About

About the Health Coach:

Mary P, the Coach4HealthyLife health coach, has been involved in personal training and health coaching since 2011.  She is certified as a Health Coach through the American Council on Exercise (ACE).  More information can be found regarding this certification at www.acefitness.org.  Maintaining or renewing certification requires a defined amount of continuing education and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and automated external defibrillator use (CPR/AED) certification every two years.  

A pre-requisite for training, testing, and obtaining the Health Coach certification from ACE is to be a certified personal trainer.  Mary P is a personal trainer, certified through National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).  This certification also requires continuing education and CPR/AED for re-certification every two years.  More information regarding the NASM personal training certification can be found at www.nasm.org.

Mary P is also a certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist, Weight Management Specialist, and Behavior Change Specialist through ACE.  She holds Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees in Chemistry, with an emphasis in Biochemistry, and Physics from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.  She also holds a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Engineering from the University of Arizona. 

Nutrition is a special topic within health coaching, and requires a great deal of education and experience to understand and apply all the information available.  A certified health coach is required to be trained and tested in nutrition science to earn the certification.  At Coach4HealthyLife, your coach, Mary P, has a biochemistry degree which provides detailed education on nutrition science, a nutrition certification (ACE Fitness Nutrition Specialist), and additional college coursework in nutrition (Central Arizona College). 

Mary P has used her education in her 25+ year career in the medical device industry, where she has designed and developed products primarily for the cardio-vascular system, but also in other surgical and medical areas such as orthopedics, breast reconstruction, cancer detection, and drug delivery.  This experience has increased her knowledge of the human body, having received a great deal of training in anatomy and physiology related to the products being developed.  And she witnessed well over 100 surgeries and medical procedures - live in surgical suites or cath labs, and through videos.  She has spent many hours talking and experimenting with physicians to learn about what they do, how they do it, and how to make it better.  Now, she consults with medical device and pharma companies on how to develop products most efficiently while meeting world-wide regulatory requirements.

Mary P has been involved in sports and fitness her whole life, from her earliest memories of ice skating and swimming at the local parks in Minneapolis, MN.  She has personally participated in cross-country and track running, yoga, gymnastics, softball, basketball, soccer, tennis, skiing (downhill and cross-country), golf, bowling, weight lifting, triathlons.  She has dabbled in fitness boxing, volleyball, hockey, flag and tackle football (with the boys when she was young, and now paying the price with sore joints!), surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding (ouch! -not doing that again...), and many other outdoor activities.  Her favorite sports pastimes now are hiking, cycling, and kayaking.