Debi Carlin Boyle shares a health coach’s perspective on healthcare on today’s episode of the Perspectives on Healthcare Podcast with Rob Oliver. A Southern California girl, she is a member of the baby Boomer generation. In addition to being a health coach, she is a nutritional expert.
Here are three things that stood out to me as Debi Carlin Boyle shared a health coach’s perspective on healthcare:
· Lifestyle and health go hand in hand – lifestyle plays a part in wellness
· Quality healthcare is taking a holistic overall view of the individual, it can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution
· The Blue Zones of the world are where people live the longest with the highest level of independence
· (Bonus Observation) Food can harm and food can heal
You can find out more about Debi Carlin Boyle through her website, podcast and social media links:
Website http://www.balancedlifebydebi.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/balancedlifebydebi/
Instagram https://www.facebook.com/balancedlifebydebi/
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/debi-carlin-boyle-122a129/
Here is the transcript of Debi Carlin Boyle: A Health Coach’s Perspective on Healthcare:
Rob Oliver: Welcome and thank you for being with me today. I have with me today, Debbie Carlin Boyle. She is a health and nutrition coach as well as a personal trainer and fitness instructor. She is based out of Calabasas, and she is a member of the Baby Boomer Generation. Debbie, welcome to the show.
Debi Carlin Boyle: Thank you, Rob. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here today. I really feel honored.
Rob Oliver: Thank you. I am looking forward to hearing your perspective on health care. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your role in health care, please.
Debi Carlin Boyle: Okay. So I’m a baby Boomer. So my background is I’m a Southern California girl born and raised, but I was born in the 50s because I’m approaching my mid 60s right now. So I was a product of the beginning of fast food, and I’m also a child of four siblings. So my parents, my mother had her hands full, let’s say. And so the fast food thing became her best friend. And I grew up as I want to say, as a process kid and from a very early age, I could see that food and lifestyle were playing a part in making the people I love around me ill. My father was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma when I was only five years old and I saw him going downhill without any lifestyle changes. So he was smoking, he was drinking, he was overeating, he was not exercising and he had a very high powered job. So he was probably overworked stressed, not sleeping well. And even though I was too young, he lived another 15 years, but very poor, poor quality. During that time I started to also see his sister get breast cancer. His parents get sick, my grandparents get sick on the other side. And as I was growing up and eating all this processed food, not knowing better about lifestyle and health, going hand in hand. I started to see changes in me. After puberty, I started to gain weight. I was feeling bloated lethargic. My hair was falling out, my eyes were cloudy because obviously my brain was cloudy and here I was in high school. So I decided before I was going to go away to College that I was going to get out of that processed food situation. And I was really quick and try to get on the health road. So I did those like protein shape diets, which helped me lose £20 pretty quickly. So when I went off to school, I was able to attract the things I want, mainly a boyfriend, but also I was able to relate lifestyle to the way I ate. And I added exercise to my life for the first time once I was in high school. I mean, in College I started playing tennis, I started lifting weights, I started to see a physical change, a mental change, an overall feel good change, having a really strong immune system, not getting sick when all of my roommates and friends were going down for the cap. So that was my start into and also when I studied, I was a theater major, so I have decree in theater. But I was a minor in family studies and consumer Sciences, and I was very interested in raising the family healthy because I watched my family go down for the count. My youngest sister was sick with juvenile diabetes and my mom was sick because she was really living on prescription medication, maybe drinking too much because she was stressed from all the kids. I don’t know, but I did realize really quick that lifestyle played a part in wellness. So I decided only I would become a vegetarian in College. And I’ve changed diet lifestyle since. But I have to say that was my jumpstart fast forward. I got into the film industry in the very high power producer job for the better part of 30 years, but I had this side hustle of health and wellness. I also wanted my family not to go down the rabbit hole for health the way I saw when I was growing up. So I decided I was going to do this from the get go. I was going to breastfeed, I was going to have a natural childbirth. I was going to give my kids the best start to life. And subsequently I did that and sort of changed the legacy or directory of my family situation. And I started teaching spin in the 90s and 96 when it was just becoming very popular. And that led me to become a personal trainer. And that continued to be a side hustle. I continued to raise a family and I continue to produce and then fast forward. Ten years ago I went through a pretty contemptuous divorce, which was very high stress. And we were in the business together and he sort of went with the business. I went with the social life and I did a pivot in my late 50s and changed my career and went back to school, became a certified health coach and four modalities and took my business full time online. And now this is where I fit to educate myself and help others in that field.
Rob Oliver: Yeah, you’ve had some kind of journey. It’s impressive. What does quality health care mean to you?
Debi Carlin Boyle: Well, it can mean a lot of things, but as a health coach, it means to me that I think taking a holistic overall wellness look at the individual and seeing where they are at and what their needs are, but making it affordable to them as well. So they don’t have a fear of seeking the help they need so quality to me is starting that with it’s not a one size fits all situation. We’re all different. We all assimilate our food different. We all need different supplements. We all have different legacies and backgrounds, conditions and constitutions. And I think a health care professional needs to see that from the get go and that we work together to create quality from all ends of what that individual needs and not just give it a prescription and walk away.
Rob Oliver: Got it. Can you give me an example of quality health care?
Debi Carlin Boyle: So I think the best way to give you an example is tell you about a client of mine who went to her doctor for her routine check up to her general practitioner, and her numbers weren’t so good. So she had high LDL, the lousy cholesterol, and her doctor said to her, if you don’t get this down in three months, you’re going to go on medication. So she sought me out through a family member who I was already working with and we had a goal. And so what we did was we worked towards staying away. I individually worked with her and her needs. I found out what her history was like, what her relationship to food was like, what her self care was like, all the things that we need to consider as wellness as overall wellness. And we work together. We’re still working together in both the fitness end of it and in the diet and overall self care end of it. And as a result, her numbers are down and no medication. So that’s me working and giving the time and energy that she deserves as a patient has a client to get to the nitty gritty and work with her individually on what was working and what wasn’t working.
Rob Oliver: Yeah. So it sounds like you’re talking about and I think I’ll just reiterate what you said. You were looking at family history. You were looking at her relationship with food and then the other aspects of her life that all are related to, what’s going on in how she handles food and then how that impacts her cholesterol, which sounds like you’re looking at her as a whole individual from the aspect of it’s, not just what she eats, it’s not just how she lives, but it’s also taking into account kind of where she came from with her genetics as well.
Debi Carlin Boyle: Yes.
Rob Oliver: What do you wish people understood about your role in health care?
Debi Carlin Boyle: Well, I think health coaching is on the rise, but I don’t think people know really what a health coach is and what we do. We’re not doctors. Some of us are. Some of us are health coaches and functional medicine doctors. Some of us are regular general practitioners. Some of us are dietitians. We’re here to work with your medical team. Right. So what I want people to know is that the thing about health coaching is we take the time that a doctor general practitioner, even a functional medicine doctor may not do. I might send you to a functional medicine doctor to get blood work and other tests done to see where your numbers are, to see what supplements you’re lacking, the vitamins and minerals you may be needing and the nutrients that we need to catch up on. But other than that, I take the time to work with you to do just what we were saying. Those individual lifestyle changes that give you longevity with quality, those kinds of things that we’re going to Ward off any kinds of medication or illnesses, because a lot of times, if you go on medication for an Ailments, you’re going to cause it’s a vicious circle of going down a spiral of bad health. My job as a health coach is to prevent, to be preventative and to look at you holistically and individually, I think self care is healthcare.
Rob Oliver: That’s a very interesting statement that you just made there. Self care is health care. And I also think I would like to hear you expand a little bit on this, that a health coach is working as a part of the medical team, not to supplant but to supplement. Does that make? Is that right?
Debi Carlin Boyle: Well, yes and no. So I think we can be both so we can be prevented from the get go. You can have let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds and you don’t want to go on a fad diet. You want to change lifestyle, but you don’t need to go to the doctor. You don’t have anything that’s painting you or troubling you. So you come and work with a health coach or you get in a health coaching group so you can make some subtle lifestyle changes that are small, sustainable changes over a period of time. We’re basically changing habits to be prevented it. But on the other spectrum is someone who was already sick, someone like my client who had some behind numbers, who was sort of saying their general practitioners sent them off into the wild Wild West and said, Figure it out for yourself. That’s where we come in. And if more general practitioners worked with health coaches with their patients that are coming to them that are on the brink or already ill, food can heal. Food is medicine. Medicine is food, lifestyle. Self care is health care. We show them how we lead the way that other practitioners don’t have time to do.
Rob Oliver: Okay, what excites you about the future of health care?
Debi Carlin Boyle: Well, I’m here in California, so I do think that we have a little bit sort of a grip on health and wellness here that some other parts of the country may not have. And what excites me is that health coaches are on the rise and that health care is becoming more affordable for all. And that I even think for what I do becomes sort of a luxury for people to work with somebody they don’t want to spend the time or the money on taking care and figuring out what self care means to them. But if you start here, you have longevity with quality. So I just think what excites me is the awareness, the overall awareness that has come and that people are willing not to put a Band Aid on it anymore, but to change lifestyle for longevity to age young, to feel good quality of life. Huge, I think. And that excites me.
Rob Oliver: Okay. You keep talking about it. You mentioned a word and it’s lifestyle and lifestyle change. How much do you see where people are used to going on a diet where you change your eating habits for a short period of time, to lose a certain period, a certain amount of weight. And then when you’re done the diet, you generally gain all the weight back because you’ve only done short term change. Talk to me about the difference between a diet and a lifestyle change if you don’t mind.
Debi Carlin Boyle: Okay, well, you kind of said so diets don’t work. Lifestyle diet intake of food is what works. And the reason being is for what you just said is that you’re going to use what people do is they gain all the way back and then some because they feel deprived. And the idea is the mindset. There is a big, huge gut mind, as you know, because I know you interview people that work with psychology and people that have drug abuse and things like that. Everything sort of starts from the gut, and it feeds all our systems, including our brain. Our main so what we want to do is kind of reprogram. If you grew up like I did as a processed kid, then you obviously have that lifestyle of eating fast food, not eating nutritious food, not taking care of yourself. And then I decided I want to get in a size two dress for a function, and I go on a quick diet. Well, it’s a quick fix, and it’s not sustainable. So to be sustainable, we have to change bad habits. And that comes what I was saying earlier, small action steps that you take over a period of time, so they become new habits, which are good habits. So whether you decide you want to be plant based for the rest of your life, you want intermittent fasting. We’ve seen in the world that we know works the components of the Mediterranean diet and that lifestyle. So when we talk about lifestyle, we’re talking about all the things that beat us in addition to the food on our plate. When we look at the five blue zones in the world, that’s where people live the longest in their 90s and hundreds with longevity with quality. So meaning that they’re not having caretaking into their later years because they have Ailments, but they have a full life. And we’re talking about all these things that have to come together in your lifestyle. So your sleep, diet and exercise are the three top. But then you have your career, your finances, your social life, your spirituality, you have your creativity, your family and home environment. All those things you have to look at as one big hole picture, and you have to bring them to a balanced level. If any one of them is down. Like, for instance, if you are having trouble with finances, you might start eating your problems. And then all of a sudden all these other things start clearing up as well. You’re not sleeping. You’re not exercising anymore. All these things rare their ugly head. So what we try to do is help coaches to give people a lifestyle gradual changes for the positive that made them feel not surprised of anything in their life because the things that were harming them were not necessarily the things that are going to bring them joy.
Rob Oliver: Got it. What is one thing medical professionals can start doing today to improve the quality of health care?
Debi Carlin Boyle: Well, from my standpoint, my point of view is start looking at the individual has a not one size fits all. Take a holistic overall wellness approach. Talk either. Connect with someone like me who can help them understand that food can heal and food can harm and that anybody through just changing your food can really change your lifestyle. Because once you start feeling better, you want to do better. And so I think any professional in the health field should not be thinking about profits that they can get from selling certain medications for diagnosing, certain ailments. But to think about trying to heal and pure what the situation is not putting a Band Aid or quick fix. I think that’s where we should be going.
Rob Oliver: It is very well stated, and I appreciate you sharing that. Listen, Debbie, thank you so much for being with me today. I appreciate your openness and your willingness to share and I will say, Debi Carlin Boyle, thank you very much for sharing your perspective on healthcare.
To connect with the show on social media use the links below:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/yourkeynoter
Facebook: http://facebook.com/yourkeynoter
Instagram: http://instagram.com/yourkeynoter
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/company/yourkeynoter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ub8CjRQAmXsOEA4s9AYbw
We would love to hear from you. Visit the “Contact Us” form:
https://www.perspectivesonhealthcare.com/contact/
Look around the website for more Perspectives on Healthcare.
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed by guests on the Perspectives on Healthcare Podcast are solely the opinion of the guest. They are not to be misconstrued as medical diagnoses or medical advice. Please consult with a licensed medical professional before attempting any of the treatments suggested.