Tag: back to school

Health & Wellness, Uncategorized

What a Difference a Year Makes

Alasen Zarndt

Its been almost a year since I started this blog and my schooling to become an Integrative Nutrition Coach so I felt like it was time for an update. A year ago, I was excited to get started but also nervous about being able to effectively manage my full-time job, my responsibilities as a mom of 2 little ones, and school all at once. Looking back, that nervous feeling was a good thing since it drove me to sit down and carve out the time for the things that matter – one of which was school.

Last week, one of my school assignments was to reflect on what you have achieved and what you still want to achieve (with respect to becoming an Integrative Nutrition Coach) and I thought it would be great to share this assignment with all of you. I love that it starts with what you have accomplished, which gets you into the right mindset for goal setting (I talked about why this works in this post).

In the last year, I have had a lot of successes. I’ve studied diligently and passed all of the exams for school (by a wide margin – yeay), launched into practicing coaching skills with so many supportive friends and family members, completed all of the school requirements for graduation this May, and obtained my student coaching certification.


I started officially coaching some fabulous women in January of this year. The amount of progress they have made in just 3 months is absolutely amazing. They have given up sodas, started cooking most meals from home, beat sugar addictions, and made other amazing strides in their overall health. But the best thing about coaching is how much I love the work. There is something truly magical about watching another woman make breakthroughs on a regular basis.

Now to let you in on what’s coming over the next year. In June, I’ll be resuming initial health consultations for those who are interested (these are free, so if you’re looking for one drop me a message). Starting in July, I’ll be opening up a 6 month individual nutrition coaching program to 8 new and/or expecting moms. I can’t wait to watch these women achieve amazing life changes to better their health. I’m also working on an 8 week group coaching class that should be released by the end of the year.

In 2019, I’ll keep conducting the 6 month individual coaching sessions (with 10 spaces opening in January) and my 8 week group coaching class will open up. I’m looking forward to working one-on-one with people as well as the fun and dynamic learning environment that we can create through group coaching. It will be hard to top this past year, but I think we will!

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Health & Wellness, Uncategorized

Clutter, Mindfulness, and the First Week of School

Alasen Zarndt

It’s finally the first week of school! Yes, I was one of those kids who was always super excited to go back to school in the fall, and sad when it ended in the springtime. I’ve been waiting for our course to begin for a long 6 weeks and I’m so glad to get started!
I can already tell that one of the biggest benefits of learning about Integrative Nutrition is that I can apply what I am learning to our lives immediately. So not only am I learning a wealth of information to eventually let me help others, my own health and the health on my family benefits from this right away. Because IIN teaches Integrative Nutrition, there are so many areas in your life that can improve.
The area that I am most excited about improving this year is implementing mindfulness in my day to day life. I’m preparing to learn and experiment with this throughout the next year, and I’ll share my success (and possibly failures) along the way. (Time to tackle daily meditation!)

Another area that I feel will be key to my success in this school is decluttering our home and our lives in general. (I’m following this program if you’re interested.) We have built up so much stuff over the years. And what does more stuff equal? We’d like to believe that it’s happiness but it’s pretty much the opposite of that. More stuff equals more mess equals more time spent cleaning and caring for the mess and stuff equals more physical and mental energy expended on the mess and stuff… All of this come out to LESS. Less time spent doing enjoyable things, less energy for what truly matters to you, less space to relax and breathe.

When you’re in the “new mommy fog” created by the lack of sleep and physical expenses of pregnancy and labor, you truly don’t have the mental and physical energy to be spending on stuff. But when you have fewer things to worry about, you have fewer decisions to make about these things. This ends up being a HUGE asset to navigating your day-to-day life during hectic and stressful times.

I think the best example of why fewer things equals a lower stress and happier life starts in our closets. We have all stood in front of a closet full of clothes and thought “Ugh, I have NOTHING to wear!” at some point in our lives. Now imagine if your closet contained only a few items of clothing. Everything matches with everything else, so you can mix and match each piece for hundreds of outfits, but whatever you grab (in the dark at 5am while trying to not wake up your baby) looks great together. Even better, everything in the closet fits you perfectly and compliments you so you look amazing wearing it. Even better, it can all be washed and dried in one load of laundry! So now, you just have to blindly grab a couple of things every morning, you know you will look fabulous (so you feel like a million bucks all day), and you only have to do laundry once every other week. This Uncluttered wardrobe is saving you a ton of time and energy and making your life better in many areas as a result.

The clothing effect described above actually works for all areas for our lives. It works with the kitchen, the kids toys, the TV room… It works with our minds… all of it. I’m slowly working through our house and lives to remove the excess, which in turn gives us back so much more than space.