Kara is a rising voice calling attention to how the health of our gut and internal systems affects our mind, the body’s appetite, our ability to manage weight, and regulate other components of our health. Her story of dealing with an 11-year battle with disordered eating and mysterious health ailments highlights the importance of gut health in having a thriving, healthy body that will give you the best chance at aging well and achieving a life of your greatest potential. Her mission is to make gut health and nutrition approachable and understandable to everyone so that they can take control of their health and deal with issues at the source.
Kara Holmes, Health Coach, RN, Author
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about yourself and your life so we can get to know you better.
I’m Kara Holmes, a health and wellness coach and author. My focus is to help women lose weight and heal their gut by developing effective, lasting habits that lead to lasting weight loss and a healthy, thriving body as they age. I’m originally from Minnesota in the United States, but I relocated to California five years ago for a career opportunity, and I have loved it ever since! The weather and landscape have captivated me. I’ve fallen in love with long hikes with friends, lifting weights, and properly caring for my body out here. I definitely feel like I’ve expanded, and it’s been more possible to make room for positive changes and the things in life that matter to me. Although I miss my family all the time, moving states has been the best thing for me. I visit when I’m able to, and I have been blessed to have gone on some vacations with my friends and family in the past year. I’m a Christian, and my faith in God has become everything to me. His love, grace, and guidance have given me joy and peace in my health, business, and life that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Can you provide an overview of the services offered by Vitality Coaching and the target audience they are designed to serve?
I currently offer books and coaching on gut healing and weight loss for women struggling with complicated and overlapping health issues such as diabetes, digestive disorders, and mental health conditions. I also do group programs but always offer 1:1 health coaching consultations and books, which can be found on my website.
What inspired you to start Vitality Coaching, and what are the core values that drive your business?
It all started in 2018 when I overcame a set of health issues that lasted over a decade. I had been fighting a losing battle with bulimia, a severe eating disorder, depression, anxiety, and weight gain. Everything felt like it was spinning out and getting worse despite seeking help through the proper channels with therapy and medical care. When it seemed like I was at the end of my rope, I exercised my faith in God and asked Him for a solution to this issue that I was failing to solve. I was guided to gut healing and specific nutrition changes, which I promptly implemented. In less than six weeks, my entire life changed before my eyes. I completely forgot about my eating disorder, my depression and anxiety went away, I began losing weight, and I was bursting with energy. My mind and spirit were moved to start a coaching business that would help others achieve healing from similar issues. Health, faith, and compassion are definitely core values that this business was founded upon because I feel so much for others out there being consumed by persistent and frustrating health battles that seem to have no end in sight. You can be taking accountability for your health by pursuing your options, going to the doctor, and trying your best to get good nutrition, yet be left with the feeling that you’re making little to no progress at all. There’s no replacement for exercising faith in Jesus and asking the Holy Spirit for guidance because He gives us the direct wisdom we need to heal so we can stop spinning our wheels.
The other values that create the strong core of my business are simplicity and consistency. I believe that when small, positive, goal-aligned steps are applied consistently, they will add up to the change you want to see. The beauty of this is that things often turn around faster than people think they would. Additionally, keeping simplicity the focus has tremendous effects on our overall health and well-being, and it truly makes the biggest impact on our health. To give you a quick example, when I work with my clients on building up small, consistent habits with their nutrition, we see that they can keep the momentum going, and it’s easier to stick with the changes. We begin to see inflammation decrease and the gut improve, and they get excited that it feels realistic to maintain. It’s so easy to get caught up in complicated formulas and methods or think we need to do “everything” to get healthy. Again and again, I’ve found that it’s really the simple steps applied consistently that are going to be doing most of the heavy lifting for you.
Then, we can start having more fun in maintaining our health, and the body can get back to a place of balance. From there, it’s easier to lose weight, improve health conditions, reduce pain, and live high-quality lives.
How does Vitality Coaching differentiate itself from other health and wellness coaching services available in the market?
The differentiating factor is the specific attention given to gut health, and the slow, consistent steps over time that help the lifestyle changes stick. I love teaching people how to restore their bodies, and also how to fall in love with the process because this is where the change becomes sustainable.
I think this matters because navigating health challenges can be so confusing. We can quickly fall into thinking we have no control over how our health, weight, and circumstances around us became the way they did. I’m here to help people break free from that mentality and beat unhealthy eating patterns, inconsistency, and limiting beliefs that keep people stuck in their health. We want to lose weight and be healthy so we can feel confident, attractive, move comfortably, and experience longevity where we can enjoy our lives in their absolute fullness. Everyone deserves this and should have a chance to claim it in their own lives.
Could you share some success stories or testimonials from clients who have benefited from Vitality Coaching?
My client Jen really did well during the Weight Loss Revamp Challenge this past January. She felt like the accountability helped her improve her food choices by centering them around more protein and whole foods and reducing sugar intake. She even found that her food freedom activated when she went out to a restaurant for her sister’s birthday:
“I found it so freeing to take my sister out to a fancy restaurant for her birthday and not feel like I had to settle for just a salad. I used some prudence in my choices, but I also let myself have things that I would not have in my day-to-day. I could also see where I would do things differently the next time: share a dessert, have two bites of bread, and make sure my mocktail doesn't have regular soda. I feel more in control of my diet than I think I ever have.” – Jen (client)
It’s always so wonderful to read the success stories from those who have read the books as well. One of the recent readers of “Gut Health Reset” shared:
“It helped stop my anxiety, hot flashes, and cravings for diet soda. I lost 6 pounds in 2 weeks, too!” – Lisa (reader)
What are the future plans or upcoming initiatives for Vitality Coaching, and how do you envision the business evolving in the coming years?
More books will definitely be released to help people heal! But I’m currently getting excited about some course curriculum I’m writing. More on that soon! I think I always see myself coaching, writing, and teaching. I also aspire to take on speaking engagements so more people can hear about how the gut can impact their weight, mind, and relationship with food.
Tell us about your greatest career achievement so far.
It always feels like the greatest achievement to have a reader or client reach out to me and say that my story grabbed them and that what I experienced is almost a word-for-word account of what they are going through. Beyond these interactions, I would say that publishing “Gut Health Reset” is my greatest career achievement so far. This book helped so many people learn how to eat and change their lifestyle for a healthy digestive system and gut microbiome, which feels so impactful since it’s the foundation for the rest of our health. I feel incredibly grateful when I see all the testimonials and takeaways from readers who are having life-changing results. When it hit me that I was changing lives like that, it felt like I was truly fulfilling my purpose.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
The weight loss industry is so focused on losing weight quickly, and I think we could make a greater and permanent impact if we focused on a few target areas (i.e., healthcare centered around better gut health, small lifestyle habit changes, whole food nutrition) and established a pattern of consistency slowly over time. I truly believe that the health outcomes of individuals would improve so much if we approached it from this angle!
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