Back to school…

To prove to Dad I’m not a fool.. (Please tell me you caught that Billy Madison reference. Because, clearly, my dad knows I’m not a fool.)

I’ve alluded to this a few times on this blog and told a few people. I am taking classes through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition to become certified as a health coach. 

As you know, I’m incredibly interested in health and healthy living. While I love running and exercise (most of the time), I’m not really interested in becoming a personal trainer. But I LOVE food, and I love healthy food, and I love talking to people about food that can help you feel great, lose weight if you want to, and fuel you for your workouts. Though I don’t always achieve it, I try for most meals I make to be as nutritionally balanced as possible.

So why IIN and not a program to become a Registered Dietitian?

I first started thinking about going back to school to become an R.D. in late 2009 when I found Anne’s blog. Like me, she had worked in communications and was interested in nutrition. At the time, she was working on her prerequisites so that she could go back to school to become an R.D. I e-mailed her and asked her approximately a million questions, and I even went to NYU to check out their nutrition program. 

When I discovered the whole process would take about four years, I freaked out. That’s a really long time. What if I changed my mind? What would I do without a job? Was I really ready to start all over again in my career?

The honest answer to all of that was that I wasn’t ready. And I’m still not ready. I love writing, and I love working in communications/digital media, and I’m not ready to entirely leave that. 

What I am interested in is supplementing both my current career and current income with some health coaching on the side. I get tons of nutrition questions on here, and I want to have some sort of credentials so that I can help people. I think I know a lot about nutrition, but I’d like to have some sort of certification that says that I know so, as well. I’d also love to use all this knowledge I will be acquiring to do some more health writing.

But I’m not just interested in this program because I’m a little lazy and not ready to take on a commitment like an R.D. program. This program emphasizes holistic health—looking at more than just what we eat, but at health as a whole.

While I don’t doubt that more modern R.D.s like Kath, Heather, and Anne focus on, and will focus on, eating real food, from what I know of R.D.s, they’ve historically focused more on calorie counting, low-fat foods, and telling you what you shouldn’t eat, rather than what you should eat.

So this serves for an explanation for why you might find a little more nutrition talk on here in the coming months and years. Don’t worry—once I am certified to do health consultations, I will not try to shove my services down your throat. Ever. I don’t intend on this blog changing that much; I plan on starting a separate site down the line that will be focused more on nutrition and health coaching.

I have to complete six health histories in the next few months (basically, interviewing people about their health and nutrition habits in practice for my eventual health consulting), so let me know if you are interested in serving as a guinea pig for me! If so, you can e-mail me at theodora AT losingweightinthecity dot com.