Christine Foster calls it a post-holiday hormone reboot.

In a nutshell, it’s a solution to the plagues that are common at this time of year.

“At Christmas there’s so much pressure in buying gifts, work commitments, social parties with friends,” said the holistic health coach who cited fatigue, bloating and weight gain as some of the consequences.

“Trying to balance it all while maintaining your health is difficult. People know they need to eat better but they get stressed out running around. And what happens is they come out of the holidays drained.”

To help, she’s offering a lunchtime programme geared to a maximum of eight people that promises “concrete advice”.

Spread over five weeks, it will “help your liver detox your body effectively and calm your cortisol response”. Participants will receive “manageable recommendations that will be easy to integrate [and] leave [them] feeling much better with less stress”.

Ms Foster battled chronic migraines for more than 30 years before deciding “enough is enough” in 2016.

“I went to the UltraWellness Centre [in Lennox, Massachusetts] and saw Dr Mark Hyman and learnt a lot,” she said. “My cure ended up being a mixture of a healthy diet and lifestyle modifications and western medication. I believe we need all three to achieve health.”

Her road to wellness “sparked an interest” and, in 2018, Ms Foster began training with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York.

“I took the course and I loved it,” she said. “It seemed so right for me. I felt this is what it’s all been leading up to.”

Her studies benefited from the expertise of “top doctors in the field of functional medicine”: Walter Willett of Harvard University; Andrew Weil of the Arizona Centre of Integrative Medicine; Dr Hyman, a New York Times bestselling author and regular contributor to many TV shows; Geneen Roth, a bestselling author and emotional eating expert; Joel Fuhrman, a leading expert on nutritional healing.

She followed that up with an additional course on hormone health to “further my expertise in that area”. On completion she joined local practice Live & Thrive.

“I offer one-on-one health coaching to clients interested in improving their health and wellbeing, especially around hormone health, headaches and migraines,” Ms Foster said. “I can help with thyroid issues, especially subclinical hypothyroidism, blood sugar imbalances and insulin resistance, reproductive hormone imbalances that cause such things as severe PMS. I can also help to decrease perimenopause and menopause symptoms.”

People who sign up for her post-holiday hormone reboot programme will benefit from her knowledge of “cortisol regulation issues and stress management”.

“Hormone health is anything to do with hormones — adrenal glands, thyroid, blood-sugar imbalance, insulin resistance,” she explained. “It can lead to Type 2 diabetes, reproductive hormone imbalance, fertility problems.

“I’m not saying that [what I offer] can cure, but you can do things to help yourself feel better during these times. Eating certain foods will help balance hormones better, there are supplements you can take, lifestyle modifications that can help you not suffer quite so much. It’s really all about the individual and helping them be the best they can be.

“Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone. It’s all about stress balance. I can teach you how to reset your body after the indulgences and stress of the holidays. I can bring the body back to balance by helping the liver detox more efficiently. I can give a strategy for stress management.” Stress, she added, isn’t just the result of fatigue.

“You can work out too much in the gym, do things that are not sustainable and exhaust yourself and get frustrated when you fail. I can help people work out in a way that’s sustainable. They should be thinking, ‘What can I do in January that I can still do in June?’”

Her priority as a health coach is guiding clients based on their individual needs rather than using “a cookie-cutter approach”.

“Anybody can look up nutrition information on the web. It’s more about how to implement it in your life. You [probably know that you] need to eat more vegetables, it’s more about ‘How do I implement them in my life in a way that tastes good?’

“I’m trying to keep you accountable and provide that accountability to help people along with their goals although the goals are driven by the person being coached.”

• Christine Foster’s post-holiday hormone reboot begins January 14. For more information: christine@lifeandthrive.com or 333-0760. Classes are $45 per session or $225 for the full five weeks. Ms Foster is offering a special price of $249 per month for one-on-one coaching to the first five people who sign up based on this article