A wise man once said, “When you have your health, you have everything.”
Taping into the transformative medicine of a united mind and body, holistic health coach Marlys Underwood has opened her doors to new clients ready to embrace that well-worn phrase. She hopes to establish a winning practice using a positive, inspiring approach to channeling people of Sisters Country onto a healthy highway in their own lives.
Believing that simply eating better is not enough, Underwood challenges people to make lifelong choices to weed out stressors in their life in all aspects, and to promote overall wellbeing previously unachieved.
“My goal is to be a one-stop shop,” says Underwood. “I feel like it borders on being a life coach, but focuses more on the powers of prime health.”
Utilizing the proven methods and philosophies of the Integrative Nutrition Institute, an exceptional online educational company and the cutting-edge leader in holistic nutrition education since 1992, Underwood sees herself as a hybrid entity, providing a comprehensive path for optimal health.
In the process of reinventing herself, she wanted to do something that would help people, along the same lines of the active lifestyle she enjoys here in Central Oregon.
“My job is to tailor a person’s personal health goals, both through exercise, nutrition and positive mental health objectives to create an overall program to achieve those permanent lifestyle goals.”
It’s part life coach, one dose personal trainer, part dietician and a slice of spiritual advisor all rolled into one dynamic package.
“The macro approach is taking all these pieces of our lives and integrating a micro angle of the actual individual person and what works for them.”
As the largest nutrition school on the planet, Integrative Nutrition educates and transforms the lives of their students with the world’s foremost experts in nutrition and wellness like Andrew Weil, MD, Arthur Agatston, MD, Barry Sears, PhD, Mark Hyman, MD and Geneen Roth, among many others.
The curriculum teaches a wide variety of skills in health coaching, nutrition education, business management and healthy lifestyle choices. As a student, Underwood was exposed to and learned about major dietary theories from Ayurveda to The Zone, combining traditional nutrition philosophies with the most current health concepts.
For Underwood, the career change came naturally.
“I had been focused on landscape architecture for over ten years, and still am, but that field was getting depressed along with the overall economy,” she said. “You can only wait so long for those things to turn around before you make a change. A lot of people are having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet and that’s essentially what I’m doing opening a Health Coach business to supplement my income and contribute to my household.”
Underwood’s husband, Wade Underwood, is the owner and manager of Three Creeks Brewing Company in Sisters, another self-made business.
“I looked into becoming a registered dietician or nutritionist but those take a lot of time and money and I don’t have either. I wanted a quality education without the lengthy time commitment and huge financial obligation and found Integrative Nutrition based out of New York. All their stuff is online but they also have actual conferences, webinars and workbooks to support the process. They had tremendous validity and a solid reputation in the industry and are leaders in exploring all new dietary theories and approaches that some of the four-year colleges don’t get into.“
“It was a year-long program with additional opportunities for advanced business development courses later. There’s so much support from the instructors, staff and advisors at the school.”
Underwood officially opened for business in August in a cozy suite beside Shibui Spa and is striving to get her name out there into the community. Reinventing oneself in a shaky economy may seem frightening but to Underwood it comes with a certain sense of empowerment.
“The first thing I do is a free initial consultation where we go through that person’s unique health history and talk about their specific goals,” she explained. “A six-month program meets twelve times. Each session costs $75, which is very reasonable when compared to what a doctor visit or dietician would charge. Health coaching and health counseling is the wave of the future in my opinion, to have that intermediary between knowing nothing and wading through the misinformation out there. Preventative medicine is participatory, you actually have to do it to make it work.”
In those sessions Underwood explores new foods, nutritional deficits, eating and exercise habits and getting into the primary foods, the ones that feed your insides but don’t necessarily come from your plate.
“Identifying and working to resolve those toxic stressors in their life and managing them in the focus. It’s not my job to overstep a physician’s recommendation but food can make you or break you. Nutrition is where we start. That health and vitality radiates into every aspect of your life. Food affects us biochemically and therefore affects every single aspect of our cells and selves.”
“Finding your way to perfect health shouldn’t be this daunting, depressing task,” she added. “It should be motivating, exciting and life affirming. In my mind, I’m not just settling for something that doesn’t inspire me. What I offer is life to your years, not just years to your life.”
For a free introductory consultation or more information, contact Underwood at 541-977-7900 or online at marlysunderwood@hotmail.com. To learn more about the world of Integrative Nutrition and Underwood’s story go to www.marlys-underwood.healthcoach.integrativenutrition.com.
