Wellness Coaching Wisdom: You Are Who You Eat With

In wellness coaching it’s not just, “You are what you eat.” It’s also you are who you eat with. Peer group is everything. Take a mostly vegan person like myself to another city to meet up with family and see what happens to my diet. Especially when sitting down to a very nice steakhouse with a dozen other people who are ordering steak. At one point in time I asked how many different types of beef can they make? The only reason I didn’t order a steak was that I know how my body feels after eating that type of food, and the thought of feeling lousy the next day saved me. Knowing the right thing to do is not enough for your wellness coaching clients. They need a peer group who is committed to a wellness lifestyle.

Why Wellness Coaching Principles Go Out the Window At The End Of Their Session

You are a combination of the five people you spend the most time with. Peer group is powerful enough that people can ruin their lives by hanging out with people who are destructive and still get their basic needs met. If you want to get off drugs you can’t hang out with people who do drugs. If you want to lose weight, you can’t hang out with people who frequent fast food chains and eat donuts. I know that it’s not politically correct to infer such things, but it’s true. You are who you eat with. If you’re serious about your health and wellness goals, you need to eat with different people.

I’m not advocating telling your wellness coaching clients to divorce their spouses or cut ties with their friends and family. But you will need to at least have them add people who are going to support their new lifestyle or get their existing peer group into coaching.

How to Make the Rule “When in Rome Do Like the Romans” Work for You

When you’re with people who are eating ribs and hot dogs, it’s acceptable to eat ribs and hot dogs. And it’s not very acceptable to decline. So what if you ate with a group of people who took a serious approach to wellness through their diet. It would be uncomfortable to be the only person to sit at a restaurant with a group of vegetarians and order a big slap of meat; even if no one said anything aloud. It’s not part of the culture of the group.

So make sure you address the power of peer group with your wellness coaching clients, and come up with some strategies to navigate some of the obstacles they’ll face. It will make the road to better health a little less bumpy.

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Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach