My Start as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner
Last year I embarked on a career change and started a 9-month course to become a holistic nutritionist with the Nutritional Therapy Association. In two short months, I will be a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP).
Why Holistic Nutrition?
This decision came out of a few things for me. I’ve always had an interest in food systems, farming, and soil. I was recently told by a good friend that this move to nutrition was very “on brand” for me. And while it seemed like a big shift at first, it really is a natural progression in my curiosity about how we as humans relate to our environment on both a biochemical and cultural level. I geek out on this stuff.
More salient, perhaps, is my own healing journey. For years I’ve struggled with symptoms I thought were normal. Brain fog, constant fatigue, anxiety, a horrible inability to focus, and gut issues (I’ll spare you the details here.) This started for me in college, stayed bad after graduation, and got worse during pregnancy and postpartum, as things tend to do.
As a new mom with some anxious tendencies I went elbows deep in the world of holistic health and nutrition, down rabbit holes of research studies, keen on finding the optimal diet (a myth) for the 3 bites/day my then 6 month old was starting to eat. This turned into some amount of trial and error on myself, and a lot of geeking out on far more info than I was ever looking for in the first place. I found a new passion. I finally had the language for what was happening in my gut, my adrenal glands, and my brain.
With a lot of my own research, and guidance from a practitioner I began seeing dramatic improvements in my wellbeing. I found healing through food, and I feel better than I have since high school. As a bonus, I have tons of new knowledge and brimming passion to put to use.
My Philosophy as an NTP
There’s no lack of pressure in our modern context to avoid certain foods, or even food in general. This is toxic. What I see rampant in the vast world of nutrition advice is always some new variety of restriction. Go off gluten, don’t eat carbs, stop eating animal products, there is a new one each day. But how do we go about nourishing ourselves, and what the f*** do we actually eat?
Today, we’re sold a fear of food as the latest health trend or newest miracle substitute. To see food as our comrade in self-love and earth healing is a truly radical mindset shift. That shift is the sweet spot where I have planted myself. My goal as a Nutrition Professional is to reclaim food’s rightful place as a celebrated agent of physical, emotional, community, and environmental healing.