Hi, my name is Celeste Sullivan and I am a Certified Health Coach, Clinical Mental Health Graduate student and creator of The Kitchen Coach, LLC. I have been working in the Cardinal Kitchens with both staff and clients. I work directly with clients who want to make health improvements, I start by learning about them, their values, aspirations, and we work together to create a realistic plan to make slow and steady progress towards healthier eating habits. I meet monthly or bimonthly with these clients, using the first half of our session for health coaching and the second portion for a hands-on cooking lesson! For some Cardinal homes, I am working more directly with staff, teaching practical cooking skills and helping to set house goals to work towards serving healthy whole food meals.

Outside of my work in the homes I am creating educational training videos for Cardinal, on the value of whole foods and more importantly how to cook beans, whole grains, veggies, nuts and seeds in a delicious, simple and efficient way. My passion for whole foods comes from my experience healing from health problems I accumulated while growing up on the Standard American Diet. I understand what it feels like to be overweight, lack energy and feel depressed, which helps me empathize and understand that changing habits is not an overnight change, yet a gradual series of small steps that add up to better health.

So far we have made progress in increasing the amount of whole foods being served in our Cardinal homes and have seen some of the rewards of those changes! Both our staff and clients have seen progress in some cases! Multiple staff from nurses to maintenance staff have found relief from chronic arthritis pain, greater energy, more regular bowel movements and weight loss. One in-home client has lost 25 pounds since the fall, another Cardinal client has leveled out her blood sugars while another lost 20 pounds since September. Their success is a result of changed behavior and is my number one focus in working with both the staff and clients at Cardinal.