Innovation in Diabetes Care: Improving Consumption of Healthy Food through a “Chef Coaching” Program: A Case Report

Abstract

Nutrition therapy as part of lifestyle care is recommended for people with type 2 diabetes. However, most people with diabetes do not follow this guideline. Changing eating habits involves obtaining knowledge and building practical skills such as shopping, meal preparation, and food storage. Just as fitness coaches use their specific knowledge base in fitness to enhance the effectiveness of their coaching, credentialed chefs trained as health coaches might combine their culinary expertise with coaching in order to improve clients' food choices and lifestyles.This report documents the case of a 55-year-old white male physician, single and living alone, who was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and reported chronic stress, sedentary behavior, and unhealthy eating habits. He participated in a chef coaching program of 8 weekly one-on-one 30-minute coaching sessions via Skype delivered by a chef trained as a health coach. During the first five meetings, the patient's goals were primarily culinary; however, with his success in accomplishing these goals, the patient progressed and expanded his goals to include other lifestyle domains, specifically exercise and work-life balance. At the end of the program, the patient had improved both his nutritional and exercise habits, his confidence in further self-care improvement, and his health parameters such as HgA1c (8.8% to 6.7%; normal <6.5%).We conclude that chef coaching has the potential to help people with diabetes improve their practical culinary skills and implement them so that they eat better and, further, has the potential to help them improve their overall self-care. We intend to further develop chef coaching and assess its potential as we learn from its implementation.

Innovation in medical education: a culinary coaching tele-nutrition training program

“…All seven recruited coaches completed the training program. In addition, each health coach completed a 6-month internship where each implemented the CC in four programs with patients with cardio-metabolic risk factors from her practice [8,11] (including one mentored program, in which the faculty was an observer in three sessions and provided feedback). Each month the coaches and CC faculty conducted 1-h remote group sessions to discuss challenges and successes.…”

Time for food - training physiatrists in nutritional prescription

“…These are credentialed chefs who are also trained as health and wellness coaches, combining the knowledge of a chef with the skill-set of a coach to improve patients' food choices and overall health (76). We demonstrated that a Chef Coach intervention aimed primarily at improve eating behaviours also resulted in increased interest in pursuing future goals in other health behaviours (76), such as exercise. The coaching skill-set, combined with the credentialed chef's culinary skills, might be a useful 2-pronged approach to promote healthy eating (77), and perhaps improve rehabilitation engagement, resulting in better functional outcomes.…”

“…Recently, our group developed a new sub-specialty of coaching: the "Chef Coach" (76). These are credentialed chefs who are also trained as health and wellness coaches, combining the knowledge of a chef with the skill-set of a coach to improve patients' food choices and overall health (76).…”

“…Recently, our group developed a new sub-specialty of coaching: the "Chef Coach" (76). These are credentialed chefs who are also trained as health and wellness coaches, combining the knowledge of a chef with the skill-set of a coach to improve patients' food choices and overall health (76). We demonstrated that a Chef Coach intervention aimed primarily at improve eating behaviours also resulted in increased interest in pursuing future goals in other health behaviours (76), such as exercise.…”

Improving patients’ home cooking – A case series of participation in a remote culinary coaching program

“…Recently, health coaching has developed national standards and accreditations (Mittelman. 2015); therefore, health coaching was selected and piloted as the program's behavioral change strategy (Polak et al 2014). Then, the culinary coaching approach was developed as a form of health coaching to help participants improve nutrition through combining culinary training and coaching as a two pronged approach (Polak et al 2015 preparation self-efficacy items (α=0.91), (5 -strongly agree; 1 -strongly disagree); and,…”