290: Health Coaching and Lifestyle Medicine with Dr Pádraic Dunne

In episode 2 of our Coaching for Health and Wellbeing series, hosts Christian van Nieuwerburgh and Ana Paula Nacif are joined by Dr Pádraic Dunne to explore the integration of lifestyle medicine with coaching and positive psychology. Dr Dunne brings the pillars of lifestyle medicine — healthy eating, physical activity, sleep, stress management, avoiding risky substances, and social connectedness — to life with characteristic warmth and clarity, framing them not as clinical prescriptions but as common-sense foundations that generations before us simply lived by. Grounded in robust scientific evidence and focused squarely on preventing non-communicable disease, lifestyle medicine offers coaches a compelling and accessible framework for supporting client health and wellbeing.

 

Central to the conversation is Pádraic’s concept of positive health — the point where positive psychology, lifestyle medicine, and health psychology meet — with positive health coaching as the delivery system that brings all three together. He makes a powerful case that knowledge alone is not enough to change behaviour; what people need is a genuine, empowering human connection, and that is precisely what skilled coaching offers. The episode explores the co-design approach at the heart of effective health coaching, where coach and client show up as two experts — one in lifestyle medicine, one in themselves — working in true partnership to build meaningful, sustainable change.

 

Pádraic and the hosts also reflect on the broader role coaches can play in health and wellbeing, including the potential for health coaches to act as a bridge between primary and tertiary care, and the growing reach of digital health coaching. A thread running throughout is the reminder that connection, meaning, and purpose are among the most powerful contributors to a long and healthy life — and that coaches, by the very nature of what they do, are already working at the heart of that.

You will learn:

·       How lifestyle medicine provides coaches with a practical, evidence-based framework for health

·       What Positive Health coaching is and how it provides an empowering partnership for good client outcomes

·       The quality of the therapeutic alliance, the experience of being truly heard, and the pursuit of a meaningful life are among the most powerful factors in long-term health and flourishing

 

“The two things that help people live the longest with the longest health span are connection to other humans and meaning and purpose.”

 

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For the episode resources and guest bio, please visit: 

https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/dl-hub_podcast-channel-coaching-for-health-and-wellbeing-lifestyle-medicine-positive-health-coaching