SUCCESS STORY: A NEW PATH WITH LIVEWELL HEALTH COACHING

Sometimes, life can put a lot of things on our shoulders at once. It’s a good thing LiveWell Health Coaching through the Trust is available to help support you as you navigate the challenges.

For one participant, Health Coaching has been a way to check in and stay grounded while her personal life stretched her to the limit. Five years ago, Kim lost her husband. In the time since, a family member has struggled with substance abuse. The stress compounded, and she had a minor stroke.

Through it all, she kept up her calls with her LiveWell Health Coach.

“I was working with a Health Coach before all the stress,” said Kim, “and it was great to have a coach there to check in and stay motivated as I created new ways to cope.”

Kim’s 15-minute calls took place every other month and she credits her coach for motivating her to continue on her stress reduction exercise plan of walking. She has a two-mile loop and another 4.3-mile loop she walks in her neighborhood – she knows the miles exactly because she always wears her fitness tracker, which she also earns HRA funding for.

Walking became an outlet, and Kim has had the added benefit of improving her health. She was able to get off the cholesterol medication she had been taking and lost 50 pounds.

As a way to celebrate how far she’s come, last April, Kim and a friend hiked much of the 518-mile Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain.

“We supplemented with other transportation, but backpacked 330 miles of the journey,” recounted Kim.

She even wore her FitBit in Spain, so she will earn maximum HRA credit for her steps.

Kim used her experience with Health Coaching to create a holistic, personal plan to move forward from traumatic events. She wants to remind her fellow participants to work on one thing at a time, so you get the full benefit, stressing that it’s important to follow through on the goals you set with your coach.

“Each small decision to make a change adds up, and these changes are compounded over time,” she said.

Each year, she takes her husband’s birthday and day of death off from work to go do something that reminds her to live life and live it well. Now, she’s getting ready for another big trip – this time she’s going skydiving.