Ali Brody created Healthy Glow to explore the interconnected aspects of wellness. “Healthy Glow is nutrition, coaching, and counseling in one. We look at food, career, relationships, activity, and spirit and work towards goals in those areas. There isn’t one diet that is perfect for everyone, so the goal is to figure out which foods are best for that client.I want this process to be fun, so all the steps have to be something the client will enjoy so it can produce a sustainable lifestyle shift. I want them to be able to develop a pattern that will feel good, natural, and fun.”
The multifaceted approach to health and wellness used by Ali, health coach behind Healthy Glow, makes a lot more sense when she talks about her diverse interests. Before starting her health coaching business, Ali worked at a nonprofit that allowed her to help all kinds of organizations. “I was a project manager for a communications and design firm that worked with public interest groups. Since many issues are important to me, this was the perfect opportunity to work with and promote all kinds of different causes.”
After spending some time there, Ali researched how her strengths and passions could fit together into a career. “I did a lot of exploring. I liked gardening so I talked to horticulturists, I liked learning about the healing properties of food so I talked to nutritionists, and I looked for a career that could combine my skills and history—everything I’d been doing until that point.”
Ali’s curiosity was peaked when one friend recommended a school for integrative health coaching. “The program totally fit with my thinking on the situation. It combined nutrition within the context of your whole life, because everything is really interconnected. Now that I’ve seen this approach, it’d be so much harder to just be a nutritionist and say, ‘This is your prescribed diet,’ without considering the life circumstances. Or even to be a counselor and tell people what to work on psychologically, without the nutrition component.” With her background in psychology and human development, Ali had a solid foundation to start from.
Ali finds that for her clients, pairing coaching and counseling with the diet and nutrition changes makes that lifestyle shift much more doable. “I try to make health coaching something fun and practical instead of a last ditch effort. A lot of people I work with are doing well, but know there is room for improvement.” Ali says that many clients come to her during a transitional period of life. “Many times change is the tipping point for people, and it’s not necessarily all bad transitions. Starting a new job or moving makes people realize that in the last stage they may have developed bad habits. They see the transition as a chance to change things.”
Ali says that Healthy Glow isn’t just for those drinking Slurpies for breakfast. “Many clients come simply because they’re pretty good, but they have an awareness that they could be better. That’s why I believe that I can offer something for everyone, a chance to turn their should do’s into reality.”