Healthy & Awake Podcast · Mike Vera, Board-Certified Health Coach

Ethical Influence in Health & Wellness w/ Dr. Michael Arloski [Ep. 58]

·58 min·3 clips

Arloski links health coaching to “sales and marketing in a trillion, multi-trillion dollar industry” and says images of wellness are often misleading.

1. Healthy & Awake Podcast features a conversation about ethical influence in health and wellness coaching with Dr. Michael Arloski. 2. Host Mike Vera introduces himself as a board-certified health coach and names Dr. Michael Arloski as the pioneer behind his field. 3. The episode asks how people influence themselves, how coaches influence clients, and why awareness matters for lasting behavior change. 4. Vera credits Arloski’s book Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change as a foundational text in the field. 5. Arloski says healthcare often lacks the time and structure to talk about behavior, attitudes, and lifestyle prescriptions. 6. He contrasts advice like “lose weight,” “stop smoking,” and “drink more water” with coaching support that helps clients actually follow through. 7. Arloski says a health coach must “create the alliance” through trust, competence, explanation, and support. 8. He defines coaching by difference from consulting and by helping clients take stock of strengths, assets, challenges, and readiness. 9. He says health coaching is also about influence because people are constantly surrounded by sales, marketing, and media images. 10. He argues that wellness advertising often shows a 20-year-old model or a six-pack body that many people cannot reasonably match. 11. Arloski says those images create internal barriers such as “I’m not worth it,” “I don’t deserve this,” and guilt about self-care. 12. He says a coach can help people find ways to move, eat, and live that are congruent with who they are. 13. He uses James Prochaska’s readiness-for-change model to explain why a client may be ready to work on weight loss but not smoking. 14. He names Miller and Rollnick’s motivational interviewing and distinguishes change talk from sustained talk. 15. He gives an example of a client who stopped smoking after making progress on stress and other health goals. 16. He describes ethics as “client-centered directiveness” and says the client stays in the driver’s seat while the coach can still ask, challenge, and offer tools. 17. Arloski says being awake means awareness of what is outside, partial, and fully inside awareness. 18. He says self-concept shifts matter because “as we believe who we are, so we behave.” 19. The interview style is practical, explanatory, and coach-to-coach, with frequent examples from sessions and training. 20. People interested in behavior change, coaching, and lifestyle medicine will get the most from it.

As heard by us

A coaching conversation that frames influence as a client-centered tool.

Healthy and Awake Podcast with Mike Vera and Dr. Michael Arlosky turns a practical coaching question into something clear: how to influence without taking over.

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Why you'd press play

When you need a cleaner way to guide change without taking over the driver's seat.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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