The Able Coach

What is Able

Able is a science-backed, 360-degree weight care and wellness program that is tailored to the biology and lifestyle of our clients and supported by one-on-one coaching.

By providing this coaching and a personalized program that takes into account nutrition, sleep, hydration, movement, emotions, and medication as appropriate, Able helps clients reach their happy weight and maintain it while improving their overall health and confidence.

What Able is NOT

Able is not a diet.

Able is not a calorie tracker.

Able is a sustainable program that incorporates nutrition, sleep, hydration, movement, emotions, and medication as appropriate to help clients achieve their happy weight and stay there. Able’s philosophy is that doable lifestyle tweaks lead to big results over time.

Able may provide sustainable meal plans tailored to the client’s specific needs. Clients and coaches can track progress within the app and share meal descriptions and photos as appropriate to their individual programs.

Able is not a fitness tracker.

Able integrates with popular fitness trackers in clients’ phones so clients and coaches can view progress in all areas of life that impact weight care and well-being in one place. At Able we believe movement is an important part of achieving and maintaining overall health, however, strenuous exercise is not a requirement for reaching a happy weight or improving metabolic health.

Able is not a weight loss plan.

At Able, we talk about weight care and reaching your healthy weight, not about weight loss. We don’t recommend “calorie deficits” or fad diets because they don’t work long-term. Similarly, the term “plan” is similar to a diet in that it reminds many people of a short-term meal plan or diet that doesn’t incorporate their unique lifestyle and needs. Many clients have past experiences with “plans” they could not stick to and which wreaked havoc on their weight over time.

Able may provide sustainable meal plans tailored to the client’s specific needs. The meal plan, however, is one tool in a comprehensive program that considers sleep, emotions, movement, medication (as appropriate), and a variety of factors that contribute to weight care. Able’s 360-degree program includes one-on-one coaching, so clients have the support and guidance they need to continue newly formed habits long-term.

Able’s Coaching Philosophy

Who are we and what do we do?

Our Mission:

Able is on the mission to make personalized, best-in-class weight and wellness care accessible to everyone through a virtual, one-on-one health coaching platform. Lifestyle is a key driver in health but change is hard. We offer coaching to help guide, support, encourage, empower, and collaborate.

Our Coaching Values

We ask coaches to embody these values so that we make clients successful and retain them. Furthermore, these values instruct us in how to make decisions and prioritize our actions and time when the path is unclear.

1. Connection is the basis of everything we do

2. We are present and devoted to every client

3. We look at the client as a whole

4. Our program is flexible and sustainable

5. We learn from every experience to take positive steps forward

What is the Role of a Coach?

Coaching is a very powerful methodology when it comes to stimulating individual behavior change as it is focused on helping clients grow into becoming more autonomous experts in their own well-being and personal path.

Coaches look first to collaborate and partner rather than showing up as experts who analyze problems, give advice, prescribe solutions, recommend goals, teach new skills, or provide education

These expert approaches can be helpful in a coaching relationship, they are used “just in time” and infrequently

The goal of coaching is to encourage:

• Personal responsibility

• Reflective thinking

• Self-discovery

• Self-efficacy

Client-originated visions, plans, and behaviors are the ones that stick.

The National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) By definition, health and wellness coaches are not content experts in health or disease; they do not diagnose or prescribe unless a coach has credentials in another profession that allow expert advice to be given. The coach should be able to identify risk factors for chronic disease, commonly used biometric measures and current lifestyle recommendations for optimizing health. An important focus for the coach is to recognize potential imminent danger and medical red flags and to know when and how to refer to another healthcare professional.

Healthy lifestyle ideals, as in most areas of health care, are continually evolving. Recommendations change frequently for everything from interpretation of biometric markers (e.g., cholesterol, blood pressure) to evidence-based suggestions in lifestyle areas like nutrition and physical activity. Moreover, guidelines vary by organization.

The coach stays abreast of trends, controversies, and evolutions in the lifestyle fields since these will impact client choices and the resources they need.

Since the coaching relationship is client-centered, the coach’s focus is on determining what the client already knows, needs, and wishes to learn about. The coach then supports the client in obtaining credible health and wellness information.

Professional Coaches are trained to:

Accept and meet clients where they are today

• Ask clients to take charge

• Guide clients in doing mindful thinking, feeling, and doing work that builds confidence

• Help clients define a higher purpose for health and wellbeing

• Uncover a client’s natural impulse to be well

• Support clients in tapping into their innate fighting spirit

• Address mental and physical health together

• Assist clients to draw their own health and wellness blueprint

• Encourage clients to set and achieve realistic goals (small victories lay the foundation for self-efficacy)

• Harness the strengths needed to overcome our obstacles

• Reframe obstacles as opportunities to learn and grow

• Enable clients to build a support team around them - friends/family/community

• Inspire and challenge clients to go beyond what they would do alone

Integrating the Coach Approach

1. Make sure clients are working at least as hard as you are

2. Make sure clients are talking more than you are

3. Make sure clients first try and find the answers for themselves

4. Ask permission before you give expert advice if you think it might be beneficial so that the client is still in control

5. Brainstorm 2-3 choices with a client so that the client taps into his or her own creativity and is the informed decision-maker

6. Deliver only one question or reflection at a time

7. Always stop and consider how to use the coach approach (inquiry/reflections) with the client before offering the expert approach

8. Balance questions with reflections so that clients don’t feel like they are being interrogated

9. Use silence to elicit deeper thinking (not possible with coaching by text)

10. If clients confirm they need to acquire new knowledge and skills to reach their goals and visions, help clients define the path to this knowledge and skills, with input from other experts when needed

Able Coach approach Cycle does not

• deliver unsolicited advice

• assess and seek what needs “fixing”

• define an agenda (unless the client has asked for this direction explicitly)

• provide all the answers

• generate a know-it-all energy

• talk more than the client

• follow a checklist or methodical questions

• be the expert

• use scare tactics or emphasize risks/danger to motivate change

• prescribe anything from goals to solutions to supplements

• make assumptions or draw conclusions

• disagree or moralize

• persuade or lecture with logic

• interrupt or avoid

• feel responsible for client progress/health