We've all heard of business mentoring, but what about healthy life mentoring? This new and innovative approach to fitness and nutrition could be the key to losing weight and adopting the healthy lifestyle many of us know we should be living. Healthy life mentoring isn't just about weight loss, it isn't just about making a lifestyle change: it's about what works for people on a practical, physical and psychological level in order to help them get the most out of every day of their lives.

It's not personal training: it's more holistic and less rigid. Indeed, a lot of this coaching can be done online. Rather than forcing you to adopt a strict diet and punishing exercise routine, a healthy life mentor gives you the tools to transform your body and your mind. It improves your exercise confidence, teaching you to engage with exercise more fully, and shows you how to eat sensibly without denying yourself.

The success of online weight loss mentoring lies in the sense of ownership it gives you. Ownership equals engagement and engagement equals motivation. A healthy life mentor doesn't tell you what to do-instead, they empower you to make your own decisions about healthy eating and exercise, giving a much-needed boost to your self-efficacy and self-esteem. With confidence and knowledge, you're much more likely to succeed.

This is certainly the experience of Karen James, who began working with a healthy life mentor after years of struggling with her weight. "My mentor completely changed my outlook," says James. "She made me realise that I'd been approaching weight loss in totally the wrong way-I'd go on a diet, lose weight, stop dieting, put the weight back on and hate myself".

Under the guidance of her healthy life mentor, James learned that she needed to adopt long-term, sustainable changes to food and exercise, which meant changing her mental approach to healthy living. "My mindset was holding me back," she says. "I saw weight loss as difficult, but it's actually not-my mentor helped me make small changes to my daily habits, and they led to big changes in my body and my mind. I've lost twelve kilos, and I'm not on a diet-I've just changed my habits and my outlook".

More important than the physical transformation, James says, is the mental one: "I feel empowered. I know now that I'm the one who's in charge-I can do whatever I set my mind to".