How do counselors help with health and fitness programs?

Counselors provide assistance with developing strategies to help you live a more fulfilled life. They will typically encourage self-responsibility, stress management, physical fitness, good nutrition, and the development of overall wellness. Counselors can also be a great resource as you seek to define your motivation for becoming healthier or physically fit. All of these counseling outcomes will help you stay on track as you engage in a health and fitness program.

A counselor helps you gain insight into issues which directly affect your success with a fitness program.  Counselors can suggest proven strategies for many common challenges that people face when they begin a fitness program.  A counselor might help you to set realistic fitness and weight loss goals, help you find motivation to exercise, help you develop strategies to stick to your exercise program, and help you confront any habits which may get in the way of your success. 

If you are new to exercise there is a lot of learning involved before you can become an exerciser. Most health & fitness professions while equipped to help with education around physically exercising are not equipped to help support someone's mental education. Not everyone who walks into a gym is prepared to exercise and it's the exercise psychologist job to help make that happen. 

An exercise psychologist job is to understand how psychological factors affect an exercisers inability to exercise and to understand how participation in exercise affects a person psychological development. An exercise psychologist will help an exerciser build awareness of an exercisers motivation to help support that person to adhere to an exercise program. Once an exerciser has an awareness their motivation the next steps are as follows. There are three important phases of mental skills training to help an exerciser even begin to exercise: the education phase, the acquisition phase, and the practice phase. In order to develop and improve the mental skills necessary to start an exercise program the research has shown that is important to include all three phases of mental skills training. In the education phase a person must first identify their psychological barriers and what skills they need to move forward. During this identification period a person also needs to become aware of the importance of defining barriers to exercise, the relevance of mental skills training and how it applies to the their specific needs. For example, a person may think that mental skills training is only for someone who have psychological issues. It's important for people to understand how mental skills training can be beneficial and applicable in an exercise setting. Without an opportunity to build the mental skills portion of an exercise program many people will fail. Barriers will pop up (that have probably always popped up) and people will not have an understanding about how to work through those. In the acquisition phase it's important for people to understand the range of techniques available to help address their needs and how to utilize those techniques. In the practice phase people over learn skills through extensive practice so that those skills become ingrained and automatic and people learn how to transfer those skills to their exercise.

Counselors can help with a health and fitness program by helping one to deal with their emotional health. The emotional health is just as important as the physical health, because the emotions have to be well managed to have the mental toughness to endure, and achieve ones fitness goals. Counselors are great resources for this aspect of fitness.

Counselors help fitness programs in several ways.  Counselors can save time by helping the client find the most efficient path to their goals.  Counselors force accountability by virtue of having to report to them on progress and failure.  Counselors provide encouragement by helping clients over the emotional and physical hurdles that occur in any fitness program and as important as all of the above;  a good counselor provides a teammate and partner in reaching goals together.  Another name for a fitness counselor of course is trainer.

Motivation and Education is why Health and Fitness counselor is incredibly important.  The majority of people drop their programs within six months without a Fitness professional.  I know in my own journey, when I have someone coaching me, I have much more success than when I use my own devices.  It is just as important to have a coach, as it is a primary care physician and dietian.  You need a team of people to keep you on track of your journey, not to mention friends and family.

I think we all have that person we want to be or that we're working to be. Speaking of the person we want to be in terms of health and fitness, I believe we can be and in most cases we are, our own biggest challenge and we get in our own way mostly with beliefs (or disbeliefs), fears, or doubts. A good councilor can help us find our way through the maze of confusion in our own hearts and minds.

I think our reality starts inside each of us! Physically we take safe, progressive steps to health and fitness. Some of those steps take some time and some will come quicker than you expect with the right audience but on the inside, we have the ability to move mountains and make increasable accomplishments or at least find and see our true potential!:)

If you find yourself thinking more than not, "I can't", "I'll never be", "I don't have what it takes", "I can't ever see myself being,,," then I think a little guidance from a counselor to help you see, or most importantly BELIEVE your true potential is a huge help in gaining your health and fitness.

The journey to being better in any way starts with belief. All your team members should reinforce the belief that "you can". If your challenge is believing in yourself then I'd say a good, positive, trusted counselor should be a member of your team.