Episode 183 | Jun 4, 2026

Bringing Health Coaching to Higher Education, With Krisler Bailey

What if health coaching skills could help students navigate college, manage stress, and build confidence for adulthood? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes FMCA graduate and executive function coach Krisler Bailey for a conversation about using health coaching in innovative, non-traditional ways. By combining functional medicine principles with executive function coaching, Krisler supports teens and young adults as they build sustainable habits, improve focus, and develop the skills they need to thrive academically and personally.

“There’s a lot of things that students deal with that they’re not really prepared for. So, I like to work with clients before they even enter into that transition to start getting them to think about those things and start preparing themselves for those next steps.”

Krisler Bailey, FMCHC

With a background in sociology and education, Krisler always had a deep interest in the connection between health, behavior, and well-being. After discovering functional medicine and health coaching, she realized these skills could complement her work with students in powerful ways. In her conversation with Dr. Sandi, Krisler shares how coaching transformed not only her professional approach as an educator, but also her communication with her own children and family. Together, they explore the growing challenges facing today’s students, including stress, sleep deprivation, social media overload, anxiety, and the overwhelming transition to independent living in college. Krisler also explains how executive functioning skills impact everything from time management and decision-making to eating habits, self-advocacy, and emotional resilience.

For health coaches, this episode highlights the expanding opportunities to apply coaching skills far beyond traditional wellness settings. Krisler’s work demonstrates how active listening, positive psychology, and collaborative goal setting can support clients in education, parenting, leadership, and everyday life. The conversation also reinforces a core principle of health coaching: clients often already hold the answers within themselves, and meaningful change comes through guidance, reflection, and support rather than advice-giving alone.

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Transcript

Dr. Sandi: Welcome to another episode of “Health Coach Talk.” Today, we’re going to dive into health coaching, but from a different perspective. We’re going to talk about how to use your health coaching skills in non-traditional, innovative ways. So, I’m really excited to share my conversation with Krisler Bailey. She is an FMCA graduate. Let me tell you a little bit about her.

She’s an executive function coach and college success strategist, who helps teens and young adults build the skills that they need to thrive academically and personally. She’s a graduate of FMCA, and she integrates functional medicine principles with executive function coaching to foster sustainable health habits, improve focus, and greater independence. Through her work, she empowers students to navigate the transition to college and adulthood with confidence, clarity, and resilience. I know you are going to really enjoy my conversation with Krisler. Krisler, welcome to “Health Coach Talk.” It is such a pleasure to have you.

Krisler: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to talk with you.

Dr. Sandi: You have a wonderful journey. And you became a health coach and you graduated from FMCA. And I’d like for you to share just how did that training really shape your perspective and what you’re doing right now.

Krisler: Well, most of my career, I’ve been in education. Learning how to talk with people and how to listen and how to really help them identify what’s going on has really helped my being a professor. I’ve learned how to listen to my students. I’ve learned how to teach them better. I’ve started doing different things in the classroom, in office hours, but also in my personal life, you know, with my children. Learning how to listen to them when they’re talking about things going on at school or how they’re feeling just really has helped me sort of slow down my parenting. Instead of getting really excited or anxious or what have you, just kind of slowing down and asking them deeper questions, and really having more conversation with them and learning more about them so that I can be a better parent.

Dr. Sandi: I love that. And so many of our graduates say that when they learn coaching skills, they may have come in to learn to become a health coach thinking that they’ll become a health coach and that’s how they will use their skills. But after they graduate, they say, you know, I’m using it in all kinds of situations. I’m using that with my kids, even speaking to somebody in customer service, for example. Having those skills really comes in handy in so many different ways. So, tell us about your background and what led you to make that decision to become a health coach.

Krisler: I had been interested in health and wellness, and how society connects to the individual and their health outcomes for a long time. As a sociology major in undergrad and graduate school, I had really been focusing on medical sociology. So, it’s always been something that’s been there, but I didn’t really know how to use that in a health and wellness aspect. So, of course, I became a sociology professor, and still really loved learning about health.

And I actually started following a functional medicine doctor on Instagram several years ago. And at one point, she mentioned having health coaches as a part of her practice. And I was sort of in transition. I had left my full-time teaching job and just trying to figure out what I was going to do. And when I heard her say that, I was like, oh, what do those health coaches do? And I befriended her and started asking her more questions and asked her about where her coaches were trained because as an educator, I love to learn and I knew I wanted to have really good training. And so, she told me about FMCA. And that’s how I found out about the coaching academy.

So, I was like, yes, this sounds like exactly what I wanted to do. And so, I knew I wanted to continue in the educational space, but also, I knew that with my personal health journey, my husband’s health journey, raising kids and all the noise that we hear through social media and friends and whatnot, I knew I wanted to learn more. I knew I wanted to educate in a different way, help people in a different way. And so, that’s where I turned to FMCA and learning how to be a coach.

Dr. Sandi: That is such a wonderful story, how you happened to discover a functional medicine doctor through Instagram, and that led you eventually to coaching. And what, anything that as you were going through the program…first of all, when did you graduate, and what stood out in terms of what really perhaps made an impact on you?

Krisler: So, I graduated a few years ago now. It’s been almost four years, which is crazy to say. It seems like just yesterday. But I learned so many things when I was going through the program. And what was interesting was I had in my mind what I was going to learn. I thought I was going to be learning about a lot of biology and a lot of nutritional things. And we certainly touched on those things. But when we first started, and really a majority of the time, we were learning about coaching, coaching techniques, positive psychology, active listening, and all these things. I realized that these questions that people come to us with, they really have the ability to answer those questions with some guidance. Right?

So, it wasn’t that I had to know everything. It wasn’t that I had to know all the nuances with nutrition and exercise, and I didn’t have to be the expert, but that I could guide them, I could listen to them, I could provide resources if they needed them, and just really be that support that they never really got when they went to the expert, maybe when they went to their doctor or someone else. So, that was something that was really cool to learn that I didn’t have to be the expert, and that the people that I was working with, they really had the answers on the inside. And I could help them discover those answers in the coaching process.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And I’m so glad that you clarified because it’s a big distinction. And many people think coaching is about giving advice. And many people will come to a coach thinking that they’re going to get a meal plan, they’re going to be told what to eat, how to exercise, being told what to do. Well, first of all, we know that doesn’t work because there’s so much information, people are still not doing it. And also, from the time you graduated, what’s exploded is AI. And so, you can go to ChatGPT Health or Perplexity Health, and you can get tailored, personalized recommendations. And then you can also consult with the experts, with the medical practitioners.

But what a coach does is help people get from where they are to where they want to be, and helping them to also filter out what’s real, what’s noise out there, what is going to be right for them. Because they may see something, let’s say, through AI or through social media, and think, oh, I’m going to try that. But personalizing it, helping them to see it might not be right for them. And there’s been so many studies of health coaching. The number one reason it’s so effective has to do with self-efficacy, helping people to see that, yes, their genes are not their destiny, they can take charge of their health, daily habits do matter. So, what have you seen in your work in terms of people feeling that they can, through coaching, take charge of where they want to be?

Krisler: Mostly, I work with teens and young adults. So, they typically aren’t the ones who are coming to me. It’s their parents that are coming to me, saying, my kid is struggling with x, y, z, and I need you to do this, I need you to teach them about this. A lot of it is time management and various areas of executive function. What I then get across when I have my consults, typically with the client, the potential client and the parent, is that the client is my client, not the parent. So, that’s one thing that sort of knocks down that barrier and makes them more comfortable, but also that I’m not going to be the one that’s telling them everything. I tell them, I’m not your mom, not just going to be telling you what I expect you to do. But I’m going to be spending time getting to know you and getting to what’s actually going on in your situation.

You have all these college students that are really struggling with a variety of things. For example, I have a young man who came to me for time management. And we’ve been talking about all these other things. We’ve been talking about the physical spaces that he’s doing his projects and studying. And we’ve talked about his sleep. We’ve talked about taking his ADHD medication regularly. We’ve talked about his…him taking breaks.

So, what I found is that when I’m talking to my clients, what they’re coming to me with is what they think the issue might be. And then when we get into conversation and we start really drilling down into what’s going on, there’s a variety of things that are happening. And we’re just sort of attacking little by little, not everything at once, but little by little, what do you feel like is going to be the best thing for you to address right now? Why is it that you want to address that right now? How is that going to help you in your current situation? How is that going to help you down the line in the future?

So, having those conversations and really working with my clients, especially the young people who feel like, oh, mom and dad just want me to do this, and I’m gonna have to, this is something you get to take ownership of. This is something I get to help empower you to do.

Dr. Sandi: That is so important. And really that giving them the reassurance that they’re the client, it’s not…you’re not going to be their mom telling them what to do, and also that their parents are not the clients, that they are. Can you talk more about executive function? I don’t know if everybody understands exactly what that is, and how it’s so critical. And perhaps also, how…are there things that people are doing that are hijacking their executive function in terms of their eating habits or poor sleep, as you mentioned?

Krisler: Executive functioning basically are the cognitive processes that we use every day to make decisions, and to think through and process information. And a lot of times, we think of executive function related to adolescents and children, we think of it in relation to school. But again, it’s something that we use every day, all day. We are constantly making decisions, things like what we’re going to wear, what we’re going to eat, how we’re going to get to work that day, which route we’re going to take. We are thinking about things like, you know, students will have to ask questions, self-advocacy, being able to go to office hours. All these things are a part of executive functioning skills. And so, what I find is the biggest barrier sometimes or struggle is that we sort of pigeonhole it into education and schooling. And again, it’s all day long, we’re making decisions and processing information.

So, I find that, again, when students come to me, or maybe their parents come to me, they’re seeing this surface level issue of, well, they don’t turn in their work. But it’s more than not turning in their work. There’s a lot that goes into the process of thinking through completing the assignment, getting it in your backpack, taking it to school, turning it in. So, that’s what we really talk about when we are looking at those different things is all the different steps that it takes to actually get to the end result.

With college students, they are overwhelmed with the decision making, because prior to that, somebody has been making the decision for them. And it may not have been everything, but they don’t realize how much they’ve had to rely on somebody else. So, when it comes to eating, one of the biggest struggles clients come to me with is, they’re like, I don’t know when to eat during the day. They’ve had a very set schedule in grade school and high school where they’ve gone to school from 8 to 3. So, they have breakfast in the morning, they have lunch at school, they have dinner at home with their family, or there’s always some food available for them, even if they have to prepare it themselves.

When they go to college, on the other hand, their schedule is all over the place. So, now, they have to figure out, well, if I have a 9:00 class and a 10:00 class, but I don’t get up until 8:15, do I have enough time to eat? What am I going to eat? Do I have enough time to walk to the cafeteria, then make it to class? All of these decisions come into play. And then they’re thinking, okay, well, if I end class at 11, do I have enough time to study in between classes, get something to eat, go back to my dorm? So, again, processing and trying to make these decisions. And then they get to the middle of the semester and realize, I haven’t had a real meal since I left home. So, there’s those things that they’re not realizing.

Athletes struggle with this. If they have been working out in school for the last four, five, six years, they’ve been on a team, they’ve had a coach, they’ve had a program that they’ve expected to follow. They go to college, they’re no longer an athlete. When do I work out? When do I exercise? So, then they experience fluctuations in their body that they’re not used to, and they’re uncomfortable with. They want to go to maybe the rec center, but they don’t know when to do that and how to fit that into their class schedule.

So, there’s a lot of things that students deal with that they’re not really prepared for. So, I like to work with clients before they even enter into that transition to start getting them to think about those things and start preparing themselves for those next steps.

Dr. Sandi: That is such a good plan. And there are so many issues that you’re bringing up. And what’s your perspective and what are you seeing in terms of how stressed out kids are? And particularly, there’s been a lot of talk about kids being addicted to their phones, to social media. And can you comment on that? What are you seeing in this population?

Krisler: Yeah. The stress is quite high for students. I think there are a number of factors that influence that. Certainly, being away from home. Some of them have never really been away from home for a lengthy amount of time. So, they may be going to another state or across the country or even across the world for school. So, they don’t have their usual support system in place. They are trying to make friends, find their people. That can be stressful. They are in a different environment, a different physical environment. They’ve been in their room for the past four, five, six, however many long years. And now, they’re in a new room, a new physical environment. So, they don’t have the things that they would normally have, or maybe they didn’t realize that they would miss their pets. They would miss their darkening room curtains, those types of things.

So, they’re dealing with a lot of different stimuli. They’re dealing with a lot of new environmental things. They’re dealing with lack of sleep. This is a huge issue. They’re staying up late to study. They’re staying up late scrolling on their phone or watching Netflix. And so, they’re not getting the sleep that they need. And that is a struggle for them because they’re going to class. They’re struggling with attention and focus. And then they’re like, I don’t know what to do with this. So, yeah, the stress definitely is there. And of course, we know, unfortunately, the teen, the adolescent and young adult population is dealing with higher anxiety, higher amounts of depression, things like that. And so, colleges do their best to try to offer resources in terms of mental health services. But they can be overwhelmed with the number of students that are in need.

I love that there are coaches out there that work with this population because they can offer them some support in some of these areas that combines with or is a collaborative effort with the mental health services.

So, you mentioned social media and device addiction. It is rampant. And it’s really unfortunate because they don’t realize what an interruption it is to their day. So, they’re making friends, they don’t know how to make eye contact, they’re not having conversations with people in person. They are, again, scrolling at night. And so, they’re staying up later. So, there are some things that I’m seeing in the classroom and with my clients that are certainly contributors to those higher levels of stress.

Dr. Sandi: It is just a big problem and getting worse. I remember a study, it was a survey a few years ago where they asked college students, would they prefer working with a therapist or a health coach. And overwhelmingly, the preference was for a health coach because they’re familiar with the idea of a coach. And therapist still has that stigma attached. You know, I need a shrink, there’s something wrong with me, be judged. So, growing the opportunities for young people to have health coaches would be phenomenal because we have the research, we show how effective it is.

It was actually very recently, there was a new pilot study, and it was looking at a different population. These were veterans who had just returned from active duty for suicide prevention. They had health coaching. And the reaction, an overwhelming percentage said it was a positive experience for them to work with a health coach. So, there’s just so many applications.

So, turning to those who may be interested in becoming a health coach. So, we tend to think, oh, I’ll be a coach and I’ll work with people on nutrition, for example, helping them to adhere to exercise. But what about for somebody who is already in a career, as you were, and just wants to extend coaching skills to what they’re already doing and particularly in education, which is so critical to have a coach approach?

Krisler: Yeah. I would highly, highly encourage it. Like I said, it has been so helpful for me to learn these skills because when a student comes to me and says, I’m really struggling, I can’t keep up with the work, or I didn’t do as well on a test as I wanted to, I can then sort of help them see what’s really going on. I get to ask them questions that maybe they’ve never thought about before, maybe no one’s asked them before. And it really helps them get down to what’s the root, what is going on.

So, in any occupation, whether you are in law or in medicine, whether you are an engineer, whether you are in construction, you’re going to be working with people. And people are going to be coming to you from all areas and backgrounds. And they may have a problem that seems to be just related to the job. But sometimes there’s a lot more to that. Maybe many times there’s a lot more to that. And it doesn’t mean that on your job, you’re getting into people’s business, but knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing how to listen sort of in between the lines, knowing how to reflect back to people and confirm what you’re hearing is very helpful.

It keeps the lines of communication open so that maybe you solve that issue, but then down the line, they’re probably thinking, you know, that person really was helpful and they really were attentive. They really did pay attention. They’re going to be much more apt to come back to you to hear what you have to say or ask you questions or maybe throw business your way, whatever it is. I really encourage people to consider going through this training. It can be very helpful in both your professional and personal life.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you. This has been so enlightening to learn about what you’re doing. And what is next for you? What are your future plans?

Krisler: Like I said, I’m a mom. So, I’m raising a current teenager and a preteen. So, my plans personally are just to do my best as a parent and to really continue to use the skills that I’ve learned to help develop them into good young men. Professionally, I continue to hope to grow my business. I have a course that I’m relaunching that is first year college students. It’s a DIY course that they can work on and sort of help them transition. I’ve actually started some parent coaching as well. So, again, I coach mostly teens and young adults, but I do find that parents need the support. And so, I’ve started some group coaching for parents, too. So, yeah. So, just expanding that and working more with my population that I love and probably continuing to teach a class or two here and there as I move forward.

Dr. Sandi: Wow. I love that. You are making such a huge impact. And I’m so glad you brought up group coaching because with parents, often, they do feel like we’re the only family that is having these issues, for example. And getting together with parents when I was in special education many, many years ago in the ’70s. And I was working with young children, five and six-year-olds. I got the parents together and just being able to say, oh, yeah, I’m not alone. And I have support. And that is just very, very helpful to feel like you’re part of that community. And kids as well can feel that. I should have asked before, but is your work mostly in person, or is it virtual?

Krisler: It’s virtual. Yes. I do have a couple of clients that I meet with in person because they’re local. But most of my clients are all across the country. So, technology makes it wonderful for me to be able to connect with people that way.

Dr. Sandi: Wonderful. Krisler, where can people find you?

Krisler: You can go to my website. It’s coachingwithkrisler.com. You can also follow me on Instagram. I post a lot of information regarding the college process and lots of resources and tips. So, I’m @professorkrisler there. And then you can also find some videos on YouTube as well, Coaching with Krisler.

Dr. Sandi: Well, check her out. You are a real force, and you’re making a real, real difference. So, thanks for taking the time to be with us today. And let’s stay in touch.

Krisler: Yes. Thank you so much.