What is Holistic Health, Step By Step?
Holistic Health, Step by Step is a private healthcare company with the vision of promoting empowerment and understanding within the healthcare setting. We understand that people can struggle to prioritise their health throughout their lives; they could be busy juggling work, family, volunteering, mental health conditions, and various disease states. This is why we put you in the centre of everything we do.
Our healthcare experts understand that change can be a daunting process. You could have been in a long waiting list, you could have tried multiple different resources to help you, or you could simply be overwhelmed by all the information that has been given to you and not know where to start. We emphasise an easy onboarding process to ensure you will be able to put the right foot forward in the next step of your journey.
However, we also understand that moving from a supported environment to a self-supported environment can bring its own difficulties and, hence, we will work with you to ensure that you have a support network in place and troubleshoot any problems that may occur so you can be confident in leaving Holistic Health as a healthier and happier you.
Our Principles
Promoting Self-Empowerment
We do not want to encourage reliance on healthcare professionals, we want you to be able to take ownership of your health and lifestyle. Using our expertise in behaviour change and specifying our care to you, the individual, we will empower you to do everyday activities to enable a healthier you.
Evidence-Based Practice
At Holistic Health, we understand the allure of the recent fad diets and quick fixes that are available for numerous conditions. However, our healthcare experts are qualified to provide modern interventions that will help you in the long-term to improve your health and wellbeing. We pride ourselves on an evidence-based approach to holistic health, integrating current research, extensive clinical experience, and continuous professional development.
Healthy Relationhips
Having both a strong social network and a healthy relationship with food has been shown repeatedly to be beneficial to our health. A support network will enable you to be accountable in your journey of change and motivate you to continue a healthy lifestyle. Having a healthy relationship with food has numerous physical and psychological benefits, and food is often central to our social networks.
Prioritising Health
We understand that you may have personal goals such as fitting into the dream wedding dress, being healthy to start or continue a family, or achieve that summer body. Using the advice of our experts we will help you employ sustainable changes for a lifelong benefit to ensure that quality of life improves, not just the number on a scale. We will work with you towards these goals whilst helping you build the sustainable behaviours that will lead to a longer, healthier life.
Our Founder
Our founder, Douglas Livingston, has over 15 years’ experience in coaching and the healthcare setting. Initially following an interest in mental health with a psychology degree, he worked with a national charity becoming trained in aiding those with numerous health conditions and developing a passion for enabling others to lead the way in their own healthcare journeys. Following this he worked with those in addictions with complex mental health needs.
Doulgas then studied nutrition and dietetics working across Lothian and NHS GGC in gold standard weight loss services, diabetes services, eating disorders services, and community outreach. It was during this time that Douglas spearheaded an award-winning sustainable eating and cooking campaign and worked to introduce an educational programme to supplement the release of modern weight loss medications to the UK for a leading UK pharmacy.
Douglas is an expert in motivational coaching and sustainable diets and cooking, with other clinical expertise in eating disorders, weight change, and diabetes, and the dietary impact upon mental health. He has a growing interest in the holistic impact on the gut-brain axis, gut microbiome, and neurodivergence.
In his spare time you can often find him nerding out over the latest research article in psychology or nutrition, training to return to martial arts, or socialising over a new board game or TTRPG. He also has a keen interest in animals and can often be found surrounded by rabbits, cats, dogs or amused by the antics of the local wildlife.
