Episode 127 | Apr 24, 2025

Autoimmune Health Starts With Your Habits, With Amy Behimer

What if a diagnosis didn’t mean decline—but a chance to build something stronger? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi is joined by Amy Behimer, pharmacist, board-certified health and wellness coach, and founder of the Habit Hub for Autoimmune Health, to talk about thriving with autoimmune disease, rethinking chronic care, and coaching as a powerful path to resilience and well-being.

“Yes, we have an autoimmune disease. That part is the uncontrollable part. But then we ask—what in our life is controllable? That’s what we call autoimmune health. It’s our habits, our movement, our food, our mindset, our relationships—everything we can influence.”

Amy Behimer

Amy brings a unique perspective to her coaching practice—one shaped by her pharmacy background, her own journey with multiple sclerosis, and her deep knowledge of behavior change. In the episode, she and Dr. Sandi explore how coaching complements conventional medicine, and why creating synergy between the two can be life-changing for people living with chronic conditions. Amy also walks through the process she uses with clients—one that combines habit science, emotional awareness, and a guided, supportive community—to shift from sick care to true health creation.

After being diagnosed with MS, Amy found herself facing a difficult truth: she was well-versed in the medical side of her condition, but something was missing. Coaching helped her reframe what was possible—and that transformation inspired a new career. Today, she helps others rewrite their own stories. With her pharmacist mindset for systems and evidence, Amy developed a structured, compassionate process to help clients move from overwhelmed to empowered. Her Habit Hub framework weaves mindset, movement, nutrition, and relationships into sustainable change, and her CLUB coaching group provides the support and structure so many with autoimmune conditions are missing.

Health coaches will find Amy’s insights on group coaching especially valuable. She shares how she built her program from the ground up—starting with one-on-one clients and learning through real experience, then expanding through community connections, partnerships, and podcasting. Amy also touches on the unique challenges of working with people who have chronic conditions and how coaching supports emotional as well as physical health. Coaches can draw inspiration from Amy’s approach to creating a safe, intentional space where clients take ownership of their habits and their healing.

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Transcript

Dr. Sandi: Why does someone go from being a pharmacist to becoming a health and wellness coach? And if you are diagnosed with a severe autoimmune condition, how do you go from living with that condition to wanting to inspire others to launch a career as a coach where you will be helping so many others deal with the consequences of living with an autoimmune disease. Well, this is what we talk about as well as other topics on the podcast today because my guest is Amy Behimer.

Let me tell you a little bit about Amy. Amy is a doctor of pharmacy and a nationally board certified health and wellness coach who lives with multiple sclerosis. She uses her education, training, and her firsthand experience navigating life with autoimmune disease to help people change in a way that feels good so it lasts for good. She created and uses her framework, the Habit Hub for Autoimmune Health, to do it and host a weekly podcast by the same name. It covers the six key areas of lifestyle habits proven to help people feel and function at their best, diagnosis and all. She supports people through coaching, teaching, and cultivating community, so I know you will enjoy listening to Amy as much as I enjoyed recording the podcast.

So, you are now a health and wellness coach. Having started out as a pharmacist, can you talk about that transition? What was the impetus for becoming a health coach? And you’ve also struggled with MS. I know that played a part in your journey as well.

Amy: Absolutely. You nailed the three lenses through which I really see the world and help my clients and people is this health coach piece, this pharmacist piece, as well as living with multiple autoimmune diagnoses but most notably in my life would be multiple sclerosis or MS. So, to be fair, I haven’t fully transitioned. I do still work as a pharmacist as well, and I just love the pharmacist part of me. Not that I’m using that degree or that license or that skill set in any way other than just how it’s shaped me as a person. It has me really valuing evidence-based medicine. And with coaching, what that looks like is what are the things that the science tells us, things related to positive psychology, which I learned in great deal at FMCA. And what do we know about how humans change in a way that feels good so that it is sustainable? And so, yeah, I love the pharmacist piece of me because it’s all about order, and it’s all about organization and really using good quality science in this approach to what we can take control of in our lifestyle.

Dr. Sandi: It’s so, so critical. And I’m sure in your role as a pharmacist, you see the best and the worst of our current healthcare system, which is sick care. So, what is that like when you see patients come in and they are on multiple medications? What is that like for you? And personally, how do you deal with that? And also tie that into the role of habit change and helping people to change their lifestyle habits so that they will need less of that medication or maybe not at all in some cases?

Amy: Yeah, that’s such a good question. Yeah. As a pharmacist, I work in acute care setting. So, in a large hospital where people are coming in because they need us acutely, surgeries and these different aspects that come up when we really do need good quality healthcare. So, I see less of the outpatient side as a pharmacist, but it really is… It has helped me in my coach training. I remember when I was in… It’s been five years, but when I was in class at FMCA, there were a lot of classmates who maybe didn’t have an expertise or a degree in the healthcare setting. And I think that they often looked at myself or other people, and they shared this as well of, “Oh, it must be so nice to have this piece of this expertise.” And that’s what’s so amazing about coaching is that you take that expert hat off.

I keep the expert hat on of habits and behavior change, but I really take off the expert hat of me having the answer for what you need to do. And so I think that having that piece of it and knowing that’s not what I’m going to use when I’m helping someone was such a powerful thing, because I imagined that if I didn’t have it, I would also be thinking, “Oh, I wish I had that.” But in pharmacy for so many years, being the expert of helping counsel patients and help them try to make changes, it doesn’t work as the experts. So, really helping people tap into their expertise.

And the other side of it is me being in the healthcare system as a patient really helps me help my clients, because a lot of what we talk about sometimes is how to better navigate the health system, and how to advocate for yourself, and how to ask the right questions and how to really develop the rapport with your providers so that we can set people up for the best possible scenario when it comes to their interactions with the healthcare system. And most of my clients do have chronic diseases. I help people with autoimmune diseases. And so most of them have a very real need for good, strong physicians and oftentimes medications that help change the course of their disease. And so it’s a fact of life that we really need to find the synergy between these two.

So many places are pitting one area against the other. People will come and say, “I’m only treating this naturally,” versus, “Oh, I think I’m treating it naturally. I’m on a disease-modifying therapy, but I’m also doing everything I can with lifestyle.” And so really helping people see that there’s a synergy between the two. They’re going to lift each other up in every way and that we don’t have to choose between the two is a super helpful approach to take.

Dr. Sandi: Oh, absolutely. It’s never either/or, but it is looking at a continuum of care and…

Amy: Absolutely.

Dr. Sandi: And always an integrative approach. So, people can get tied into one methodology, and that never works because it’s personalized. And what is personalized for each individual is this… Well, you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And often it’s trial and error in terms of what works. How do you actually work with clients? Can you share that process in taking somebody from the traditional sick care where they’re coming from to that true healthcare, which is what you are doing as a health coach?

Amy: Absolutely. So, I work with clients both one-on-one but mostly in a group coaching program. And sometimes they’re called programs. Sometimes they’re called memberships. Sometimes they’re called group coaching groups. But really it’s an experience. It is bringing people together all with the common goal of wanting to create autoimmune health, which is really the language that we speak. Yes, we have an autoimmune disease. That part is the uncontrollable part. Then we look at, okay, but what in our life is controllable. That is the part that we call autoimmune health. That’s our habits. That’s our movement, our food, our mindset, our relationships, all of these things that we do have control over.

And so in the group setting, it’s called the club or CLUB Habit Hub. And we come together, and there’s really three pillars. There’s coaching. So, there is live coaching with me together every single week. There’s a curriculum. So, throughout the years, I have run courses, and I will do workshops and trainings, and I have video lessons. That is housed inside a membership portal, and that is for the in-between times when we’re not actually working together. So, people can still be learning these various things that they need.

And then the third piece of it is community. Really bringing together a way for us to be in community with each other because there is nothing more powerful than going after similar things together with people that are putting their health a priority. And the research shows that time and time again how powerful that is. So, many people come to me, and they have been jaded by free online communities, whether it’s a Facebook group or various things. And so they’re very worried about what is this community piece. Because if it’s not moderated by somebody who is taking the various pitfalls into account, it can be a dumping ground for unsolicited advice or a dumping ground for everything going wrong. And so I’m very intentional to keep using the word community but really try to express that it is using community all in the name of how it helps us reach our goals.

Dr. Sandi: That is beautifully said, and I’m glad you brought it up. It’s not talked about often because we typically see these Facebook groups as a source of support and information. But it’s like the Wild West out there in terms of people starting these Facebook groups based on a disease, a condition. I know somebody who swears by it. They’re going into that Facebook group and getting their advice. They’re acting on what people say in the Facebook group. And often it’s not right. It’s one person’s experience that is often biased. So, while it can be a tremendous source of support to know you’re not alone, it can be, in some cases, harmful and guided community. That’s the beauty of group coaching where you have the support of your peers, also have the guidance, the professionalism of the facilitator, which is what you do.

Amy: Yeah. And the other neat thing about the group setting is, again, going back to the science, we know why goals fail. And I talk about these top six reasons that will usually be the thing that trips us up when we’re going after a goal. So, knowing why they fail, I created the group in a way that really solves for each and every one of those reasons. And the neat thing is that community often is a piece in that accountability, in the various places to celebrate wins, the places to share, the reminders of things. And so it really is neat when you can have a space where you really get to use what we know and use each other in such a beautiful way to lift each other up.

And really it becomes less about the diagnosis. Some people ask me before joining, “Well, what diagnosis do other people have? And what are they able to do?” And any differences we have are really not accentuated in the group because we’re all after one thing. We are trying to create autoimmune health. And so we may have a different diagnosis, a different ability, different ages, different races, different generations. That’s one of the biggest compliments I’ve ever gotten was one of my clients said, “I love the different generations because I can see what’s coming.” And, yeah, that’s really a beautiful thing when we can come together.

Dr. Sandi: Can you share how you recruit clients to come into the group? How did you just get started? Because we may have some listeners who are health coaches. And frankly, starting a group can be very scary, and they don’t know where to start, how to get clients, how to lead a first session. So, can you share some of that and what it was like, how long you’ve been running these groups, and how it got started?

Amy: Sure. So, I definitely started with one-on-one. I definitely spent a couple years really getting the reps in of figuring out what is my process. There is no way to learn what your process is going to be until you just start coaching, until you get those reps. And so my very first client ever was a friend of a friend, and he is still my client. And it’s the most beautiful relationship because I think that he changed my life in every way, and he thinks I changed his life in every way. And everybody has a win-win. So, it starts with your community, your network. Who do you know? Let anybody know what you’re doing, how you can help, and just be willing to do it messy because we learn in the doing.

That’s the exact same way when someone sets out with a goal for the week, and they’re going to learn what worked and what didn’t in the actual doing. We can sit on a call and hypothesize all we want, but we learn in the doing. So, I started with one-on-one. I’ve always invested in support, meaning I say all the time that support, instead of being something that, “Oh, I failed, so I need to get help,” I just embrace that there is somebody doing this that is a little further along that can see things I can’t see in my own mind, and I am going to always have a place to go for support. And I think that my clients really feel that because they know that I’m really modeling… In a lot of ways, I’m creating autoimmune health with them for myself, and they feel that. But I’m also modeling that I’m asking for support in the ways that I need to reach my goals, which for the past five years has really been to get this coaching business flourishing and helping as many people as possible. So, yeah, it starts with that.

One great exciting thing that I really also would encourage people to do is get to know other people in the space. So, for me, I’ve really reached out and partnered with organizations that are doing amazing things for people that could use coaching. So, I’ve partnered with the National MS Society, and we just completed our second study, our second six-month pilot where we’re actually studying the results of what six months of one-on-one coaching can do for somebody who’s newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And we’re actually able to present those results this spring at a large conference with a lot of medical professionals and patients, so it’s exciting. And other organizations I’ve reached out to and just offer to give value. I offer to give presentations. I offer to give workshops. I really think that coaching is hard to explain, especially if your clients are ones that haven’t had a coach before. And so any opportunity that you can have to let people experience coaching, lead with that. Try to get in rooms and spaces with people where they can really see what it’s really like to interact with a coach. It’s not just me telling you more information. I want to hear from you, and I want to respond to that.

Dr. Sandi: Congratulations on that study and collaborating with the MS Society. I think that’s huge. And so we’ll be rooting for you. And I can’t wait to learn more about that study and the results. And that’s a wonderful accomplishment, because it’s one thing to know it works anecdotally, but to have the evidence in terms of some research behind it. And I’ve just finished reviewing hundreds of studies for a new book that I have, and it’s irrefutable. Coaching works. And no matter what condition you name, there’s a study out there, one in progress, that is looking at how… For COPD. For Parkinson’s disease. For presurgical preparation, it reduces the number of hospital stays or readmissions. It is just really encouraging to see how much research is out there.

Amy: That’s a great point because when people start working with me, one of the first things we do is, what does working mean for you? So, I could have 10 different people. And if our coaching relationship and the club are my coaching container, if they, at the end of the day, say, “Oh, my gosh. This is working,” it could look different for all 10 of them.

Dr. Sandi: Of course.

Amy: So, it really takes pausing and having them clearly define what works and then watching them step into that is the most beautiful place to be as a coach.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. So, how do you… Speaking of steps, somebody comes in, they may have some general goals, “I want to feel better. I want more energy. I want to deal better with my autoimmune condition,” how do you take that to small actionable steps that will actually be effective?

Amy: I love that question. And I love habits in so many ways. I’ve really hitched my entire coaching philosophy on habits, because aside from making up to 40% to 50% of our day, they are really the vision that we have for our life, which we call autoimmune health. In my world, that’s our language. They really are our vision in action. They are the daily things, the weekly things, the monthly things that are going to add up over time into that big picture.

So, the steps really are first zooming out. So, some people call it a vision. Some people call it, you know, what a vision statement is. What party are we planning that we want to get to? We want to make sure that we’re planning a party we want actually want to attend. So, that’s the zoomed out version. Then we really zoom in on what are the habits that are going to get us there. This isn’t something that when I finished the coaching program or when I got my board certification that I was just ready. I really had to spend the time to develop what my tool was going to be.

But what it’s ended up as, it’s a framework, and it’s called the Habit Hub for Autoimmune Health. It’s also the name of my podcast, and it’s also my process. It’s a little bit of everything. It’s an approach that works because it’s a framework that is holistic. It’s balanced, and it allows us to work on habits to get us to that big goal that are both what I call inner habits and outer habits.

So, the inner habits are our thoughts and our feelings and that mindset piece that drive everything we do. The fact that one framework, one process that we learn and become fluent in and that we live can encompass all of those things—how we’re thinking, how we’re feeling, the emotional health, the physical health on tough days. That is what has made it so useful of a tool because then we can really keep coming back to the basics of these six different spokes of the Habit Hub.

Dr. Sandi: That sounds like it’s really effective. It’s your process. You’ve really nailed down that process. So, you mentioned not just physical health but emotional health. So, coaches aren’t therapists. They’re not counselors, but they do support people to better mental health. It goes along with physical health. So, can you share how you guide people towards better emotional and mental health in addition to physical health?

Amy: What a good question. First, it starts with awareness that we have thoughts and feelings that precede everything we do or don’t do. And for a lot of people, even for me before I had my first coach, I didn’t realize how much control we really could have if we paused and looked at, “Well, what am I thinking and what am I feeling?” and how important those feelings are in driving what we do. There’s a lot of overlap with that. And with everything, every goal that we’re going after, if we feel stuck, let’s say we set a goal to move more or to eat better, if we feel stuck, if we ignore the upstream thoughts and feelings behind it, or the mindset behind it, or the our approach, then it can really feel hard and like we’re just white knuckling it. And so the way I approach it is that these are all habits. We have habitual ways of thinking, we have habitual ways of feeling, and we have habitual things we do. And so we break it down at which step to see which habit we’re actually going to be changing, and we change all of them together. But sometimes to really help us focus in, we look at those different layers of the habit.

Dr. Sandi: That makes a lot of sense.

Amy: Yeah.

Dr. Sandi: So, in addition to running your groups, you also have a podcast.

Amy: I do.

Dr. Sandi: And I was fortunate enough to have been a guest on your podcast. Describe your podcast and what was the impetus for you to launch a podcast?

Amy: This is a nice tie in to your earlier question. So, if you’re listening and you are like, “Yeah, but how do I find clients? How do I reach people who maybe need me?” What I realized in my first couple years of coaching is that anybody who decided, “Okay, I want to work with her,” and took that often brave plunge to have their first coach, it was because I had spent some time with them. So, maybe I gave a presentation. Maybe, again, I knew them through somebody. Maybe I did a free class that they attended. And realizing that, I thought, “Oh, I really want to talk to people.” That’s finding what your strengths are and leaning into those. And so I thought, “I want and I love podcasts. I feel like I am friends with the podcast that I listen to.” And so I thought, “Okay, what if I could just get my message out, do some teaching, do some coaching in a way that people could feel, again, that experience of coaching instead of just seeing it on a web page or reading in an email. That really was the impetus for it.”

So, very early I thought I’m going to do this. And so, again, I got support. I got a basic podcasting course to help get me started. I landed on a framework that I felt like, “Okay, I can do this each week.” And now I think I just got to about my 100th episode. Someone told me very early that the first 50 podcasts, they’re for you. You learn your voice. You learn your style. And it was about the earmark, which would have been about 50. I was like, “Oh, gosh. Whoever that was, we just need to do it messy, show up, and done is a whole lot better than good.” And I go back, and I’m still super proud of those early ones. And hearing from people that they start from the beginning, it makes my day. And, yeah, it’s such a fun outlet to get to speak to people because at the end of the day, I just want to be in a room with people. I want to be able to hear from them. Your coach is listening. You know that, yes, we have good information, but the best teaching that I can do is when it’s responding to a question, when someone is asking me something and I have a chance to ask a couple questions of them to make sure that I’m really addressing what they really want to have addressed.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. And you are so inspirational. And we tell our graduates, your unique story is enough. That’s your brand. You go out and you tell your story. And often in narrative work, somebody’s story, it can be a story that would be more of like someone who’s a victim or more of a negative theme to the story, having a lot of adversity. And with what you have suffered from in terms of your MS diagnosis, you could have gone that path but you didn’t. It became a redemptive story, because you are using that now to not only thrive yourself but helping millions of others. And so I just wonder if you could comment on that, like how you have taken that physical setback and learn to thrive and become resilient and help others?

Amy: Such a good question. And I have to say it was the first coach that I had. I remember, speaking of those inner habits, the thoughts, I remember when I was diagnosed… Because I knew a lot. I had already been through pharmacy school. I knew what was going on in my nervous system, and it was scary. And I remember I had the thought my life will always be worse. I have what is called a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disease. My life will be worse. And the first coach that asked me like, “That’s a thought. That’s not necessarily true.” And it blew my mind of, “Wait, that doesn’t have to be the truth that my life is worse.”

So, flipping that, I became, “What if my life could be better? How could it be better?” And our brains love to go find evidence for whatever good questions we give it. And so with that new slightly softer thought of, “Oh, what if I could be healthier in some ways?” Then instead of feeling that devastation, instead of feeling that doom and gloom, I started to feel hopeful, curious, and started actually, again, reaching out. What about functional medicine? I started learning about it for myself, and I went first.

And so when I went back, I knew I wanted to go back to school. At first, I looked, “Do I want to become a functional medicine practitioner?” And I thought, “No. I already am the expert somewhere. I want to coach.” And so that’s when I found FMCA. And it’s a big identity shift when you tell people, “Oh, yeah. I’m going to be a coach.” And they’re like, “What? You’re a pharmacist.” And I just had to trust. It’s okay if people don’t get it. I knew the profound impact I had.

If you’re a coach, when you’re living in the transformation of coaching, when you get to experience, when someone helps you see something that you can’t see, or when you are asking for support, when you go to coach, I think my clients feel it. They know it. They know that I really believe in coaching. It has really changed my perspective, my skill set, and helps me be such a better coach. And what I just walked through there, those are those layers of the habit. That thought of my life will be worse, I approached it like a habit, and I shifted it to the thought, “Oh, my life could be better.” And with that feeling became more habitual, that hope became more of the go-to in my body versus the fear. And then like magic, only it’s not magic, it’s neuroscience. Like magic, you start to do things different. You start to act out of those more useful emotions. And I tell everybody, it’s tough to hear that from someone and say, “Oh, we’ll just think more positive.” There really is a process behind it. There’s a strategy and a science behind it that is very learnable and very available to everybody. So, if it sounds like, “Oh, must be nice,” I promise you I like to also say that I’m showing the work behind coaching. There is a way that we can do this in a way that feels good.

Dr. Sandi: Oh, absolutely. We feel good, and our clients are thriving. And this is truly a profession that brings joy, brings transformation. And so I am so glad that you made that transition, that you are still on that journey. And I think you’re a good example that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We have many people who are still keeping their jobs, so to speak. And they’re doing this as their passion when they are not at that previous work. They are fitting it in. That is what they love. It’s like an actor who is working at one job but then they are performing and they are still there honing their craft and they’re doing that as their passion. And so it’s a common way of working. But some people do choose to change careers totally and whatever works.

Well, this has been such a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for being here. And, Amy, how can people reach you?

Amy: I can be found at www.amybehimercoaching.com. That’ll have all the information, but my podcast information we can leave, it’s “The Habit Hub for Autoimmune Health.” Anybody can reach out for anything. Like I said, the communities that we build as coaches are everything. I still keep in touch with people from my FMCA class, and we can all just learn so much from each other. Back to your question of how to serve people and find people, I created a quiz last year that is really neat. It helps you identify your number one habit because there are so many things we could be doing. So, it really helps us simplify it to the next step that’s available too if anybody’s curious to see more about that.

Dr. Sandi: That’s great. I love quizzes.

Amy: Yep, I love quizzes.

Dr. Sandi: Well, thank you so much.

Amy: I appreciate you. And, again, FMCA is such a big part of my journey. And stressing and the importance of getting board-certified by the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching was such good advice as we were going through FMCA and has really served me well to be in that directory, and that’s another place that people can find us, our directories. And so thank you for your guidance and for founding something that didn’t exist before and was such a big part of my story. So, I appreciate you.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you.