The EssentialSteps Advantage 
I know you’ve had the experience of starting a new weight loss program or exercise regimen, excited about living healthier and transforming yourself and your life – only to lose steam after a just several weeks of intense discipline. Or, like many of my clients, you’ve stayed on those programs and maybe even achieved great results but discovered that they were short-lived. You had great intentions and tried to make these solutions work. Unfortunately, most options have been quick-fixes or one-size-fits-all approaches; neither of which work for long.
No one taught you how to do this. Many of us learned how to ride a bike or play a musical instrument. We also enrolled our children in classes and insisted that they regularly practice to improve their skills. So why would we expect to be proficient in integrating and sustaining health behaviors in our lives, such as self-care and physical activity, etc. when we haven’t learned the necessary skills and attitudes? When have we had the opportunity to practice these specific skills? Many women feel like they have failed at fitness, self-care, and weight control, but they are mistaken. Most of us simply have not been given an opportunity to learn an approach that leads to long-term sustainability and success. Until EssentialSteps.
No other women’s coaching program exists that that addresses women’s distinct lifestyle barriers and needs, is evidence-based and as systematic as EssentialSteps. Working with me, clients don’t have to wonder “how long” it will be or “how much” this process will end up costing. You know up front that the program objectives can be achieved in four, one-hour coaching sessions. Because the EssentialSteps methods are powerful and targeted, clients overcome their personal barriers and ambivalence, and gain insights and skills to sustain their physical activity, self-care, wellness, and health behaviors long term.
Here’s the bottom line: Your behavior is determined by your mindset. If you want to change your behavior in any way you MUST change your mindset about that behavior. I will guide you to through this process.
Women Who Are Successful with EssentialSteps
My clients are smart women who strive for their goals until they achieve them. They recognize the other approaches that they’ve tried over the years haven’t been sustainable, and are ready to learn a research-based and women-specific approach that celebrates who they are.
EssentialSteps is for women who are ready for an empowering, women-specific approach and philosophy to create fitness, energy, well-being, health, self-esteem: Learn about Jan’s experience.
They have accepted that “fad” diets and yo-yo dieting don’t work and want an approach to self-care that can be fully integrated into their lives and sustained; one that addresses their whole person, not just numbers on a scale. Read about Deb’s experience.
They feel that they are worth investing in. If want to make your continued sense of well-being and health a high priority, I’d like to help you succeed. My clients have spent many years taking care of their loved ones and/or building successful careers, and are now ready to expand their care-giving roles to include themselves. Learn about how Mickey did.
They have families to love and care for, but they also want to include themselves in their care giving so they can stay healthy and feel great (and be a good role model). Read about Susan’s experience.
If you identify with these things and are ready for a new approach you may be a candidate for my coaching services.
How I will Work With You
Although I will always honor your personal goals and support your values, my job is to both encourage and challenge you to stretch yourself. Why? This is the only way you can make changes and achieve the results you want in yourself, your body and your life. As your coach, I will make sure you develop the necessary mindset and tools to achieve your goals in ways that you can sustain for the rest of your life.
I created a smart method and philosophy specifically for women in midlife to achieve their desired self-care wellness and health goals. The chart below shows the differences between the old method and my smart women-specific one.
| Women-Specific Smart Self-Care | |
| Focus on quick weight loss and “magic bullets”, not sustainability | Focus on getting the foundations in place for successful maintenance of behavior. |
| Targets making exercise and dietary behavioral changes at the same time. | Takes a sequential approach so you can learn to integrate one essential behavior into your life, before starting to learn the next one. |
| “The more, the better” | “Consistency first, then quantity” |
| Women & men are approached as if they are the same | Women and men have different barriers and need different solutions |
| Someone else has the answers for you | You have the answers. I help you find them. |
| “No pain, no gain” strategies that deplete | Pleasure-based strategies that nurture |
| Marketing-based approach | Research-based approach |
Arrange a Free Consultation
I offer a free consultation to individual women.
Women: If you are ready to learn a completely different (and evidence-based) approach to achieving your self-care, fitness, and lifestyle goals to create and sustain a joyful mind, healthy body, and balanced life:
Please fill out the contact form for potential new individual coaching clients.
Every client is unique. The purpose of our consultation is for me to learn about your needs, issues, goals, and past experiences – and for you to get a better feel for my approach. Then you can decide if my coaching, consulting, or speaking is a good fit for you. This consultation is obligation free because I am proud of providing the best service to clients who will get the most value. I will not take you on as a client if I feel like there is not a good fit between your goals and what I offer.
Why Is My Approach For Women in Midlife?
1. Because we are in midlife, we have gained wisdom from our past experiences. We know what’s in our best interests, even when it conflicts with so-called expert prescriptions. We recognize that our previous, numerous attempts to lose weight haven’t been sustainable. By midlife, we are too smart to continue doing things that haven’t worked for us in the past.
2. We’re ready to re-prioritize and take care of ourselves – at last! Many of us were taught to put everyone and everything else first. But we’ve learned that this approach leaves virtually no time for ourselves. Now is the time to change that, so we can enjoy the rest of our life with more energy and good health!
3. We’re tired of wasting money on fitness products, rather than developing a lifelong relationship with fitness. Many of us grew up before the passage of Title IX (legislation that forced schools to create athletic programs for girls). This means we learned our attitudes towards physical activity not from teachers or coaches, but from advertising – and we’ve spent thousands of dollars on fitness and services touting false promises.
4. We know that what used to work isn’t working anymore. Menopause and hormonal changes alter women’s bodies and complicate losing and controlling weight, so we need to take a different, smarter approach.
Free On-going Support
My support for you will not end when we finish the four program sessions. After the program ends, I offer all of my clients the following FREE on-going support:
* A monthly eNewsletter with insights about new research about women, motivation, behavior, self-care, eating, weight, and health.
*Access to tele-conference calls with me to assist clients with any motivational issues or new challenges that arise after the program ends.
Smart Self-Care for Smart Midlife Women
EssentialSteps was developed to address women’s unique needs and the specific pressures we face. The approach I use in EssentialSteps is evidence-based and developed out of years of scientific research about women’s different psychology, exercise motivation, and behavior change processes. I treat the women-specific issues that underlie sustaining the behaviors necessary to prioritize your self-care and live a healthy life that most other coaches and programs don’t understand or address.
Common Questions
Why should I hire you and not a different coach? In the end, who would you rather hire, a coach who works with any person with any kind of problem or goal? Or a recognized expert and specialized coach who helps women learn the art of on-going self-care, fitness, and well-being?
Why should I spend money on EssentialSteps coaching when I could use it for another weight loss program, work with a personal trainer, or buy a new piece of exercise equipment? My first question in response is, has that worked for you before, long-term? If it has, then do it! My guess is, though, if you are reading this, then that approach hasn’t been successful for you. Why hasn’t it worked? With the above strategy you pay for a service or product – but you don’t learn a system for integrating the necessary lifestyle behaviors into your life so they can stick, as you would learn doing EssentialSteps with me.
The money you spend doing EssentialSteps is an investment in the rest of your life. Think about it. If you could pay to have peace, well-being, good health and high-level physical functioning for the rest of your life, how much would it be worth to you? What is having excellent quality-of-life and optimal health worth do you during the next 30, 40, or 50 years? Is it worth $1, $100, $1000, $10,000, $100,000, or $10,000,000?
The fee for EssentialSteps is a drop in the bucket compared to what the results are truly worth. If you don’t take care of yourself in the way you know you should, estimate how much money you might wind up spending on future medical and therapeutic costs (and the emotional toll from being ill). Why not invest now, and reap the quality-of-life and cost-savings benefits of taking care of yourself? Bottom line: If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will.
How can coaching work if it is done over the phone and not in person? That was my reaction before I worked with my first coach! I quickly learned that working by phone is not only a wonderful way to work with a collaborative partner and problem solver, but also very convenient. I have never worked with a client who didn’t discover that coaching by phone was fun, beneficial, and effective.
How long does coaching last? Although it varies from case to case, MOST coaching relationships tend to last months or years. Because I spent many years researching, developing, and evaluating the EssentialSteps program and process, I have condensed the program to the powerful, core “essentials”. This means you don’t have to work with me for months on end and commit to a process with an unknown total cost. You don’t need to commit to longer than four, one-hour sessions, over three weeks. Some women decide to add on a few sessions spread over the upcoming year for added support. But most women finish the four program sessions having learned everything they needed to sustain the lifestyle behaviors that are essential for weight loss that can be sustained. I’m so confident of the program’s power that I offer a money-back guarantee. If you go through the program, and fully participate, I will refund your money if you feel that it didn’t benefit you.
How can you help me if I do want to eventually lose weight? I ask my clients to suspend their desire to lose weight for at least the length of the EssentialSteps program. However, for most, I advice they spend at least 6-8 months focused on truly integrating self-care and physical activity into their lives BEFORE working on dietary changes to lose weight. Why? We wouldn’t build a house without building a solid foundation first. The foundation is essential to the support of your house over its life span. Similarly, we should also build a solid foundation to maintain the weight we lose before we start to lose weight. Learning how to prioritize your self-care and sustain a physically active life is your foundation for sustaining any weight you lose through dietary changes.
Dealing with eating is not my expertise. So once my clients are proficient in self-care and physical activity I refer them to other people and programs I respect. If you want me to help you decide which dietiary change appraoch or professional would be best for you and your life, we can schedule a follow-up mini session when you are ready to move to that next phase. As you know from reading this website, I believe you should be proficient one phase before moving to the next so that you can truly focus on INTEGRATING each behavior, one at a time.