I’ve been enamored with nutrition, food, cooking for quite some time now. Cooking healthy meals, that actually taste good, out of whole ingredients. I’ll be honest, there were times when it wasn’t so much about the whole foods as it was about tasting absolutely delicious. Well, that’s changed a bit over time.

 

Almost two years ago I gave up land animals. I’ve written quite a bit about that. Once you start reading, watching, learning not only how they treat mass produced for consumption animals, but what they’re pumping into them, feeding them and what they do to the human body….well, it’s definitely a personal choice to not eat meat, but one I couldn’t have felt more secure in making.

So, where to get my protein!? That seems to be the most commonly asked question as a veggie-eating gal. Being a pescatarian (I do eat fish occasionally) helps cool the heals of protein-crazed people, but a whole diet started becoming more and more nutritionally important. Mike is a contractor, check out his blog MAS Quality Construction, so someone in his worker-shoes needs to be extra careful, as the energy he’s putting out during the day needs to be properly replenished.

The quest to learn began and for anyone who’s curious about food, diet, nutrition, the resources are endless. Overwhelming even. And the studies are plentiful. Why not go back to school, to really learn about this stuff? OK!

I started researching programs, for fun at first, that taught nutrition. Did I want to be a nurse? No. A dietician? No (there’s a lot of school involved in that!) I wanted to mostly learn about the science behind what happens to the food we put into our bodies, what happens to our bodies from the food that’s put there. Scientifically, what the hell is going on!? What nutrients (or combination) of foods works best. Open up Pandoras box!

We moved to Colorado late December 30th 2013, demoed our house, Mike started his company up again, I continued my Marketing gig from my home office…..a year later, we were settled. Time to dive into the next chapter: Back to School!

 

I enrolled in the Nutrition Therapy Institute (NTI) January 6th, 2015. Their philosophy struck a cord with me: Better Health Through Nutrition. So simple, yet such a foreign concept. Traditional Western Medicine doesn’t incorporate nutrition into the bigger picture, which boggles the mind considering most of the chronic diseases in this country are preventative and can be proactively managed, hell even avoided, with proper nutrition. I digress….

My first class is Anatomy & Physiology – fascinating, hard, mind-boggling stuff! I can’t believe we’re all still alive with the damage our body takes, the amount of energy and cell repair and organ functioning that takes place under our integumentary system (skin, look at that, I’m so scientific!!).

I hope this program enlightens me beyond my current state of nutrition, so I understand the options out there, the whole foods that could work for someone suffering from allergies, celiac, asthma, hypertension. I truly believe health starts with what you put (or omit from putting) into your body. And so my nutritional journey begins….I’ll try to share my knowledge here, as it’s so absolutely fascinating.

Let food be thy medicine – Hippocrates

Happy eating!