comfortable learning in a virtual environment.
• Those who are beginning again, and are excited about a program that fits into their lives, instead of the other way around.
• Folks who enjoy virtual personal training, because they can train from the comfort of their own home while being challenged by their programming and supported by their coach.
• Those who want to avoid injury, and have experienced injury or overtraining in the past, but want to prioritize building strength and fitness for their health and longevity.
• Athletes who want to support more specific forms of movement, for example strength training to support climbing or running, and also want higher levels of support from a coach who cares about their well-being (and avoiding overtraining!).