The Health Coach Approach: A Secondary Analysis on the Association Between Remote Health Wellness Coaching and Body...

Body image and body appreciation (BA) are often considered a young adult issue, but the importance of body image as a factor contributing to wellness persists across the lifespan. The study's purpose was to examine¹ the association between participation in a 3-month health-and-wellness coaching (HWC) program on BA and² whether baseline measures of physical and mental health were related to changes in BA. 100 women completed a 3-month HWC program where BA and mental and physical health measures were collected pre and post intervention. A stepwise linear regression was conducted using measures of physical and mental health with BA as the outcome. A higher level of baseline depression was linked to more improvement in BA post-intervention (β = 0.033, P < 0.05), while higher baseline muscular endurance was linked to less improvement in BA at post-intervention (β = -0.022, P < 0.01). Results suggest that a 3-month HWC program has potential for improving BA, with stronger results possible among women with higher levels of depression at the start of the intervention, however without a control group, causation cannot be established.