The average person is unhealthy and most people don’t know why.
There is a plague of ill health, obesity and chronic disease ravaging the world. There is no one single cause but the collective impact of modern lifestyles is clear.
What do I mean by modern lifestyles? Junk food, sedentary living, comfort and convenience, drugs & alcohol, too much time indoors, on screens and an over-reliance on pharmaceuticals for managing the symptoms of chronic disease.
Let’s be honest, it’s a disaster out there.
Functional health is a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease.
The root cause for most chronic disease is a mismatch between your modern environment and your evolutionary genetics.
Your body will trend towards optimal health in the absence of evolutionarily inappropriate exposures and behaviors.
You are essentially genetically unchanged from a hunter-gatherer from 20,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers tend to stay fit and healthy throughout their life. They do not age like us. They do not atrophy or become obese. They often have longer effective healthspans than modern westerners.
If you rose with the sun and slept when it was dark, ate natural food, walked a lot, got periodic intense exercise, had connections to a tribe, rested and eliminated the toxins of the modern world, maybe your health outcomes would be very different?
I get it: we’re not going back to living in caves (let’s hope). But we can cherry-pick from the modern world. It’s not an “all or nothing” package. You can still eat cheesecake and work on a laptop. But overall it will take conscious thought and planning to live a more natural (and hence healthier) lifestyle.
This is simple to say, but not easy to implement. And this is where the role of functional health coaching comes in.
Be The Chief Medical Officer of your own life
There is nothing more important than your health.
That means that you need to take charge of your health. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it all by yourself. You should have a team around you to support your health.
That should obviously include medical doctors (GPs) as well as consultants and specialists. Modern Western Medicine is amazing for short term interventions (intensive care, accident & emergency, fixing people after accidents)
But most chronic disease is created slowly over the long term by the “wear and tear” caused by lifestyle and environmental factors.
Allostatic load is "the wear and tear on the body" which accumulates as an individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress. It represents the physiological consequences of chronic exposure to fluctuating or heightened neural or neuroendocrine response which results from repeated or prolonged chronic stress.
A functional health coach does not just focus on one pillar of health (e.g. diet). I am not a nutritionist or a personal trainer or a doctor prescribing drugs.
I focus on the overall picture including:
Psychology & mindset
Stress
Diet & nutrition
Sleep, sunlight & circadian rhythm
Moderate “Zone 2” exercise e.g. walking, cycling
Resistance training and high intensity training
Flexibility and mobility
Cold water exposure
Supplementation (should be the “last mile”)
Relationships and connections
You can research and fix all of these things yourself if you have unlimited time and unlimited ability to self-motivate. Most people do not have these things.
And this is why many people benefit from working with a health coach to address and improve these factors that will determine your health outcomes over the long term.
How you benefit
We focus on what is most important to you but here are some of the things that I have helped people with:
Career burnout
Cutting alcohol
Reversing Type 2 diabetes
Overcoming depression and anxiety
Boosting energy, vitality and libido
Eliminating procrastination and brainfog
The aim is not just the absence of illness. The aim is more energy and lust for life. The aim is to feel grrrrr-eat. The aim is robust and vibrant good health in it’s fullest sense.
Am I offering medical advice?
No. I expect you to continue to see your regular GP / family doctor and other medical specialists and consultants as appropriate.
Your doctor is an expert adviser but not a health coach. They have enough on their plate already and are under a lot of time pressure as well as bureaucratic pressure to follow certain approaches. They are not incentivised to work with patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle and there is quite a lot of career risk for them in telling their clients the truth (and many unhealthy people are not ready to hear the truth).
I do not have this problem. I lead with the truth.
The coaching is about creating a long term environment in which healing and health optimisation can occur.
Your body will trend towards optimal health in the absence of evolutionarily inappropriate exposures and behaviors.
Important regulatory notice: I don’t give medical advice. You should be consulting your doctor for medical diagnoses, prescriptions and procedures. This is about lifestyle changes and the fundamentals of sleep, nutrition, supplementation, exercise and circadian rhythm.
Why have health coaching?
Because nothing is more important than your health.
Consuming podcasts, books and blogs is great, but its not enough on its own: we learn best when we combine reading with a mixture of Q&A, personal interaction, accountability, discussion, encouragement and practical guidance.
Long term adherence to a healthier lifestyle is more about psychology and motivation than it is about esoteric details (important though those can be). Talking these issues through with a behavioural coach who is independent and not trying to upsell you is hugely beneficial.
In the areas of health, exercise, diet, lifestyle etc the biggest problems are adherence, consistency and mindset. You probably already know most of what you need to know. The question is why are you not already following though on that?
Health Coaching
This is a monthly subscription. There is an initial payment of £150 followed by a recurring cost of £50 per month.
This includes an hour per month of one to one coaching time over Zoom plus unlimited access to me via Whatsapp and the ability to email me questions.
I do most sessions over Zoom / Teams / Gmeet but I’m happy to meet for the first session face to face in London. Or you are always welcome to come and meet me in Farnham, Surrey.
Your subscription will renew automatically each month until cancelled. There is no long-term contract and you can cancel the auto-renew anytime (either yourself via your Paypal account or by emailing me).
You can pay securely by Paypal. To pay, click here or on the Paypal button below:
Or you can pay by debit or credit card (processed via Stripe.
Extra time for ongoing clients
The pricing structure is designed to encourage and reward recurring, long term relationships with clients.
For ongoing subscribers, I allow ongoing clients as many coaching hours as they reasonably need. I don’t keep timesheets and I never deny extra time to any ongoing client who remains an ongoing subscriber…so ongoing clients get all the Zoom time that they need.
Plus unlimited Whatsapp / email access. So you get maximum value from the subscription.
Introductory calls
If you would like to speak before signing up, you can choose a convenient time for a free introductory video call on Gmeet here.
If you would like this free intro call, please first email me with what you would like to cover.
Please choose a calendar slot that works for you here.
If you have any questions, please email me on barney.whiter@gmail.com
Barney Whiter