How To Become A Health Coach

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And I get asked a lot by you guys, writing into the show and calling in about how you can actually get to the point where you're in a position, kind of like I'm doing, where you can help people to have better health. And probably the number one most common question I get when it comes to that line of questioning is how you can help people when it comes to the eating part, the nutrition part. And, you know, really, even if you don't have the resources to, say, attend medical school and become a physician, we still live in this era where you could become a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a dietitian, a health coach, and still be able to help lots of people achieve better health. So rather than me just sitting in front of the microphone and droning on to you about, about how to get health certifications or how to become a nutritionist or something along those lines, I actually decided to bring somebody on who is living a life right now as a health coach and who's really a wealth of information when it comes to this stuff. Her name is Maria Marlow from mariamarlo.com and she is certified through something called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which is the world's largest nutrition school. She graduated at the top of her class from Fordham University with a degree in finance and marketing. And after she landed a position in finance when she graduated, she moved on pretty quickly and started instead kind of pursuing a passion for the healing power of food. So she attended the National Gourmet Institute to learn raw food prep. She became a certified health coach through integrative nutrition. And now she's all over the place. She's been in Shape magazine, in the New York press on well and good New York City. She's working towards her master's degree now in human nutrition. She lives in New York and she's going to fill us in today on everything that went into her journey and how she became a health coach, some of the differences between things like being a nutritionist and being a registered dietitian, what a typical day in her life looks like, and much more. So, Maria, thanks for coming on the call.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

So I'm curious. It sounds like you actually started off with a pretty good job in finance after graduating in a pretty good position. So tell me a little bit more about what compelled you to not work in finance.

Definitely. So I went to college and sort of decided to do what everyone was doing. Go into finance, get a good job, make a lot of money. And then I did that, and I was at this job, and I just kind of felt, you know, like I wasn't doing anything to make the world any better. It was very boring. And I just felt there were so many problems in the world, like I needed to be doing something else that had, you know, a real purpose. So I had on my own, on the side, starting in college, just got really interested into nutrition because I had my own health problems. My skin was terrible for years, had all sorts of different health issues.

And I met someone, like eczema and stuff like that.

Well, I had acne. I had really bad acne where I didn't even want to go out of the house. And, you know, I had. I was diagnosed with pre cancerous cells. So, you know, when I was 17. So here I am thinking, oh, my God, I'm not gonna make it till I'm 30. You know, what am I gonna do? And so that's when I kind of was like, all right, what's going on with my body? At the time, I went to tons of different doctors and dermatolog skin, and they're always prescribing me creams and pills. They wanted to give me Accutane, and the side effect is suicide. So I was like, no, thank you.

Yeah, that's just a little side effect.

Yeah, no biggie. So I was like, all right, what's going on with my body? Nobody can help me. I'm going to help myself. So I started doing research, and what I found was that all of my ailments really ended up going back to food and what I was eating. And at the time, I was eating absolute junk food. That's all I was eating. I didn't know what a vegetable was or I did, but I wasn't going to eat it. And I just decided, you know what? Let me see if I change my diet if my problems subside. And lo and behold, they did. So I sort of became obsessed with, you know, the power of food. And up until that point, I had thought, food only affects your weight, right? Because that's what we grow up thinking, you know, calories in, calories out. But it turns out Food affects everything. So it affects your skin, it affects your mood, your energy levels, and it even affects your risk for illness, disease and cancer. So once I learned that, I kind of became this walking encyclopedia of food. And I would tell, you know, everybody what each food, you know, would do for them and if they had a specific problem, you want to avoid, you know, certain foods. So I just had this.

You were that person that nobody wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory with, right?

Exactly, exactly. You know, it's funny, like, at first, you know, I'd be the one like, oh, no, don't eat that, don't eat that. But then people started coming to me like, oh, I have this. I have this issue. You know, is there something I could do for it? You know, so people came around. But, yeah, so I kind of did this on the side as my own little hobby. I was always researching it. And when I left finance, I said, you know what? This is something I'm so passionate about. I've been living and breathing it for how many years? Let me see if I can turn this into my career. And then that's how I got. I was introduced to integrative nutrition and then kind of just fell down the rabbit hole that way.

So did you just, like, quit your job and have nothing, or had you kind of started down the road of educating yourself to become a health coach and then you decided that that was what you were going to pursue full time, and then you quit?

All right, to be perfectly honest, I just quit. At that time, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I just knew that I hated finance. And I felt like every time I walked into that office, I was dying a little bit inside. So I quit. And I just kind of went with, you know, there's that quote. It's like, jump and the net will appear. I just knew 110% in my body that I was not meant to be in that office. And I knew I was going to figure out what I was supposed to do, so I left. But, you know, on the same token, you know, all throughout college, I had worked for various different marketing agencies, so I knew that I'd be able to freelance with them. So I didn't have, like, another set 9 to 5, you know, waiting in the wings, but I knew that I'd be making income, you know, substantial income from freelance marketing projects.

Yeah, gotcha. So at that point you said you started studying at this. Did you go right off the bat into the Institute for Integrative Nutrition? Is that the One that you started into?

Yes. Well, I mean I had, you know, looked at my options. I love school, you know, I went to Fordham, you know, I had like a double degree and I'm going back for my master's now. But I had looked at the options, you know, of going into nutrition, you know, whether I wanted to become an rd, which is a registered dietitian. And I felt based on my research that becoming a health coach was more in line what I had discovered on my own, a more holistic way of looking at nutrition as opposed to sort of just like the food pyramid, which is, or the my plate, you know, kind of which is the direction that the registered dietitian goes.

Yeah. And I certainly want to delve into that a little bit. So what exactly is a health coach like? Is that an actual recognized term or is that just kind of like a catch all phrase or how does that work?

Yes. So a health coach is anyone who basically helps, you know, motivates and teaches and guides, you know, someone to live their healthiest life. Now I'm a certified health coach. So integrative nutrition is a certifying body. There are maybe a couple other certifying institutions, but as far as I know, integrative nutrition is the biggest one and most well known health coach certification program. And it's different from a registered dietitian. So to become a registered dietitian you need a master's degree. You need to do, it's more clinical.

You're going to become a registered dietitian. Do you need a master's degree in anything or do you just need a master's degree in a health or nutrition related.

In like a nutrition or science related science field? You have to do, you know, it's more clinical and you know, it's totally a great way to go, but it can take, I mean, for me, you know, someone who already graduated in the non science related field, you know, it's going to take me like two years to do prerequisites. Two years for the master's and then, you know, time to do the, when you do like the rotation when you're actually working. So for me I wanted to kind of jump in a lot sooner than that than you know, four, five, six years. So that's why I chose integrative nutrition because it was a one year certification program and I knew it would give me everything I needed to start my business and then I could add, you know, if I wanted to add more qualifications down the line, I could.

Now to be fair, if you had wanted to work in, like, a clinical environment. If you had wanted to work with folks to manage something like, say, diabetes, for example, or health folks with a nutrition protocol for cancer or something like that, you would have needed to have gotten a registered dietitian.

Yes. Okay.

Or had become an rd.

Right, exactly. That's a great thing you bring up. I had asked myself, what do I want my life to look like? I like working for myself personally, so I knew that I wanted to work for myself, and I just wanted to help people get healthy. If you want to work in a clinical setting, if you want to work at a hospital and really work with people with diabetes or people with specific issues where you're really doing a very specific diet for them, then you probably want to go the RD route. But for me, I wanted something where my life was a bit flexible and I'm more just teaching people healthy habits. Usually people come to me more for weight loss, for energy issues, things like that, as opposed to, you know, cancer.

Right, Gotcha. Now, what about the difference between, say, being a health coach or getting a certification from this institute for integrative nutrition and being a nutritionist? Like, what's the difference between health coach and nutritionist? Because I think I understand what you're saying as far as the registered dietitian is concerned. But what about nutritionist? Is that the same as being a health coach or is that different?

It depends what state you're in, actually. So there's, you know, it's different. It goes differently by every state, and, you know, they have different requirements. So for a nutritionist, you can do. So integrative nutrition, it was a, you know, a real place in, you know, in New York City where people attended class live, but now it's completely online, so it's called a distance learning school. So for to become a nutritionist, you can also do, like a distance learning program as well. So they do have online programs for nutritionists. And again, that's something that's going to vary by state as of what the exact requirements are for that, but it's pretty similar. I think the main glaring difference that I see is that a health coach is more holistic in the sense that it's not just food. So food plays a huge role in our training and what we teach people to eat healthy. But we also examine why are you overeating? Or is it stress that's causing you to overeat? And if so, how do we reduce your stress? So we look at other aspects of your life that are not necessarily food on your Plate but still affect your health and your wellness.

Okay, gotcha. So in terms of being a health coach, it took you how many months to actually go through this certification?

It's 12 months.

Okay, and during those 12 months, what kind of things did you learn? Like what kind of classes did you take?

It was great. What I loved about Integrative nutrition is that they have really the best minds in nutrition teaching you and everything's up to date. So we had, you know, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Walter Willett, who's the head of the Harvard School of public medicine, Dr. Furman's, you know, one of my favorite, one of my favorite doctors. So, you know, each week they would release a different module and you know, would be on a specific subject.

So by the way, are you, were you studying this stuff online or did you need to actually go to, Were you at a facility in New York City?

Mine was online.

Okay, gotcha.

I was one of the first online programs. Yep. So you get like, you know, if you do it on your iPad or you just log on online, there's videos, you know, you go through all the videos. You know, there's handouts and things to read. You know, there's also suggestions for further reading, you know, and further studies and more documentaries and things to delve into, you know, certain topics more deeply. But in general, each week they would release, you know, open a module and it's videos that you watch and listen to.

Okay, gotcha. Now I'm curious, as you're going through a process like that, do you ever have second thoughts about whether or not you're going to be able to take all this kind of like in the cloud, online, Internet y type of stuff and somehow be able to actually work with folks one on one, like face to face in the, you know, in the quote unquote, real world. Are you getting experiences like that as you go through a health coach certification or as you go through something like this integrative nutrition protocol?

Uh huh. So that was one of my biggest fears really was like. Or, you know, or my biggest doubts was, you know, this is an online program. How is this going to translate when I'm actually with, you know, someone face to face? So what I thought was great was that, you know, they really encourage you to, you know, they put you in groups, like online groups with other students in the same class as you. And that way you get to know each other. You know, they really encourage you to practice with each other. So I remember, you know, one of the first things you do is a health History, you know, and finding out about people's background. And, you know, you had to like, I don't know, five or ten of them. And, you know, I just kept doing them with all different people to get the practice, to meet people and really know what it would be like to be like with someone one on one.

Okay, gotcha. Now, during the, during the course of this education, like, I know if you go online and you get certified as a nutritionist through many organizations, you know, well, let's use me as an example. I got certified as a sports nutritionist through the issn. And the diet that they recommend really is like the food pyramid or the food plate now would be when you're going through something like integrative nutrition, are they focusing on one particular diet that you would use with all your clients, like the Paleo diet or the vegan diet? I mean, is there a real bent there that you found? Or how exactly does that work? How do you decide what kind of diet you're going to use and does that fit into the education process at all?

So they really teach you about all different types of diets. So you're really pretty well versed in everything across the board. The biggest thing that they teach is that everybody's body is different. Our biochemistry is different, our tastes, our preferences, all these things are different. And that's why one person's allergic to peanuts and one person can eat them all day long. Everybody cannot have the same diet. So they really teach listening to your body and understanding the subtle signals that are going to tell you what food is good for you and what food is not bad, what food is bad for you. So it's not one set diet. I mean, there are general principles for sure. I mean, it definitely promotes a plant based diet. It's not saying you have to be 100% vegan, but they definitely extol the virtues of eating a diet rich in nutrients and vegetables and plant products.

Okay, so when you graduate, you're not basically like walking out of there and having say, like the Paleo diet in your back pocket and just kind of like giving that to everyone who you come across as a fix all.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's one of the things that sometimes concerns me, frankly, about a lot of health coaches and nutritionists out there. Is it. I don't know if you've noticed this, but it seems like it's one of those things where when you got a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. And it's like, you know, the vegan diet fixes everything or eliminating grains fixes everything. And you're more looking at things from a holistic standpoint, right?

Exactly. Yeah. I think that's very dangerous to make assumptions like that. Like, there's only one diet that's going to, you know, cure everything. You know, it may work for some people and it may not work for others. And the other interesting thing which you know, brings up is that, you know, what you're eating when you're 15 is going to be different than when you're 25, than when you're 45, than when you're 95. Right. So your body is going to need different things at different points in your life. So just because you've eaten one certain way and it's been really great for you for so long again, when you start to see signs and symptoms in your body that you're low energy again or you're having problems or whatever it is, then it's time to look at your diet and see, you know what, Maybe my body's changed a little bit. Maybe I need to change what I'm eating as well.

What are examples, like, in terms of the titles of actual classes that you would take just to give people kind of an idea of the curriculum? Do you remember any of the names of classes?

Well, it's a little different. So it's not like when you go to a college class, you're in chem 101 for the whole semester. So each class, there's tons of different videos are different. So basically the experts would kind of come in and teach their philosophy. So, for example, Marianne Nestle, she is a food activist. Oh, yeah.

I've actually had her on the podcast. She wrote Food Politics, right?

Yeah, yeah, she's great. So she comes in and talks about food politics. Then you have Walter Willett. So he comes in. He's been taught a variety of different things, but say he teaches like Harvard has their own version of my plate, so they disagree with the USDA version of MyPlate, so they've created their own. So he'd talk about that. Dr. Weil came in and was talking about botanicals and mushrooms, and everyone, each expert talks about their expertise. And then so there's that big nutrition component, and then you also have a business component to it as well.

That's actually what I wanted to ask you as well, because I get that a lot from people who are pretty educated with nutrition or with diet or with exercise, but they don't know how to run a business. So where does that fit in? How do you learn to do that?

Yeah. So this is another thing that really separates Integrative nutrition from the other health coaching programs, I think, is that they give you a great background in business. So the first year, there is some business classes and modules in there, but you also actually get a free second year, an entire year worth of just straight business education. So they really teach you how to set up an online business, how to get your name out there, how to market yourself. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you're doing, whether you're a dentist, you're a dog walker, whatever you are, you need to market yourself if you want to have your own business. So they really set you up with a great framework. They do give you a website. I personally didn't use the website they gave me. I went and made my own. But they give you business cards. They tell you what you should be doing as far as networking and what you should be saying and where you should be going and who you want to be meeting. So they really give you basically the framework for setting up a real business.

Okay, gotcha. I'm curious, and I think probably a lot of other people may want to know this too, what an actual day in the life of a health coach looks like. Like what you're doing when you're waking up in the morning, if you're just, like, Skyping with people all day long, or if you're like, you know, out there meeting with people at coffee shops in New York City. I mean, what exactly are you doing when it comes to your job? And just walk us through a typical day in the life of Maria.

That's so funny you asked that question, because I actually shot a video that's a day in the life of a health coach. But I'll walk you through it.

And that's actually one of the ways that I found you and wanted to interview you for this. And I'm going to embed that video for folks to watch, because I did want to find somebody who was able to talk about a day in their life. And you actually had a video out there about a day in the life. So walk us through this.

There you go. Okay. So I get up and, you know, even though, you know, I'm the boss and it's my own business, but I keep a very, you know, strict schedule. I keep my hours and I get up, I leave myself about half an hour to an hour to do emails and get back to people. But then during the day, I'm either Skyping clients, I prefer doing video calls. Just because I feel like if you're not there in person, it just makes it that much more personal like when you see each other. So I spend a good chunk of the day doing the Skype calls or I do like local people, I do have come to my apartment actually and I do the session here. I also write a weekly newsletter and blog so I save one day a week. I have a couple hours where I'm doing recipes, you know, for the blog, testing that, photographing them. In the evenings I teach group health coaching programs. So that's a lot of fun and that I actually just rent, you know, rent a space and go there and speak. I also have teamed and partnered up with a few different fitness studios and I'll go there and I'll, you know, host talks about nutrition and wellness and that's a great way to get new clients actually. And then that's it. I mean that's pretty much what I do in any given day.

Now when you're for example, like Skyping with someone, is that a video Skype session where you are teaching people cooking or are you more talking about just like kind of like day to day management of their health and answering questions that they have and things like that?

Good question. So, so it's a video, you know, it's a video and video call and what it is. So I've sort of developed my own little curriculums from working with people and I use that sort of as a baseline. But it's very interactive. So you know, when a client starts with me, you know, I'll have them fill out this in depth questionnaire and you know, based on that, based on what their goals are and where they're, you know, where they currently are and you know, what they're eating, I basically figure out, okay, what do we need to work on first? What's the most important steps that we need to change and how do we do it painlessly? So each session will talk about a specific topic, whether it's vegetables or grains or meat or fats, sugar, all these different things. And then at the end I explain everything and then at the end of the session I'll give between one and three maximum, you know, tips or advice for them, like something for them to put into play in their life in between our sessions. So I try to make it as easy as possible. And basically what that does is that helps them build habits step by step by step. So whereas if you go to an rd, right, or a nutritionist, typically, I know within rd, typically what they'll do is they'll have you fill out that questionnaire. The next time you come back, they'll give you a set. Eat this, don't eat this. And then in your follow up sessions, it's kind of just a check in where you're not really learning anything new necessarily. But with a health coach, our whole goal is really to educate people on why you should be eating certain things and maybe avoiding other things. So each session they're learning something new. They're getting a new step or a new habit to add to their routine or kind of help them get rid of a bad habit. And then. Yeah, so that's basically how it runs.

Gotcha. Okay, so now for the tough, squirmy, uncomfortable questions. How much does it actually cost for you to become a health coach?

That's a good question. I think the tuition now is, I want to say, I mean, it was 5,000 when I did it and I feel like it may have went up. I would say it's five to six thousand dollars for the year.

That's for the whole year?

That's for the whole year. Plus, like I mentioned, you get the free second year, which is just the business training.

Okay. So the whole first year you're just learning like health, nutrition, everything like that. You're paying five, six thousand dollars, something like that. And I'll put a link to integrative nutrition. It looks like they have a pretty good page here that describes how it goes. But then the second year you don't pay anything and it's just all business after that.

Yes, there is some business in the first year. There's definitely some business in the first year. But the second year is dedicated solely to. And that's optional. I mean, to be honest, I didn't actually do the second year, but I know there's a lot of people that did. I felt like what I learned in year one was sufficient enough for me and then I was just busy and I didn't really have time to do year two.

And you have a degree in finance, which probably.

Well, yeah, exactly. I have a degree in finance and marketing. So I kind of already knew the business aspect of it. But yeah, and I mean they do have scholarships from time to time, but I think all in all it's a pretty reasonable thing. I mean, I made my money back, my tuition back within really just a few months of that.

That was the second question I was gonna ask you, was like, are you having a moonlight here as like a line cook or is this working out?

Yeah. So I ended up, I Told you. I left finance and then I was freelancing and then I did once integrative nutrition and I knew it was a one year program, I decided to take a full time job. So I took a full time job and I was working full time while I did the program. And then after I graduated the program, I quit probably within a few months of graduating because I actually started working as a health coach. You can start working at about the six month point. So I put my website up, I started blogging, putting my name out there, writing for different publications. And because of that I started getting clients. People I didn't even know were reaching out to me and wanted to be my client. So I was able to quit a few months after I graduated. That being said, I took a serious pay cut. I'm not going to lie. That first year that I left, I just knew I was so passionate about it. I was like, I know that I'm going to be able to, you know, make it back. And in year two, I'm, you know, on par with what I was making in a full time desk job.

Yeah, I love it. And actually that, you know, the same thing happened to me. I got a, I got a really well paying job out of college in sales, in medical sales for hip and knee surgical sales for a company called Biomet. And I quit after three or four months because I hated it and went to work as a personal trainer. And it was like about two to three months of being pretty uncomfortable, comfortable, but I was so passionate about it. And within literally like it was about three months, you know, I had eight or nine clients a day that I was working with. And so I think one thing it really comes down to is before people jump in and decide they want to become a health coach or go through a program like this, you got to make sure you're really passionate about it. And you know, it sounds like, like a lot of our listeners who are nutrition nerds and who are kind of into this stuff anyway, this would be right up their alley. Now that's kind of another question I have though. Like personal trainers, people who are fitness nerds, really into exercise, have a good knowledge of exercise, but really wants to kind of bring in the nutrition component. Did you have a lot of classmates like that?

Oh, definitely. There's tons of personal trainers that do the program because it does, it adds that extra component, that extra add on. I mean if you're already getting physical, you know, personal training clients, that's two things that you can offer them instead of just one.

And Are you doing much of that? Are you a personal trainer or do you have an exercise component at all?

It's so funny. When I was in college, I'm a big fan of group fitness classes, the barre classes and all that stuff. I got all the stuff to be certified and then I never did it. Now I actually wish I would have done it. And I almost want to get certified as a personal trainer, but it's not really in my game plan right now. I'm kind of busy with everything. So I've actually, what I'm doing is I'm working with another personal trainer and we kind of like tag team.

So you've got like a team of people and you can refer other folks out for the skills that you're not comfortable doing.

Exactly, yeah. So for fitness, you know, I advise people definitely work out, but that's about the extent of it. I'll send them to somebody else for that.

Right. Okay, cool. So this institute for Integrative Nutrition, I just, I want to give my 2 cents here because I'm actually looking over your guys list of instructors right now. Now, Christian Northrup, John Douillard, Sally Fallon, Andrew Weil, David Wolf. I mean, these are people who I wouldn't consider to be kind of dyed in the wool nutritionists when it comes to like preaching what I think probably the FDA would prefer to be preached from a nutrition standpoint. It seems like there's kind of a holistic event to this. Is that what you experience or am I just seeing this based off of the people who are listed here on the site?

Yeah, very, very observant there. And this was a big reason again why I decided not to become an rd. So to become a registered dietitian, you basically have to be certified by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So they set the curriculum and they're basically the ones that if you pass everything, you become an rd. So the biggest and most loyal sponsor of the A and D is actually the National Cattlemen's Association.

So then there's other companies like the National Cattlemen's Association.

Yes, as in the Beef Producers of America, ConAgra Foods, Kellogg's, General Mills and the National Dairy Council are their other top sponsors of this American. Excuse me, this Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Now this just kind of screams conflict of interest to me. Plus I learned that registered dietitians, you have to take continuing education classes every couple of years. And they can take classes from Coca Cola, they can take them from PepsiCo, from Kraft, from Nestle, and I'M sorry, but I don't want my nutrition information from Coca Cola. Call me crazy because of that. That's another big separation between a health coach and an rd. But, yes. So in integrative nutrition, you have people who are taking a much more holistic standpoint. For example, Dr. Weil, he actually studied botany, and so he talks all about plants. And I was at a very interesting lecture with him, and surprisingly, it was sponsored by Pfizer. And he's talking about how nowadays we're basically taking the active ingredient of a plant. We're basically getting rid of everything else and just boiling it down to its active ingredient, and that's our medicine. Whereas back in the day, we were consuming the whole plant and that was our medicine. So really talking about how we kind of got skewed in what's healthcare and food and medicine and all these things.

Yeah, I'm a total learning nerd when it comes to nutrition. And I kind of want to go through this course now that I'm looking at. Looks like if I click on the button here and I'll put a link for folks in the show notes to this. But it looks like you can actually take a free. Looks like one of David Wolf's courses you can actually take for free. So you can go through, like a sample course on there. That's kind of cool. Okay, cool. Well, I will certainly put a link to this and also over to your website, Maria. But before I let you go, when it comes to being a health coach, do you have any last tips or tricks or advice that you would give to folks who are interested in doing this?

Yeah, I mean, if you're passionate about nutrition and wellness and you want to get paid and make a living out of doing something you love. Right. If this is your passion, I think integrative nutrition is a great first step for that. And I think just realizing if this is what you want to do, set your goals and do it. Just pedal to the metal. There's no need to wait. The faster you start, the faster you're doing what you want to do.

And of course, the other benefit to doing health coaching via Skype and online is you can, if you want, do it from the beach in Thailand.

That was a big draw. It's actually funny. I live in Brooklyn right now. I lived in Manhattan and then I recently moved to Brooklyn, and I have a lot of clients that are still in Manhattan and they don't want to come over the bridge to Brooklyn. So I Skype them even though they're about 1520 minutes away from me. But I realized even if someone lives next door, it's much better to Skype because you can obviously do it from anywhere.

It is. I have this coffee shop by my house that I do some of my health and nutrition consults at. A lot of times what happens is you wind up driving in, doing the consult. Usually it's a lot of time you're standing in line at the coffee shop, getting a drink, finally sitting down, doing the consult. Working online is actually far more efficient, I think, for both the person getting the advice and the person giving the advice to me. I'm a big fan of having a home office or having a laptop based office for a lot of this stuff, because really it's you taking the advice that you, that you've learned in the trenches and then bringing that to a level where you can disseminate that in an easy to understand way to somebody and change their life. And you don't necessarily have to have an office to be doing that.

Definitely. And yes, I mean, doing it online or even via the phone, it's just way more efficient for, again, for everybody.

Cool. Well, I know that for all of the people who have asked me lots of questions about how to become a health coach and talk about exercise and nutrition and things like that to folks, hopefully they got a lot of their questions answered on this one. And I'm really happy too about this whole Institute for Integrative Nutrition thing because I didn't know something like that existed. And it's very cool to see that now somebody's kind of doing it the right way when it comes to nutrition education. So I'm excited. Maria, thank you so much for coming on the call.

Thank you for having me, Ben.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Maria Marlow and I will create show notes for this episode. I'll put them over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com health coach BenGreenfieldFitness.com Health Coach if you want to go check out some of the resources and Maria's video and the Institute for Integrated of Nutrition and everything else that we talked about, have a Great Week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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