Self Improvement – The Nutrition Doula

It’s that time of year again: the time where the New Year New Me thing happens. I love the energy that is created by the communal hope and goal-setting this time of year, it makes me feel like anything is possible!

But this energy fades, our motivation fizzles out, we finish our 21 Day Reset or Dry January and then what? We can often feel left to figure it out from there and with the first stressful day at work, condescending phone call from a parent, or fight with our spouse, we find ourselves “unstressing” with whatever “treat” is our favorite. By March we have reverted to so many of our old habits and these habits keep us stuck where we don’t want to be.

So how do we make sure that 2019 is different from every other false start that we may have had over the years? How do we hold ourselves accountable when motivation fades? How do we learn to recognize and more importantly break the patterns that are holding us back? How do we IMPLEMENT a goal instead of picking one?

… Enter Nutrition Coaching! Individualized coaching is the secret weapon that gives you the edge to make sustainable change. It will provide you with a plan that works for you to get to where you want to be. It is dynamic and adapts to your circumstances as they change. It gives you access to a trained coach who can help you cut through all the noise and confusion thrown out there by the diet industry.

This year, I am launching an online Nutrition Coaching Course: 8 Weeks to Wellness, and I couldn’t be more excited about it! This program is revolutionary in the way it helps women make and create sustainable changes for their health and nutrition. It doesn’t rely on products or quick fixes, in fact, the program is 8 weeks long specifically because this allows for enough time to implement lasting change. It also doesn’t require you to turn your life upside down – all of the shifts in the program are designed to integrate seamlessly with your lifestyle.

Over the last 8 weeks of 2018, I ran a group of volunteers through the program (that’s right, these ladies decided to invest in their health over the holidays) and they had incredible results:

“Before starting, I was hesitant about a couple thingsâ€¦.a) that everything would be too much of a change for me to be able to keep it up and b) that I’d have to completely change my approach and way I grocery shop, start going to health food stores (which I’ve never done), and spend a lot more each week on food… both concerns which weren’t a reality.”

“Overall I’m eating way more veggies and drinking way more water, eating way less sugar and processed food.”

“I’m down inches, up energy, and still down pounds overall over the holidays!”

“Best part was simple, but thorough lessons… Plus your quick responses to questions.”

“I’ve seen an increase in my energy levels, I’m eating foods that give me more nutrition with less quantities (more bang for my buck), I’ve expanded my horizons in terms of trying new veggies, and I’m more able to make conscious choices about what I consume.”

“Alasen is friendly, non-judgemental, supportive, helpful, engaged, and wanting everyone to be at their best!”

“I’ve told so many people about my ‘program’ and how simple it is to follow. I would love to join a second round now that the holidays are over!”

If you are ready to finally make a sustainable change for your health and nutrition, the next 8 Weeks to Wellness course begins on January 20, 2019. Enroll in the course and personally see how powerful Nutrition Coaching can be! I can’t wait to get started. My reason for entering this field was to help as many moms as possible to cut through the diet hype and create affordable, sustainable, natural health for themselves and their families. 8 Weeks to Wellness is your key to accomplishing this.

To sign up, click here.

To read through some FAQ, click here.

If you have any additional questions, or would like to chat with me directly about the program to see if it is right for you, please contact me!

Health & Wellness, Uncategorized

So What IS Nutrition Coaching Anyway?

May 10, 2018July 6, 2020 Alasen Zarndt

I’ve been having a lot of conversations that go like this lately

Friend: So what’s new with you?
Me: I’ve been going to school for the past year and I’m graduating this month!
Friend: Oh, thats right! What are you studying again?
Me: Integrative Nutrition. When I graduate I’ll be an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach!
Friend: Oh… yeah… So what exactly is that?

Integrative Nutrition Health Coach is a bit of a mouthful to say, so I often shorten it to Nutrition Coach. But still, most people ask me about what Nutrition Coaching actually is about. “What is the point of that?” “Oh, so you make meal plans?” “Nutrition Coach… Like you cheer for someone eating broccoli?” While I would actually cheer for you eating broccoli if you wanted, that’s not all there is to it.

So what is Nutrition Coaching anyway?

A Nutrition or Health Coach is someone who is an expert in helping people make sustainable changes is their lives to improve their health, and as a result, their overall happiness.

We all have been given basic information about nutrition like “drink more water” or “eat vegetables.” We inherently know that an apple is healthier for us than a cookie. Yet still so many people struggle with choosing to eat the apple instead of the cookie. We know what we should do, but we don’t really know HOW to make it a sustainable habit.

As a Nutrition Coach, I help people actually want to choose the apple over the cookie. I help people learn exactly how much water is “more water” and how to ensure that you do drink the right amount for you. I also help people to cut through the layers and layers of conflicting information and click-bait headlines about nutrition and health, so that they can choose the right things for themselves and their family.

Currently, I work with people in a one-on-one setting. This lets me really get to know my client and the exact struggles they face when it comes to eating a healthier diet. I’m able to taylor any recommendations to make sure they fit easily into their lifestyles. This one-on-one coaching goes over a 6 month period, so that we can make sure the regular challenges people face (like summer cookouts, holiday parties, stressful family visits, trips out of town, etc) come up during the coaching period. This is a key component in making lasting changes and is what sets Nutrition Coaching apart from a “diet” that only lasts for 21 days or whatever small period of time is specified.

I meet with clients for an hour every other week and provide support for the changes they are making during the off-weeks. The results that we have achieved with my first clients have been amazing so far! What I’m finding is that is addition to the health benefits from changing your nutrition habits, my clients are making huge positive changes in other areas of their lives as well. Things like “I never in a million years thought I could give up diet soda, but now I have!” translate into the confidence to go after another non-food goal they “never” thought they could do. I love seeing the positive changes in all areas of their lives as we work together. This has been the most rewarding work I have done!

So if Nutrition Coaching sounds like something that you would benefit from, let me know! I offer completely free, no obligation initial consultations. These are a 50 minute long call (I like to use FaceTime or Skype, so we can see each other) where we go over your health, wellness, and nutrition history and discuss potential goals. These are designed to be sort of like an “interview” to see if you like me and my style and to see if we would work well together.

If you love the initial consultation, and we work well together, you could decide to try one-on-one Nutrition Coaching and see how it transforms your life! I am opening up 7 additional spaces for new clients starting in July 2018. I can’t wait to help some courageous women improve their diets, their health, and their lives in general.

Health & Wellness

Self Improvement Burnout

March 25, 2018May 18, 2020 Alasen Zarndt

Around this time every year, it seems like “life” gets the better of me and all of a sudden time begins to fly by. (Hey March, where did you go???) This is also the time when most of our New Year New Me endeavors (or resolutions, whatever you want to call them) start to fall by the wayside. You’ve been going hard for the month of January, but the initial glamor of your idea or new habit has worn off. In February, you may be able to dig down with determination and power through maintaining your change, but old easier habits begin to sneak in. “One slip up won’t hurt” turns into “once in a while is ok” which them morphs into “well on the weekends, I deserve to relax” and by this time of year, we’ve either stopped entirely or we are feeling totally burnt out with this Healthy Habits All Day Every Day thing.

So the question is: why does this happen and what can we do about it? I actually blogged about this (on my old platform) last year and these thoughts still hold true for me. It’s helped me to avoid the complete Burn Out that I’ve had in years past, so I thought it would be a good read for you guys too. Here it is:

“Around June of 2016, I hit a low point. It wasn’t tied to any particular event. There was just a slow decline over time where more and more dissatisfaction crept into my life until I was incredibly unhappy and burnt out. I knew that I needed to make changes, but they seemed to be too hard to do.

Taking the first step towards self-improvement is always the hardest. I think of it in terms of inertia: when you’re stuck in a place it takes a huge amount of energy to start moving. Think of how hard it is to push a huge rock that is sitting in the dirt. (Or even better how hard is it to start flipping that tractor tire over at the gym?) But the thing about inertia is that once you get going, the law makes it just as difficult to STOP the object you just had trouble moving. If you do manage to get that huge rock rolling, you definitely don’t want to be at the bottom of the hill to stop it! (Or using the gym example, have you ever tried to catch a weight before it hits the ground?)

In July 2016, I (unknowingly) took the first step to overcome my “stuck and miserable” inertia by signing up for a nutrition coaching course. I thought I’d be learning about macronutrients and serving sizes, but this course had so much more to it. They really dug into the lifestyle reasons for poor eating, as well as the emotional components that lead people to cyclically diet and regain weight. This course showed me how interrelated nutrition and the rest of your life were. You can eat all the kale in the world, but if you are miserable in other areas, you still won’t be healthy. Suddenly, I was confronted with admitting that I was unhappy and had the power to change that. And like they say “You can’t unlearn this stuff.”

Flash forward to January of 2017 and the inertia behind all of my self-improvement actions was really beginning to build up. I began to see all of the areas in my life that I wanted to change and fix. There were so many things I wanted to do: change jobs to something that I enjoyed, change my relationship with my kids to be better, work on relationships with friends, work on my health and fitness, make our house more organized and functional, let go of things that were no longer helping in our lives; the list goes on and on and on. I was suddenly beginning to feel overwhelmed with it all. I began to wonder, “is there such a thing as self-improvment burnout? Cause I’m totally there.” I wanted a break, and a small part of me wished I could just go back to not knowing that things could be better, because “ignorance is bliss.” HA!

Everything can’t be fixed instantly. It’s often a slow process, but we tend to see the end goal clearly and then get impatient when we can’t get there immediately. Then we get to the point where I was in January and our self-doubt kicks in. We see the long road ahead of us and decide that it’s just too hard. We end up with Self Improvement Burnout. We quit. And then we are doubly dissatisfied because not only do we know that we aren’t where we want to be, we’re down on ourselves for quitting. And the cycle continues.

So I began to measure progress differently. I committed myself to taking as least one SMALL step each day towards any of the goals I had. And it’s working. Here’s why: it made making progress sustainable, since I gave myself permission to not have to do everything all at once. It keeps the inertia going, so I won’t get to a place where it is a considerable effort to start again. AND by having so many areas that I know need work, it made finding a small step to take relatively easy and dynamic. If I ever don’t really know what the next step under the “Change Careers” goal is, that’s ok because I can take a small step towards another goal that day (like declutter a junk drawer for the “Functional House” goal). I’ve still progressed while giving myself time to figure out the next best step for the career change goal.

The important thing is to just keep moving forward. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow or fast. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fraction of an inch or a huge leap. Just be relentless with your movement. One action per day is progress, and for me progress is the new measure of success.”

Now here we are in March 2018. I look at where I was 15 months ago and there is so much that is different (for the better) now. All of those time steps each day have added up to a large change. They were the grains of sand that have turned into a 30lb sand bag. Looking back at this process helps me to keep going with the “just do one thing every day” path. Because in the end, I can see that it is working.