how to find balance

The Start of a New Chapter: Why I’m Studying to Become a Certified Health Coach

Announcements, Health & Wellness

Hello friends, followers, readers, and subscribers! Today I wanted to come to Lost Online to make an announcement. I’m officially a student with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) studying and training to receive my health coaching certification!

It was over a year ago that I first learned of IIN from someone I had met at a coffee shop in St. Augustine. He told me all about this program he had been a part of for months and how it had completely transformed his life. The program caused improvements in each and every area of his life from his relationships to nutrition. Since then, IIN has been popping up in conversations, podcasts, and social media posts since I spoke with him.

The thought of potentially starting the program continued to keep me up at night and distracted me during the day. With my message about full body health and wellness on Lost Online, I felt called to learn more and finally receive proper education and training on how we can live well during the modern age, and how I can coach people through their own wellness journey.

I’m so excited to embark on this new chapter and learn more from the most accomplished people in the health and wellness industry. You’ll be getting tons more content from me as I explore health-related topics at IIN. Before you start hearing more about the institute in future posts, I first wanted to explain what IIN is, how it relates to my message on Lost Online, and why I decided to pursue health coaching for those of you who are curious.

Thank you for your support on this new endeavor and I can’t wait to take you along with me!

So, What is The Institute for Integrative Nutrition?

IIN is the world’s largest nutrition school that teaches its students unique education theories. While the rest of the health care system in America continues to keep us sick and unhealthy by treating symptoms rather than the cause of dis-ease in the body, IIN is way ahead of its time. Rather the school teaches the importance of getting to the root of “dis-ease” — some misalignment in the body that manifests as sickness and improving our health through the mind, body, and spirit.

The school was created by Joshua Rosenthal, a pioneer and visionary in holistic health and wellness. He built IIN after he realized that people’s health is determined not by how many supplements and wheatgrass shots they take, but by their quality of life. Our mind, body, and spirits are fed mainly by what Joshua refers to as “Primary Food,” which is broken down into relationships, spirituality, career, and physical activity. “Secondary Food,” is the actual food on your plate. If you’re not convinced just think: when all those other areas of Primary Food are thriving in our lives, we are far less likely to rely on the food we eat. When those areas are struggling we binge, we look to food for comfort, and cravings manifest. Primary Food actually overrides Secondary Foods in many ways.

The program is also built around the idea that the body knows how to heal itself (given half a chance) – but we don’t allow it to. We overwork ourselves, feed the body the wrong foods, abandon our dreams, stay in bad relationships, take prescription drugs, stop our spiritual practice, etc…and then wonder why we’re so sick, bloated, stressed out, and unhealthy. The body is the most intelligent computer in the world. If we just take care of it, the body knows how to heal itself. If we just stop treating symptoms and start treating the real cause of “dis-ease” in the body, and it may surprise you how often the diseases are mental and emotional.

The one other central theme of IIN is that it teaches another way to look at “biodiversity.” At IIN, biodiversity is the idea that each and every one of us has a unique body with a unique diet and lifestyle needs. One man’s food or medicine is another man’s poison. Yet there’s a brand new diet coming out each year or a brand new exercise program that promises that it’s perfect for each and every one of us. However, health doesn’t work like that. No two people are the same and therefore their nutrition and lifestyle can’t be identical either.

IIN teaches that in order to have full body vitality, people have to make small changes to improve each of those aspects of their lives in a way that works for them. Otherwise, stress and inflammation linger in the body, and symptoms and diseases develop.

Why is this important?

The reason why this is so important is because we currently have a disease management system in America, NOT a health system. What’s worse is that most of the diseases we try to manage are 100% preventable – they could have completely been avoided with lifestyle changes. Unfortunately, prevention doesn’t make money – sickness, pills, and hospital bills do.

We live in a country where the food system pays NO attention to health, the health systems pay NO attention to food, and the education system pays NO attention to wellness. We’re turning a blind eye to the fact that the health of our bodies and our minds are connected AND that disease can be preventable through living a holistic lifestyle.

Consequently, we’re going through a global health crisis. Access to healthy, organic foods is limited to the small percentage of people who can afford them, while fast food and products filled with sugar (specifically to make us addicted) fill up grocery store aisles, our home, and our bodies. More people are obese and sick than ever.

Now we can point fingers at our government, the health care system, the food industry, and the pharmaceutical companies all day, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. Those entities have enormous amounts of money and power to make sure that their interests won’t be compromised. The only way to change this is through a grassroots movement. Through regular people like you and me going out and learning about full body health and wellness and incorporating it into our lives. Through learning about things like meditation, spiritual practices, biodiversity, healthy eating, stress management, supportive relationships, and more. Eventually, if enough people start taking this approach to full body wellness and making changes, everything else will come behind it. But that won’t happen unless the majority gets on board and starts taking integrative nutrition seriously.

How does it relate to Lost Online?

When people ask me what my blog is about, I always tell that it’s about self-help, health, and wellness. I always say self-help first because I believe that our mental health and mindset are just as important, if not more important than how often you go to the gym or how wonderful you are at getting enough greens.

The most impactful moments of my life came when there was a shift in my mentality, when I felt better about myself, my situation, and the world around me. Once I was feeling better mentally and emotionally and in my work, spirituality, and relationships, my food and nutrition seemed to follow without much effort.

Self-help (no matter how you choose to practice it) is just as important as your diet and lifestyle, in my opinion. That’s why my content revolves highly around self-help with health and wellness sprinkled in. I’ve always felt this way, but until starting at IIN, I didn’t have the language to relay my message accurately. I didn’t know vocabulary like primary foods, secondary food, the circle of life, and grassroots movements to help explain it.

Why I’m becoming a health coach?

I’ve wanted to go into health and wellness since I worked on a smoke- and tobacco-free policy at my college, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I knew that I was passionate about inspiring others to live a healthy and happy life, but until now I thought the only way I could do it was through sharing content or getting a very traditional job in health care.

Through this program, I’ll be learning how to coach others who wish to feel better every day. I’ll have the tools and the training to help my future clients – and readers – so they reach their potential and not be held back by a foggy mind, anxiety, toxic relationships, or uncomfortable symptoms.

Why? Because I believe that we all are here today walking around in human form because we have a purpose. We were put on this planet to do more than pay bills and make babies. We came here because we all have work to do. We all have special gifts and something spectacular to offer the world. Maybe you want to design clothes made from recycled water bottles, maybe you want to end human trafficking, or create music, or discover the cure to cancer – you can’t do that or function at your best if your primary and secondary foods are lacking.

I realized the power of meditation, self-help, spiritual practices, and lifestyle changes in my own life, and it’s been my passion to help others see those changes for themselves so they can flourish into the best versions of themselves that they can be.

Thanks for coming to Lost Online!

I hope you enjoyed this post and my special announcement! I’m so looking forward to finally receiving an education in health and wellness beyond those uncomfortable health classes I used to take in school (which, let’s be honest, mainly focused on STD and teen pregnancy). I’m excited to finally learn more about how the health of the mind and body are intimately linked and how I can better help others who would like to feel healthy, happy, fulfilled, and vibrant. Stayed tuned for tons of fresh self-help, nutrition, and wellness content!

As always, let me know what you think in the comments! Have you heard of IIN? Do you believe in Joshua’s theory that we are fed more by Primary Foods than Secondary Foods? Have you seen this in your own life? How do you think we can change the health care system and food industry together?

If you like what you read here, remember to go down to the bottom of the page, click that “+” symbol, and type in your email where it says “follow blog via email.” You’ll have all future blog posts sent right to you! Thanks for coming to Lost Online!

Photo by Whitnie Williams @whitawill.

How to Find Balance & Inner Peace as a Busy, Working Woman

Lifestyle

Sitting at my desk I can feel my mind racing a million miles an hour. I have 500 product listings to manage at work, 30 blog posts that all need Pinterest graphics, 20 New Year’s Resolutions, at least 10 blogs I’m working on at home – Oh, and did I mention I’m trying to go vegan?

This is how the modern era is, thanks to technology, social media, and our own amazing aspirations, the calendar is always full of stuff to get done. Personally, I find that color-coordinating my calendar helps the most. Red is for the important sh*t; Blue is for fun things and social events; Purple is the random stuff like errands; Yellow is anything related to my blog; Pink is for the doctors’ appointments… you get the idea. But that’s not what this blog post is about. It’s about balance. How do we find balance during a time when we have at least 100 goals for ourselves, a full-time job, side hobbies, friends, and a boss to keep happy – all while trying to get to the gym and eat healthy? How?

I may seem like the last person you would take advice about this from, and until last month, I wouldn’t have believed that I would find that balance myself. Fortunately, after a full night of journaling and reflecting on my last year and my aspirations for the New Year, I wrote the words to myself that I most needed to hear. “You do not need to do it all.”

I don’t think I’m unlike many 20-something women my age. I have high expectations for myself, I never say no to new projects and my computer is open to 12 tabs at any given moment. I have gotten so immersed in this digital age that I sometimes feel like I expect myself to be a computer. To be productive all the time and to stay healthy and functioning, even if I’m running low on energy. That mindset is what created the person I was in 2018: a person filled with stress and anxiety, who still couldn’t meet my own expectations. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

I could see while reflecting on the last year that I became so involved in graduating, in running my blog, in my personal goals and in my new job, that I became a wreck (and a rather unpleasant person to be around). So, there I was journaling away on my computer in late December thinking about how overwhelming (but still wonderful!) the last year had been. Although I still had tons of aspirations for the New Year, I didn’t want to bring that same stressful energy along with me.

And I kept writing because it’s medicinal to me. I wrote all about my high standards for myself and how cruel I had been to myself in the last 365 days, all because I wasn’t superhuman. I realized that even on the good days when I accomplished the most, I still beat myself up and thought, “I could have done more.“I could have done one more paragraph, I could have run one more mile, I could have made one more graphic, I could have written one more post… but in the end, I realized that all that did was make me feel terrible. All that negative self-talk and the stress I was putting on myself didn’t benefit me in the slightest. Because at the end of the day, who really cares if I couldn’t do it all? No one is ever going to know that I didn’t create some Pin that I thought up. No one is ever going to know or care that I didn’t stretch that day, or that I only ran one mile on the treadmill. These were goals I set for myself, so why have I been taking them so seriously? No one, no matter how productive and energetic they are, can do everything. It’s just not possible.

In those late hours of typing away, I was discovering for the first time what should have been common sense: I am not a computer; I am not technology; I was not born to be productive; it’s OK if it all doesn’t get done. Moving forward, I wanted to spend 2019 feeling proud of myself. Spending that time embracing every moment of growing my blog, becoming healthier, getting stronger, and learning more. At the end of the day, I want to feel happy with myself because I’m working so hard to improve.

Somehow in that one journaling session, that became my intention for the upcoming year. In 2019, I would end the day feeling happy and feeling proud of myself for what I got done. Even if I hadn’t checked off everything on my to-do list. Even if I hadn’t done all of my self-improvement rituals. That’s how I stay grounded and stay balanced this year. Even though the world continues to demand things from me, and even though I still have a to-do list, none of that is worth my mental health. I am not computer software that been designed to work 24/7. I need sleep, I need days off and I need to treat myself with respect. So do you.

Now whenever I find myself feeling overwhelmed, whenever I don’t complete my self-made to-do list, whenever I don’t have the energy to work anymore–I let it be. I remind myself that it’s OK. I’m doing the best that I can. Yes, sometimes I forget to do that. And when that happens, I also let it be. Because you and I, we’re human. You can’t update us like computer software and we’re completely fine for a year. It’s OK if we slip up. The best thing that we can do for ourselves in this digital age, is to feel comfortable just being. To be OK with sitting in silence eating without the TV on and without checking our phones. To feel like we can turn it off in the evenings and relax. To make the thought, “It’s OK if I don’t get this done immediately,” become the knee jerk reaction instead of letting our minds run wild. This year I made the decision to remind myself that I’m a human being, not a human doing. I think that you should too.

I’m not here today to offer you “10 Tips for Finding Balance” or “5 Ways to Relieve Stress.” Because isn’t that just another to-do list? I’m here to give you, and me, permission to just be. To just relax and unplug for a moment. That’s the way you find balance and treat anxiety today. Get comfortable with quiet, with rest, with days off, with being unplugged. Remember what it was like before you had a blog, a business, a smartphone, and social media accounts. Remember what it was like before you had a million responsibilities–and sit with that. When you do, you’ll finally find that balance and that inner peace you’ve been craving in the chaos of modern life.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments! Have you found it difficult to stay balanced? What were the biggest challenges for you? How have you coped with this even as life continues to make demands? Do you have any mantras, journal prompts or habits that make it easier? Or maybe you’re a badass and don’t have this problem at all! Congrats! Tell me your secret below!

Photos by Ray Reyes @rocketsciencephoto.