As 2021 draws to its mid, you’d likely be thinking about setting new goals and achieving new milestones in your professional and personal life. You may even be planning to kickstart a long-awaited self-love journey, committing to your self-care and wellness, or transforming your mindset into a more focused, peaceful, and healthy one.
This time of the year also brings about a chance for reflection. Perhaps, you are looking back analyzing the areas in which you fell short or missed milestones, evaluating what you want to commit to in order to achieve your goals by the end of the year.
Yet, deliberating on the things that aren’t successful or didn’t go as plan can make you feel overwhelmed or defeated. You might feel lost on how to turn things around, wondering what would work best for you –and what wouldn’t? That’s where you need professional help to activate your inner motivation and cut through the clutter.
Why everyone should get a Coach’s help at least once in Life!
Coaching works! Whether is to change your mindset, tackle health issues, set new goals or create a path towards your vision of life, bringing on the help of a coach can be a small action that creates lasting results with higher benefits and less struggle.
In fact, with the right person supporting you, coaching brings unlimited positive changes to one’s life. Through these programs, people tend to eat healthier, become more active, reduce stress, discover self-sabotaging patterns and unlock their true Self with enhanced productivity and focus.
Research shows that with the help of coaching smoking quit rates drop more than 31%, and weight loss journeys can become easier with an average of 30 pounds lost in a year.
We have interviewed Anahi Ortiz-Prieto, a unique Wellness, Mindset coach in Qatar to learn about her style of coaching and how it can help you achieve your personal, professional and wellness goals.
Being an Empowerment and Mindset Coach, holistic nourishment consultant, award-winning speaker, and international best-selling author –Anahi’s coaching can support an unfocused, overwhelmed and stressed-out person into becoming a more energetic, happy, health and successful one.
An intro about your journey to becoming a coach
I think it started as it does for most of us on a path to help other heal and grow – Our own journey through pain and struggles. For me, it began when I started losing weight in my mid-20s after being obese most of my life. 10kg were gone, then 15 and after 2 years, I’ve lost over 30kg and feeling like, for the first time in my life, I could understand my body.
Mind you, there was still a lot to learn and heal around my relationship with food, my self-esteem, and my identity, but after achieving that, I knew I wanted to help others on their own journeys. So, I studied to be a Health and Wellness Coach, a chef, and later on, a Nutritional Consultant, and a Mindfulness and Functional Nutrition practitioner.
At first, my work was all-around weight loss and recovery from autoimmunity, another issue I faced myself, but as I worked with more and more clients, I realized the scale was a poor indicator of health or wellness and that, instead, I wanted to have more tools to support people, especially moms, to heal their minds, emotions, and bodies so they could thrive in life.
Tell us about your coaching objectives?
My biggest objective as a coach is to free my clients from the beliefs, thoughts, and stories that keep them from developing to their Vision of life, committing to their core values, and from that clarity, living in joyous alignment and integrity.
I used to say that my why was to ignite feminine empowerment to transform the world, one woman at a time. I think now I would add: “through Self-Love and mindfulness so we care for our full selves lovingly”.
What are some of the most significant goals that your coaching has helped clients to accomplish?
I love this question!
Through my work as a coach and mentor, my clients have:
- Understood their unconscious limitations and gained tools and resources to overcome them;
- Changed their inner dialogue to fully commit to self-care and self-love in a sustainable way;
- Created a clear and exciting vision of life with goals and milestones, which has led to sustainable actions towards their happiness; and
- Committed to dietary and lifestyle changes aligned with their goals and needs, which have supported them in their optimal wellbeing, weight management, and health.
What were some of the challenges you faced when you first started?
Personally, a ton! I started my coaching business as I was graduating as a mother, and when I had my first son, I developed post-natal depression plus was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease. In my first 3 years as a coach, I juggled motherhood, autoimmunity (with loads of physical challenges), a new career, and expat life. It was tough!
Later, a lot was around figuring out how to develop a sustainable practice, get my message out there and, eventually, create strategic partnerships with like-minded businesses and individuals so I could expand and grow–and then came 2020.
After finally getting away from babyhood with my sons, last year was a massive challenge for me as an entrepreneur, mother, and human.
Like it was for most people, I faced the loss of businesses, financial stability, and the process of re-thinking my practice to survive the global changes.
Each change, each challenge, and each struggle has served me to grow, learn new tools, and find new ways to serve the world, though, so I have no complaints.
How have you been helping people with their weight loss journey?
Now, this is tricky! Because despite my practice working a lot with using Keto and other amazing tools to help people manage their weight, weight loss hasn’t been part of my offerings for a while.
To be honest, my clients lose weight because, through our work on their mindset and values, they implement changes that make this possible without suffering. In general, I bring the following tools to them.
- High Nutrition Ketogenic Diet with some elements of Carb Cycling when needed.
- Intuitive Intermittent Fasting to unlock mindfulness in nourishing their bodies.
- Brainwork Recursive Therapy which helps with cravings, self-sabotage and impulsive eating; and
- Nutritional support to heal their guts and guarantee their bodies have all they need to feel at their best.
I do explain that I test many things and avoid dogma when it comes to weight loss and nutrition, as each body is unique and needs to be treated as such. So in the end, each client goes through their own exploration journey until we find what works best for them.
What methods have you found effective in your wellness programs and services?
All the tools mentioned before are very effective in giving clients amazing results. However, they aren’t effective for everyone.
For this reason, I believe the most effective method is bio-individuality, which means understanding that each client has different needs and goals, thus adapting the tools and strategies to get them the best results. This way, by remaining open-minded and mindful, I can support them the way they need and get them the results they seek.
What is your favorite part about being a coach?
Witnessing their journey. I don’t get tired of that!
Whenever a new client starts, I wonder where we will go together. It is an exciting path and being invited to join them as a fellow traveler is such an honor. In the end, I always close their cycles with infinite love and respect for them.
How are you helping people in gaining back their wellness in the pandemic?
To start, by keeping myself healthy and focused. I think this is one of the most underrated ways we can help the collective through these challenges.
Moreover, I have continued expanding my practice and opening spots so I could work with more clients, as well as supported organizations so they could offer more tools to their employees too.
You have received the Ooredoo Sheroes award for supporting women going through Antenatal and Postnatal depression, do you think every woman should seek professional help for postpartum depression? How do you guide them?
Absolutely! Depression is not a joke. Whether is chronic, seasonal, ante-natal, post-natal, or of any kind, depression kills.
I always encourage anyone struggling with depression to seek professional help, whether with psychotherapy or psychiatric support to start, and later encompassing other complementary practices and modalities.
Whenever I have a client who is showing signs of depression, I refer them to a trained psychologist or psychiatrist for an assessment before we do anything else. In the end, I will support them on their journey no matter what and, having extra support, will mean we will reach their goals faster and better.
I always explain that I don’t compete with a psychologist because therapy is a space of healing, whilst coaching is a space of growth. In fact, when my clients work alongside psychotherapists, their changes and results are mind-blowing!
What advice would you share with someone who wants to become a coach?
To start, be super clear about why you want to become one, what do you wish to achieve for the world through it, and most importantly, who do you want to work with and what do you want them to achieve.
This is the key to really focus on serving others and, through it, empowering many with your work.
Photography: Photo Phactory by PRADEEP
Makeup and Hair: Sakshi Tejpaul
Special Thanks: The Westin Doha Hotel & Spa
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