Health Coaching Client Success Story: Aurelia Fleck

At FMCA, we know the true impact of health coaching isn’t just seen in credentials—it’s felt in real lives, every single day.

Aurelia is one of those lives. As someone living with DISH, a degenerative condition affecting her ligaments and tendons, she faced chronic pain, depression, and years of frustration around her health. But everything changed when she began working with a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach in New Mexico.

What started as a focus on nutrition and weight loss evolved into something much deeper: an exploration of the behaviors, beliefs, and emotions that had shaped her experience. Over the course of five years, Aurelia lost 50 pounds, gained confidence, and—most importantly—rediscovered joy.

“Working with my coach helped me see myself in a new light,” she shared. “It wasn’t just about changing one thing. It was about changing how I think, how I feel, and how I live.”

Her coach offered more than accountability and encouragement. She provided unwavering support, deep listening, and a personalized partnership that empowered Aurelia to heal—physically, emotionally, and socially.

And the ripple effect didn’t stop there. Aurelia’s transformation brought renewed happiness to her relationships, inspired friends to seek coaching, and helped her reconnect with her community.

This is the power of functional medicine health coaching. And this is what FMCA is all about—training coaches who change lives.

Watch the Interview

Watch the full Health Coaching Client Success Story interview with Aurelia to learn more about her inspiring story:

Transcript

Kerry: All right. Hi there. My name is Kerry, and I’m on the admissions team at the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. And today, I have Aurelia with me, and I’ll explain why she is my special guest today. On the admissions team, I often get people calling in and asking me like, how can I really help people? I’m not a doctor. How can I help somebody? Right? Because like myself, I’m a graduate of FMCA. I have a business background. What business do I have—no pun intended—being someone’s health coach? So, I decided what a great idea to bring in somebody that is a client of a functional medicine-certified health coach, and that’s why I have Aurelia with me today because Aurelia is coached by a functional medicine-certified health coach. So, welcome and thank you for taking this time to spend with me. And could you tell me just a little bit about your background?

Aurelia: Sure. Thank you for having me today. I’m very excited to be able to share with you my experience. My background is I have worked both in the film industry as an assistant director on feature films and commercials, and then I transitioned into teaching middle school students drama. And I have now lived in New Mexico for six years where I met my health coach here in New Mexico. I have a background in education, obviously, but also I have a condition called DISH, which is a degenerative condition of my ligaments and tendons in my body, which presents a lot of challenges for me in living my daily life and dealing with people of all types and kinds.

Kerry: Well, thank you for sharing that. So, how did you find your functional medicine-certified health coach?

Aurelia: Well, as a part of what helps me with my condition is working with massage therapy. And my massage therapist, the one I found here in New Mexico, happened to also be a functional medicine coach. And she talked to me about the benefits of what the coaching process could bring to my life in regards to helping me not only with my condition but also with some other issues that I wanted to work on like weight control. So, that’s how I met her.

Kerry: Oh, neat. And so when you started this process like, what were your thoughts before you started about what this coaching experience was going to be like versus afterwards?

Aurelia: In the beginning, I wasn’t sure how it would be different from, say, using a traditional Western medicine counselor. And I’ve done that before in the past, so I wasn’t sure what to expect that might be different or how it could help me more than maybe a situation like that. But as the process unfolded, it became clear to me that there was a depth to this process that I had never experienced before as far as how the coach worked with me individually around all of my own issues but weaving into it all of the experience that she had as a coach to bring me to a place that was much healthier and much happier.

Kerry: Oh, I love that. That’s wonderful. And what would your life be right now if you didn’t do the coaching?

Aurelia: I had experienced a lot of depression because of my condition and the amount of pain that I suffer from and frustration due to my repeated attempts at losing weight. So, thanks to working with my coach, she has helped me have a much healthier outlook about myself, which then translates to a healthier outlook for my world around me in addition to helping me lose about 50 pounds.

Kerry: Wow, congratulations.

Aurelia: Thank you. Working together, we have come a very long way, and I have had a lot of experience with other kinds of Western counseling, which I’ve never had the kind of success as I have had with this kind of counseling.

Kerry: Yeah. So, I’m just curious like when you started working with your coach, did you come in with one specific goal and work on that goal or what I imagine and I’m gonna kind of guess here is that you may have come in with one goal but then realized that there’s a lot of different areas that you could hit on?

Aurelia: Yes, initially, I thought that we would just focus on the nutritional aspects of my desires and hopes. And as we started doing that, what I learned from my coach is that there’s more to just the one thing. The one thing isn’t what you are. You are many things. And that if you don’t investigate all of those different levels of who you are, and why you behave the way you behave, and how you’ve learned to behave a certain way, and then learn how to change those things, that one thing can’t change. So, yeah, exactly what you said. I started with one idea, and we ended up exploring just about every aspect of a human being that you could possibly experience.

Kerry: Oh, that’s wonderful. So, what would you say that being coached has brought to your life?

Aurelia: Wow, that’s a big one.

Kerry: Yeah.

Aurelia: I am a much happier, more well-balanced person. She has helped me look at myself and learn to accept the things that I felt were negative about me and to reposition them in my mind into a way that makes my life more positive. And I’m so grateful for the fact that she was able to do that. And it took a lot of in-depth work on both our parts. I mean, you have to be honest with yourself. You have to look at the history of how you behaved and what’s influenced those behaviors. And she was very good at helping me do all that and understand that those were the kinds of things that you have to change is your behaviors and how you view yourself around those behaviors.

Kerry: Yeah, I mean, coaching is a partnership, right? It’s a partnership between coach and client.

Aurelia: It really is. And I’ve worked with her for five years now, and we’ve made so much progress. It’s remarkable. And her investment in me in addition to my investment with her has been so phenomenal. Her investment has brought so much joy and happiness to my life, and she has always made me feel as though I was important to her, that my situation was important. She was always kind, and careful, and sincere about how she handled any situation we discussed. So, I’ve been very impressed with her ability being trained by your organization.

Kerry: Oh, wonderful. I love that. I love hearing that. So, you described how the coaching has impacted your life, but we often say the coaching goes beyond just the one person you’re coaching. That person being coached then spreads that to the people around them. Maybe it’s their family or their close friends. Can you kind of hit on that and how you being coached has impacted your greater personal circle?

Aurelia: Yes, that’s very true because as an unhappy depressed overweight person, that certainly didn’t bode well for my friends and my family, and people were concerned about my state of mind. So, when people learned that I was working with someone and could begin to see the small changes and then the bigger changes that I was making, it certainly made especially my husband and my close friends much happier. And I have recommended her to other people as well in my circle of friends. And people are very impressed with how how much has changed to make me a much happier, more positive person to be around, because I used to spend a lot of time alone because I didn’t feel comfortable being around other people due to my size and and just the pain that I was in all of the time. So, this has really made the people around me feel happier to be around me.

Kerry: Oh, I love that, and I’m sure maybe they’ve adopted some of the things that you share with them.

Aurelia: Yes, because I do share with them all the time. I have one specific friend, in fact, who I share all the time all of the things that I’ve learned here because she finds it also very helpful and encouraging.

Kerry: That’s wonderful. So, you talk about your friends. What would you tell a friend that was considering working with a functional medicine-certified health coach?

Aurelia: I would share with them that, in the beginning, it’s a little scary because the level of honesty with which you have to have with yourself and with someone else that you might not be comfortable with or have experienced before is intense. But if you can get past that and go with the coach who is helping guide you along in such a way that it’s gentle, and kind, and exploratory, then I would tell my friends that you will be amazed at what you discover about yourself and how much it does impact not only your life but those around you into being a better, happier person. And one of the first things that my coach shared with me about this process was a quote by Socrates, which goes the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new. And that’s what this coaching process does. It helps you look at the old, understand the old, but build on that old and create something new so that you can be happy and proud of yourself.

Kerry: Oh, that’s beautiful. So, I’m curious as, how would you describe to someone the difference between what you experience with a practitioner versus what you experience with your functional medicine-certified health coach?

Aurelia: My experience with practitioners is it’s a shallow experience. They are often not invested in the same way the functional coach is. And you don’t get the same level of care, or concern, or depth of research about your situation and your condition. My functional coach, as they sai,d the level and depth to which she goes to find and help me reach solutions to make my life happier and healthier is remarkable. It’s like nothing I’ve ever had.

Kerry: Oh, that’s wonderful. Well, gosh, I really do appreciate you sharing your experience with me. Anything else you want to add?

Aurelia: I would say you don’t know how great it’s going to be until you try it. And it really is worth it to make yourself through this coaching process a happier, healthier, more well-balanced person.

Kerry: Well, Aurelia, thank you so much for your time and sharing with me.

Aurelia: My pleasure.

Kerry: Yep. All right, take care.

Aurelia: Thank you.