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My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 7 – 9
If you keep up with me on social media you may probably already know that I not only finished the Nutritional Therapy Association Program in June and graduated, but I totally aced my exams and I am now an officially certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. Woohoo!! I have also already begun seeing a small amount of clients. It’s been a whirlwind of a year and I went ahead and just hit the ground running since graduation – then I realized that I never updated and finalized this series. This is the last post chronically my journey to becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner with the Nutritional Therapy Association, speaking to the final 3 months of the program. I plan to, from here, create one final post that is an FAQ of sorts, that I will continue to update as people reach out to me with questions about my experiences, since sadly I don’t always have the time to reply to each and every email, as much as I would love to. If you have any questions in regards to the program or my certification, please feel free to leave a note here in the comments or reach out via email.
My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 7, 8 & 9
This post continues to share my journey of becoming a Nutritional Therapist with the Nutritional Therapy Association, covering Months 7, 8, and 9, April, May and June. To read more about how I came to selecting this program and to read about Month 1 of the program, see my first post. To read about months 2 and 3, month 4 and months 5 & 6 you can read more at those respected links.
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My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 5 & 6
My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 5 & 6
This post continues to share my journey of becoming a Nutritional Therapist with the Nutritional Therapy Association, covering Months 5 and 6, February and March. To read more about how I came to selecting this program and to read about Month 1 of the program, see my first post. To read about months 2 and 3, read my second post and to read about month 4 read my third post.
Month 5
The fifth month of this program was by far the most challenging for me, the content continued to roll in and simultaneously we were preparing for our mid-term examinations, the first weekend of March. Being a self proclaimed perfectionist I wanted to ace the exams, while of course, I also really wanted all of the content to be very clear to me. That meant lots of studying, lots of flash cards, memorizing and generally freaking myself out! It worked! I missed one tiny little thing on my written mid-term examination and had 1/2 point taken off on my functional evaluation practical exam. ACED!
Month 6
The first weekend of month 6 was our second workshop weekend, 4 long days. First we had our exams and then we spent the remainder of the weekend going over the content we had covered since our last meeting as well as continuing to practice the functional evaluations (you can read more about function evaluations here). After the workshop weekend we were on term break for just under 1 month. Read the rest of this entry »
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My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Month 4
My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Month 4
This post continues to share my journey of becoming a Nutritional Therapist with the Nutritional Therapy Association, covering Month 4, January. To read more about how I came to selecting this program and to read about Month 1 of the program, see my first post. To read about months 2 and 3, read my second post.
Month 4
After our first workshop weekend and the holiday break, we hit the ground running at the start of January. We dove straight into Mineral Balance and then Hydration, the final two modules focused on the foundations. The foundations being, Digestion, Blood Sugar Regular Regulation, Fatty Acids, Mineral Balance and Hydration and of course, a properly prepared nutrient-dense, whole food diet. It was nice to finish with hydration, really honing in the classic “last but not least” cliché.
As we have continued to submerge ourselves into the content with the Nutritional Therapy Program, especially the foundations, I am continuing to connect deeply with the NTA’s individualistic approach to nutrition. Honoring that we are all bio-chemical individuals, means that there is no one catch-all diet, plan or protocol for every person. We are all very different. There are certainly constants and research that suggests specific nutritional approaches to be ideal, such as the avoidance of refined sugars, processed foods, hydrogenate oils, etc. As my intuition has always directed me to suggesting that people “nourish their own individuality”, this program really supports my personal approach. It feels good to feel validated and to continue to hone my skills in approaching food, nutrition, and overall health and wellness in this manner. I love that this program teaches a very foundational and functional approach to nutrition, not relying solely on on specific diet or slapping supplements on symptoms, especially those associated with the consequences, as a bandaid! This approach is not just how I live my own life, it is what I feel called to encourage others to do as well! I want to help people find their inner guiding voice and couple that with an arsenal of nutritional knowledge, to be able to intuitively navigate their way towards healing.
I am also continuously grateful for the virtual platform that the NTA program is built on. I have discovered, that I learn so much more effectively when I am able to take in the content at my own speed, when it fits best into my life, vs. the structure of a timed class-setting. I also love that in addition to a virtual class setting, with multiple platforms to reach out to each other, there are three times throughout the program where we gather to have in-person workshop weekends, where we can connect with our fellow students, instructors and previous students, which really gives me something to look forward to.
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My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 2 & 3
My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Months 2 & 3
This post continues to share my journey of becoming a Nutritional Therapist with the Nutritional Therapy Association. To read more about how I came to selecting this program and to read about Month 1 of the program, see my first post.
Months 2 & 3
I am combining months 2 & 3 together, as month 2 (November) was a regular, in-session month but at start of month 3 we had our first intensive in-person workshop weekend, followed by our holiday break.
The intensity and speed at which we were covering the first modules in month 1, has certainly calmed down a bit and with me finally catching up to my classmates (and our curriculum calendar), I am feeling much less pressure. I feel like I can breath and I can really let the content sit with me and permeate a bit more. For what it’s worth, the intensity I am speaking about, these are all things our instructors advised us of, going into the program. So I was certainly aware of this fact from the start and I wasn’t alone in feeling that way, I am sure. The content and reading materials are already starting to click quicker as new topics arise, pulling in previous content that we covered.
Most exciting about these past two months, was our first in-person workshop weekend, where we had the opportunity to meet our fellow classmates, as well as go over the content in person and ask questions of our instructors. Additionally we further honed our skills of client interviewing, analyzing Nutritional Assessment Questionnaires and Food Journals and making nutritional recommendations based on all of these tools and we learned and practiced the hands-on functional evaluation skills, for the modules we had already covered.
If you haven’t researched the NTA or if you’ve never worked with a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner you may not know what the terms Functional Evaluation and Lingual-Neuro Testing refer to:
Functional Evaluations are one of the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner tools for assessing a client’s health. Using the innate connection between nerve endings at skin level and the body’s internal organs, NTP’s can determine where dysfunction is occurring. Reflex points connect to the neuro-vascular and neuro-lymphatic pathways which surround every organ system in the body. When an organ is in stress, these pathways accumulate fluid around them (called venous or lymphatic congestion) to support healing. This congestion results in tenderness of the reflex points.
Lingual-Neuro Testing (LNT) is a valuable biofeedback tool that enables a health care provider to determine the usefulness of a nutritional supplement before it is dispensed to the client. LNT accesses the body’s innate ability to discriminate between what it needs, and what it does not need, in order to correct a specific problem–a weak organ or a nutritional deficiency, for example. This simple and effective technique makes the difference between a generic nutritional therapy plan and a personalized one.
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My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner – Month 1
My Path to Becoming a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner
When I started Tasty Yummies, I was never inclined to create a journal of my own personal health journey, so I often refrain from getting super personal with my healing protocols and health challenges. I have consciously avoided flooding these pages with every discovery in my own ever-evolving health and dietary challenges or with every personal plan of action. Without any certification or credentials I often found myself feeling restricted from sharing too much of the self-initiated research I was doing, as I am hyper-aware of the barrage of claims made by bloggers without credible research or science to back it up. Mostly, I have always wanted Tasty Yummies to simply be a safe space to celebrate delicious, nourishing real food, and hopefully, a place to provide inspiration to empower others to take control of their health and to be open to discovering new foods themselves, whatever their restrictions or personal path may be. I have always sought to create a place to share my personal stories when appropriate and to cultivate a virtual connection among a supportive community of open-minded souls.
The fact remains however, that this website and my recipes wouldn’t exist without the many challenges I have experienced in my ongoing journey towards healing. Hidden within my own personal struggles emerged the desire to share, share, share! While none of my issues, in my mind, should be classified as “severe” or life threatening and while I don’t have epic before and after photos from an intense and acute health transformation, I would certainly still consider many of my health struggles to be chronic and some still unresolved. I am quite literally learning right along side many of you.
The Challenges.
As a child I dealt with a weakened immune system, allergies and asthma, migraines and troubled digestion. As life moved on, I discovered a severe gluten intolerance, and have now been gluten-free over 10 years – while this major dietary adjustment has certainly helped with some of these symptoms, I continued to suffer. In the early years of my adult life, even after going gluten-free, I struggled with weight gain and acne, chronic sinus infections, lack of energy and so much more, further adjusting of my diet has tackled much of this, but last year I was also diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, an autoimmune form of kidney disease. Consequently in the process of treating the kidney disease I also discovered through the help of my naturopathic doctor, that I was struggling with what we believe to be leaky gut, likely from the months of pharmaceuticals prescribed to me for the kidney disease. While I am still smack in the middle of this ongoing work to get my kidney disease in remission and my body to a point where I can feel good each and every day, I continue to share the recipes I am creating in my own kitchen, often part of my own healing path, in hopes that they may inspire some of you, within your own individual health journey, to feel less overwhelmed as you reconfigure your diets.
Why I want to Know More.
As a result of my own individual research and constant trials with nutrution, diet and supplementation, through my lens of seeing food as medicine and knowing that real food heals, I have come to the understanding that we are all bio-chemical individuals and there is no one protocol, diet or plan for all of us, there can’t be, we are all such beautiful and unique beings. I myself have always refrained from labeling my diet or pushing myself and this blog towards one specific label, as I find this to be ever-evolving process and for me, labeling my diet is not something I have ever felt called to. As with most everything in my life, my intuition instead constantly leads me towards balance and simplicity and learning to listen to my body’s innate cues, rather than adopting a static list of firm Do’s and Don’ts. I have found myself on a path of constant independent learning, research and exploration to find what works for me and through my search to help myself, I have oftentimes found I am able to help others as well, something I have learned I truly love and now feel called to do even more.
I have come to realize that in sharing my recipes, through instructing yoga, hosting retreats and teaching cooking demos, these are all amazing ways I am able share my passions and hopefully empower others to take control of their own health and their well being. But, I have been feeling that when it concerns food and our health, that I wanted to make an even bigger impact, I want to be able to host cooking demos and speak with conviction and credibility about how we can deal with chronic comprised digestion, blood sugar regulation issues and I want to share the precise scientific reasons why certain ingredients are making an appearance in my recipes. I want to be able to better respond to folks seeking to make recipes fat free and explain to them in a concise way, why it is so important to include healthy fat in our diet and the list really just goes on and on. Finally, I have met so many incredible, yet desperate people over the years looking for answers, I have many family members and friends that struggle with their health daily and I want to help however I can, anyone who comes to me inquiring. I want to crush these old, antiquated myths surrounding eating and our diets and reveal the truth about food and it’s healing powers.
All of this lead me to the Nutritional Therapy Association.
Why the Nutritional Therapy Association?: