77 | Becoming a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner

Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Soon. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger at Small Eats, author of Not at My Dastal Lunch, designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help you cut through the health and wellness noise to find what works for you.

This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about one small step at a time. Each episode has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, small steps, and other episodes at small-eats.com slash podcast. Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only.

They are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast. Thank you for listening. I am so glad you are here.

If you love the show, please consider leaving a rating and review in iTunes, sharing with your friends on social media, and tagging me at small-understore-eats. Also, just a reminder that an animal pin that I made last year, health care is a human right, still for sale, still awesome, still have proceeds going to the ACLU and the Elle Hammer Fund. All right, this week, episode 77, is surprisingly one of my most trafficked blog posts. Yes, my website still has a blog on it, even though I haven't really updated it in a while.

But one of the most popular posts on my website and questions that I get quite a bit around certain times of year, this being one of them, is all about my experience becoming a nutritional therapy practitioner. This is one of the enrollment times for people thinking about becoming a nutritional therapy practitioner. I get a lot of questions, a lot of traffic on a review post that I made. I will link that in the show notes.

Part of this episode is going to talk about that. My experience in the NTA, also what's changed since I have been in the program because it's been four years since I started, three years since I completed it, and there have been a lot of changes. So I'll talk about that. I also did update that post so if you read it before, and you've been like, hm, this doesn't seem like what's on the website, I have gone back and updated a little bit to the best of my knowledge because I have not been involved in the new iterations of the program, which is things that I've heard from friends who have taken it looking on the website, and also something that is not on the blog that is going to be here.

That was actually sent to me via email, this question, that I have also received quite a bit. And I was like, you know what? I should just record this as a podcast to help people. Is time hacks, I don't like that word time hack anymore, but that's the best way that I can think of to say it.

Like, ways to make, if you do enroll in the NTP program, how to make things more manageable in your day to day and how to balance doing the program and living the rest of your life, because I definitely did this program while also having a full time job and having a partner, and I still blogged somehow all the same time and survived to a point. That is something that I also get asked a lot about, so I'm going to talk about that here. As I said earlier, I went through the program about three years ago, the program has gone a lot of changes, I will talk to that as much as I can, but let's start off with first. So what is the NTA?

The NTA stands for the Nutritional Therapy Association. It is a nutrition school that was founded in Olympia, Washington by Gray Graham in 1997, and then they started offering a training course in about 2001. So the NTA is based on the beliefs that every person's health is bio individual and that one size does not fit all, which completely makes sense. I spend a lot more about this all the way back on episode three, ooh, when I talk about what bio individuality is and why it is important.

The NTA's nutritional philosophy is based on the works of Westinny Price. Westinny Price was a dentist in the 30s that after his career of dentistry was winding down, he traveled the world and studied indigenous people's diets and their teeth. And after he looked at this, he came to a conclusion that one, there is no perfect diet, that people all around the world have something different, but there are commonalities through them, which is that they have some form of animal protein or fat in them, and that form was different for lots of people in lots of different ways, and that the modern diet can really mess with people's health via their teeth. So he studied people's teeth and how they were aligned and how they weren't aligned.

The modern day need to get orthodontia wasn't a thing before refined sugars and overly processed foods, and people moving away from what was indigenous to where they lived in their area happened. So people that mostly still ate what their culture's normally ate had beautifully perfect teeth. Teeth that took me two or three years with orthodontia and those rubber bands, people just naturally had that and stayed with that. And then people that had incorporated the modern diet at the time, their teeth were like why I needed to have orthodontia, so that was an interesting thing to notice, what kind of education is offered at the NTA.

So when I went to the NTA, there were two tracks of programs, now there is only one. So there used to be the nutritional therapy consultants and the nutritional therapy practitioner program, now that there is only the nutritional therapy program. The main difference were things that aren't relevant anymore, and now which is really great is the NTP program is 100% online. When I went to the program, it was like 90% online, and then 5% you would meet in person.

Back in the day, you met in person for three weekends, and the class was a little bit shorter by month. We had nine months, and now you have 10 months, and so that was a lot of feedback of nine months is a lot, like you can grow a baby in that time, packing in all this information in nine months was a lot, so they added an extra month. A thing that I get asked a lot is like, what is the coursework like, what is it involved? Everything happens on an online learning platform that they have, if you've ever done a college course online, it's a similar structure where things are broken up by the weeks, and each week you have a module, and inside that module there could be a variety of video lessons, audio recordings, assigned reading, quizzes, essays, other assignments depending on the module.

I know that things have changed since I did the program, but there's still a mixture and a variety of ways to learn and things that you'll do. There are reading assignments that are consistently from about three major books, and then each week you might have additional books to read that are based on the topic that you're working on, so it's broken up, each module is one topic, most of the time you'll spend one week, these are all suggested, there's no like, oh my god, you have to do it by this time, except for a few projects, it is self-paced because people have a lot of different things going on in their lives, there are foundations that they cover, and there are also certain other special important topics that are important to know. Those topics have expanded since I took the course, there are things that are now focused on, that we didn't really specifically fully spend a whole module focusing on, so things really great to do the program now, because there's so much more stuff, there's so many more things that like, I feel very old, I'm like, I'm back in my day, we didn't have these things, I heads up, there are a lot of books to buy. That list changes every once in a while, like the list that I had versus the list of one of my friends took the program I think two years ago now, or a year ago, her list was slightly different than my list, and there are still a lot of books to buy because oftentimes you will be reading a few different books a week, when I decided to become an nutritional therapy practitioner and like go through the program, I had decided way before any enrollment period, especially because back in those days it was dependent on your location, so I knew enough ahead of time that I started selling off books in my house to like textbook buyback programs and things like that, so I could like basically get enough money to slowly buy the books that I needed for the class, a lot of them you can very easily find on Amazon, I bought my textbook on eBay, like there are ways that you can get these books and acquire these books over a period of time, and also you don't need all the books all at once, so if money is an issue you can buy the books that you need, and they have a list online of like when the books are and when you'll need them, so you can buy certain books that you know will be used a lot right away, and you can slowly buy the rest of the books that you'll need later, so if you need a book in module 15, module 15 is towards the end of the program, if you only need that book then maybe wait or maybe, because when I took it, it started in September and ran until June, so I actually asked for some of those books for Christmas, like my parents still buy you guests and all the hey, can you buy me the book?

So if you have a birthday or holiday or some reason where people buy you stuff and you're like hey, I'm going to this program, it's super helpful, it'll be really great if you bought me this book, and then there you go. When I took it, there were some quizzes that were happening every week, kind of just to make sure that you were reading stuff, but there's only two major tests, there's a midterm, obviously in the middle, then there's a final, now those are all administered online, when I did it I did it in person, so those are all online and they're written apart and then there's a practical part. And everyone on the team is really dedicated to helping you pass and prepare. So that leads to what is the instruction like?

You're going to have a class of people, and I think that there's more on their website now, and I'll link to their website talking about this, but there are a lot of people that are going to be enrolled, and then apparently now there's a cohort, so you're going to have a head instructor, assistant instructors, group leaders, are basically like teaching assistants, all those people went through the program and will understand and be able to support you and help you, they're a weekly conference call to answer questions, ask questions, go over certain things, all of those are recorded, and I think now don't be as zoomed, so you can listen to those later, questions all the time, and that was really great. If you find that someone in your class, whether they're a group leader, a lead instructor, or just a classmate, if any of those people are local, I highly recommend reaching out to them, even though it may seem very scary because of the internet and like, oh, I'm so overwhelmed, it's a program. The benefit of reaching out to people and meeting in person and talking about it was such an important thing, which I'll talk about more later, but as much as you can find people generally in your area, just to meet up once or twice or a few times to study or talk about stuff or just be like, oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed, are you overwhelmed? Oh my God, yeah, I am, is very, very reassuring.

This program is now 10 months, the time commitment and the amount of information you learn is very intense. There's a lot, which is great, and there's a lot, which is a lot. So there's a lot of things that you need to know and there are a lot of things that they want to teach you. So the NT recommends spending about 15 to 20 hours per week on coursework, and I feel like that was pretty accurate.

I'm now going to talk about how to manage all of that. My class was a mix of people who were working professionals, like myself, or people that this was a very much like a second or third career, like maybe their kids had all gone off the school, and this was something that they were finally wanting to do. And so there was a mix of people in my class that they had more time versus some of us didn't not have as much time. So I'm very much coming through this as like, I've done a full-time job and a partner and a blog and all of the things.

Also, some of the things that I did that really helped me may not 100% apply anymore because the course has changed and things have improved, but I think knowing them would still be helpful, just in case, because I don't know for sure exactly how certain things go anymore. And also I'm extremely organized person. So if you're not like a super overly structured person, some of these things may not 100% apply to you, but I think that there's going to be some helpful things in here. I downloaded all of my files and kept things super organized because you can download everything from the website.

So I downloaded all the stuff ahead of time and organized it and gave myself an overview of what I needed to do so that I could be able to plan my week a little bit better and figure those things out. I also planned what I was going to tackle each day because there are a lot more videos that you need to watch and reading. So I would be like, all right, I have five videos to watch this week. I'm going to watch two videos on Monday.

I'm going to do this thing on Tuesday. I'm going to do that thing on Friday. And so I tried to budget about two or three hours per day as a minimum of things that I needed to do, depending on how long the video is and what that thing covers. I would usually focus on doing the videos first.

Then we had audio lessons. I don't know if those were required anymore, but then I did the audio. Then I took the quiz. Then I did the reading that was assigned.

Then I did all those other things over the course of usually my work week. And if there were other things like books and things, book reports that needed to be done, then I did those kind of later. Also, because there are no set times for anything, if you feel more comfortable waiting or if there are times in your life where it's very overwhelming, you can't read the book, do the book and do the report every week, you can wait. It just depends on your schedule and what's going on.

One of the biggest things that was helpful for me that when I have passed it on to other people that have gone through the program, they have said, oh my God, this one thing changed everything. If you have Chrome on your computer, I highly recommend you downloading a Chrome plugin that makes your videos faster. So the thing about watching all these videos, that it takes hours and hours and hours. I think sometimes it would be like three hours, three to four hours of videos, and they don't talk very fast.

And I'm definitely that person who listens to podcasts on two times. Even sometimes when I edit this podcast, I scrub it super fast so I can hear myself talk fast. Because I'm like, all right, all right, come on, let's go, let's get to the information. When I watched the videos in real time, I couldn't take it.

In the NCN instruction, I was like, please talk faster. So I was like, there has to be something out here, right? Yes, there is. At the time of this recording, and at the time that I found it, video speed controller is the Chrome extension that I installed that I still use today, honestly, that made watching videos faster.

And this was in the browser, so I would watch the video on the website. I don't know exactly what player they use anymore, but from what I hear from other people, this is still really, really helpful. And it also works for embedded audio as well. If you download the video and you watch it later at your own ledger, then I would highly recommend you downloading the VLC player, the icon, it's like a little traffic cone, and you can adjust the playback speed.

So if you do this with audio or video on your computer that you've downloaded, you can adjust the playback speed so things can be faster. Again, I can understand and process things at a faster speed. My partner cannot do that, but for some people, if that's something that really helps you, for me, that was a game changer and made listening to all these videos and taking notes so much easier. So that is one that really, really helps me, and that feedback has really helped other people.

So I would highly recommend if you know that you can listen and comprehend that fast. It's not super fast to me, but for some people it is very fast, like highly recommend video speed controller plugin for Chrome. One of the most helpful things, or the VLC player if you download things. Also, a lot of the books that are on the list, not that I know all of them, but some of them that are still on the list when I took the program, they could be ebooks now, if ebooks work for you, and a lot of them could be audio books.

So if you are an auditory processor, or if you're doing something and listening to audio books is something that is your jam. See if in the reading list, you can find some that are audio book friendly. Also, your local library will most likely have audio books, some of the books that are more popular, like Omnivores Dilemma was on the list. I don't know if that's required reading still, but if that is on the list, that's a book that you can get on audio format, whether that's through your library, through getting it on Audible.

A lot of things are available, and you can listen to those at the speed that works for you as well. So that can be really helpful to just listen to all this stuff too. The weekly conference calls that they have, that they had when I was there, I think they still have them. I never attended them live.

I'm sure that someone at the MTA is streaming at me and they're like, oh my God, how dare you? I also don't know how the structure works anymore, but I didn't attend any of those live. Most of the time, it was because my schedule, it didn't work, it was like right in the middle of when I could have dinner. Like I want to have dinner with my partner, especially at that time, you have really intense work schedules.

I was like, I want this much time with my partner as possible, so I'm not gonna attend these calls live. And for me, it was fine. I just listened to them later, and then also put them in VLC to listen to them faster, because there was a lot of questions, and so if you feel like you had good grasp on things, then you could just be like, okay, cool. There were some things in there that were helpful, and at the time, again, I don't know what they do now, but it was helpful, but not, oh my God, necessary.

And I'm sure that someone in the MTA is like dying right now. Because there is so much information, it can be really overwhelming to like, oh my God, what do I focus on? What do I take notes on? All the things, like what do I do?

Each module has some course objectives, focus on those and work backwards. There's so much information, and a lot of that information is just there to help you understand things, and help you understand concepts, but those things aren't things that you are being tested on. So focus on the course objectives, and see how things can fill in. Also related to that, you do not have to worry about taking really intense notes during videos.

Some instruction videos might have some work tangents than others, so just again, focus on the course objectives. And if you want to print out, I think there used to be like a PowerPoint presentation that would detach with the notes. Again, I don't know, I've know that they've made upgrades, but I don't know how much they made upgrades. So you can just print out those PowerPoint slides, and take notes on those.

Another thing that was talked about when I went through the program, they talked about making flashcards to help you study, and I was like, I don't know, I haven't done flashcards in really long time. I think by the time that I had started doing the program, I had been out of college for several years, and I went to our college, so we didn't need flashcards to study and recall anything, because we just made projects. But flashcards did really, really help. Making the flashcards was helpful, because that was a way to help me process and put the information down, and then using them as helpful.

They said, make them early, I did not. I made them like halfway, but make them earlier if you can, so that you have more time to study, especially if you know you need more time to absorb all these things. Also, like I said earlier, find people and form a study group. If that's in person, that's so good, but if it's even if it's virtual, it's going to be really, really helpful.

There's a lot of material that they talk about, and someone may explain it in a way that makes more sense for you, and also the support of knowing that someone understands exactly what you're going through and how much information you're absorbing, and how fucking overwhelming that feels is very, very helpful and validating. I think oftentimes, if you're the only person doing this in your day to day, you might be like, oh my God, I don't understand, you feel very isolated and alone. Well, there are a bunch of people going through this at the same time, but there's not next to you, more that you have those people to validate that your experience is reeling and overwhelming, the better. Also, mentioning what I said earlier, book reports can totally come later if that works for you and if things work for your schedule.

Also an important thing that I didn't mention earlier is that you are most likely going to have breaks. We had breaks in our curriculum, so we went about 10 weeks, and then we took a break, 10 weeks took a break, and then at the end of that, 10 weeks, we had the final. So the schedule will be slightly different, I'm pretty sure you're still going to have breaks because even if you start in May or you start in September, there are still going to be things like summer holidays, winter holidays in between, so you will have time to catch up. I never completely start working in between those breaks.

The breaks were just like, we're not going to have calls and we're not going to have instruction, but it was really helpful for me to take that time to kind of catch up. And if you want to wait for the book reports, then that would be a time to give yourself a little bit of like, okay, no one who I don't have any calls to show up, so I'm going to just do this now and get this cut up. Those are a lot of the things that made it easier for me to do the program and as I was figuring it out, if I were to do it again, I would definitely make sure to do a lot of those things earlier rather than just like, oh my God, I'm figuring this out as I go. Also, it's really important to give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion as you go through this.

This is a lot. It may not all sink in at the moment and that's okay. There are some things that took me a little bit later to like, oh, that's what you mean. Or like, you're finally like 100% clicked because there's so much stuff coming at you.

You're probably not going to absorb it all the same time, especially if you're like, Nia, you didn't come from a science background. Like, I like science, but I went to art school. So it's like, I haven't taken a science class in a really, really long time. It's good to know that you're going to get it and like other people are going through the exact same thing that you did.

Also, another thing that I want to share that is important to say is like, I didn't do everything that I continued to do before during and after taking the program. So as I mentioned, like I still had a full-time job that I was doing and I still blogged and I still had a partner and was like, doing basic care things, but I had a discussion with my partner before the program started and I was like, hey, like I know you have a lot of things going on and I have a lot of things going on, but I really need your help. So he did more household things that I would usually do. I also scaled back on social commitments and was like really more focused on my time.

I stopped watching mostly television that I watched. And I made sure that I made studying and focusing my priority. And I still blogged here and there. Looking back, I probably would have reduced the amount of time that I was blogging.

I did it and it happened and it's possible. So you are probably going to have to make some adjustments to your schedule and as much as you can lean on the support systems that you have in your life or ask for help, even if that feels really, really deeply uncomfortable because taking one thing off of your plate so you can add the other things will be so, so helpful. Another thing to talk about is what makes the NTA and the NTP program unique. There are a lot of nutrition programs out there, which was why it took me about a year to figure out what program I was gonna do.

I knew I wanted to be a nutritionist, I knew I wanted to get education and certification, but it was really overwhelming because if you Google like nutrition program, especially these days, you're gonna find so many programs that are online, so many things and I was like, what do I do? Which one's my pick? I literally made a spreadsheet and closed it and was like, okay, I can't figure it out. So in addition to what I've talked about about bioin individuality and the works of West New Price, the NTA believes in the power of foundations.

The foundation's our digestion, blood sugar handling fatty acids, minerals, hydration and are properly prepared, nutrient-dense and whole foods diet. If you focus on these foundations, that will help your body get more back into balance and your health and your quality of life can improve. There are a lot of things that I've personally extended a punsen, but this was a great foundation, no pun intended to figure out how to move things forward. I think that I also really appreciated what the NTA is really, really based in science, in fact.

The science can feel overwhelming, as I mentioned, if you haven't come from a science background or the last time you did science things, it was in high school or college and it's been a lot of times since then, but it was really helpful because that's really what I wanted. I wanted something that was science-backed. The other really popular school out there, I.M., the Integrative Institute for Nutrition, and I will put a link in the show notes because Angie Olde and Mickey Truss got, they have the same autoimmune wellness and one of them did I.M. and I have a great comparison about what one school provides versus the other, and I wish I had known that earlier because it was just very overwhelming, and that's really helpful and to know.

And I also do know that one of my group leaders did I, I, I, I first, and then did the NTA afterwards, and she was like, there was just so much more that I learned that little things in. I'm gonna put that link in the show notes, it'll be really helpful for you to see the difference and figure those things out. Another important question that people ask me, how much does it cost? Like this is not a hidden thing, you can easily go on their website and see how much it costs.

When I took the program in 2016, it was $5,400, now it is $5,900, not including the cost of the books that was separate, and which I talked about, I bought most of those used, ask for them for gifts. There are some supplies that you might have to buy. Those supplies have probably changed quite a bit since I took the program because there's a part of the program they don't offer anymore that I took, so that might be a little different now, but there will be book costs and other things like that. Cool thing that has happened since I've taken the program is now you can do payment plans with the NTA, which is really great, that was not something that was in existence when I enrolled, I remember when I paid for the program, I was like, oh my God, because I paid the whole thing, because I had to pay the whole thing, now there are payment plans that will make it a lot easier and a lot more accessible, and there are scholarships that did exist, and I think they're now more available than I applied for and didn't get, but they are totally out there.

Why did I choose the NTP program? So I mentioned earlier that there are a lot of other schools and programs out there, and it's really important to know and get clear on what are you looking for in a nutrition program. So I really connected with the NTA's philosophy about people being bio-individual, and it's really important to know like, what do you want in the program? So what I wanted when I was searching, I wanted a fact and science-based curriculum, I wanted solutions for people based in food first, and not just supplementation, I wanted a certification that would really allow me to help people, I wanted an in-depth program that also didn't require me to go to a four-year university, because I definitely didn't have the money for that.

I wanted to think that I could also mostly do online, because again, I was a working professional and had a lot of things going on, and I wanted to know, it was made for people that had day jobs like me, and I wanted something that had a reputation. So when I looked around, there were a lot of other people in my community that were either in the process of becoming NTPs or I knew some NTPs, which was really helpful for me, and I talked with them, and also watched some people go through the program before me, and they were sharing their experience, and so that was really helpful to see, and have more people being like, hey, what was this like? How was this experience? What did you actually want?

Because you can read all this marketing stuff that you want, but if you don't exactly know what it was like, then it's just like, I don't know, this looks great on paper, but what else? So I think it's really important to get clear on what do you want in a program and what aligns with you. Again, reading the stuff on the internet is great. I know that the NCA, you can call someone and talk to somebody about it, and if there are other programs that you're looking at, I would definitely recommend calling an admissions person and being like, hey, can you connect me with an alumni, so that I can get real take-in their experience.

There are also people that have reviews of their experience as well from this program, like a lot of people found mine, and other programs as well. So I also think it's really important to talk about some things to consider and some things for context to help you decide, like if this program or figuring out if any program is right for you. Any program that you take is going to take in time and money investment. There are so many different kinds of nutrition programs out there, so if you're looking for something that's really quick and maybe requires less reading and maybe you aren't a super-signsy person and maybe you just want more of the coaching stuff, the NCP program probably isn't the right one for you.

There are other programs out there that are usually associated with fitness or fitness adjacent things that may be something that's better for you. If you want something that's really heavy in business, when I took this program, this was not something that was really heavily influenced. So the NTP program is focused on giving you the nutrition support, and it does talk about how you could set up your practice, but it doesn't really focus on that. They have since since I graduated, developed an additional course that is for a graduate called the Career Development Course.

I did take that, and I think it is great for people who have not had a business before, who have not had an online business presence before. If you have done that, if you are a person that like, oh yeah, I have a blog and I'm really going to enhance my business this way, you may not need to take the career development course because there could be certain things. You're like, yeah, I know this from having a blog or business or online presence before. And there are also many NTPs that have gone on to develop online courses to talk about helping NTPs grow their business.

And so those are things that are out there. Also those things would give you continuing education credits because you do need to keep up with continuing ed credits every two years to continue to hold the title of being an NTP. Also an important thing to know that because programs are in the Western A-price philosophy that they're going to focus on animal products in diets. So if you are a very strong believer in vegetarian or vegan diets or raw diets, and you really are like, you know what, I don't really believe in animal proteins, I don't want to learn about them, I don't want to talk about them.

This might not be the right course for you because it's going to really talk about how helpful animal proteins in fat are and how all parts of the nutritional realm are valid. So if that's not something that's appealing for you, maybe this won't be the right program. You are going to learn ways to support vegans and vegetarians. And also there might be a few less options to give people the full support that they need because it doesn't just focus on speaking to vegans and vegetarians.

Also something important to know that if you want to diagnose clients, this is not the program for you. NTPs do not diagnose and specifically treat diseases, protocols, illnesses, because that's not what an NTP does. It's not in our scope of practice. So when we work with people, if they have a specific thing, we're very clear that we don't specifically treat or diagnose and that we are really supportive of helping you refer out or working in conjunction with someone else to fill in the gaps that someone might not be able to do, like lifestyle things or adjusting how you're eating or those things, but that's not something that an NTP does.

So if you're really looking to do that, this again might not be the program for you. So a lot of people ask me, it was like the big question, like what did I get from this program? Like obviously I have a certification, I work with clients, I got a lot more than I expected. I learned so many things, nutritionally really helped to give me a greater understanding of how the body works, also like how much we are not taught about how our body works.

And it also gave me a really great sense of confidence to discern and have more critical thought around like what is something that is worth me listening to from the nutritional realm? And what is not? Like what's legit? What's not?

Because there's always gonna be another diet, another protocol, some tech, what's your bullshit that pops up? And I'm like, oh, well, that's not actually a nutritionally and like scientifically sound. So I'm just not gonna listen to that or I just don't believe that. I've also really been able to help myself.

If you listen to the podcast for some time and you go back and listen to episode one about my health journey, you've heard that the information that I learned in nutrition school really helped me figure out what things that maybe were overwhelming my system and that didn't work for me. So that has been really, really helpful. Also, I found a really great community of people. For a long time, I didn't have, I had like a food blogger world because I was a food blogger back in the day again.

If you want to go back and listen to episode one to hear more about that. But I didn't have anybody to really talk about like nutrition stuff with and like kind of nerd out on that. And this was the first time that I really found all those people and that was really, really nice and validating. I have some really great friends that we are connected by nutrition and we talk about it.

And so that was a really great thing to also have a community for this. And since then, I've found so many more people that have been connected through the NTP and the NTA program. And that was really, really great and nice to find a community and find people where I could talk about those things and that those things would be understood. It was also a great way to really start figuring out things.

The thing that I really appreciate the most about the NTA program is the emphasis on bio-individuality and honoring that what someone needs is different than what someone's sitting right next to them needs. And understanding the flexibility and the gray and the it depends way of looking at how to support someone, how to support someone with nutrition, how to support someone with lifestyle changes. Like that has been something that has really helped to guide me in how I work with clients and how I show up here because there are no hard and fast rules and really learning that there are no hard and fast rules was such a relief and really, really helped me evolve past value. You have to do it this way and this is only one way to do it.

That's not really how life works at all. This was me talking about my experience, the NTA and becoming an NTP. Small steps for the show are pretty specific and pretty brief. If you're thinking about becoming a nutritional theory practitioner or trying to figure out what nutrition certification is right for you, I would definitely sit down and figure out what are your values, what are you looking for in a program.

That's really gonna help narrow things down. Like you listen to my experience, definitely go check out the website of any site that you're looking at. Again, I mentioned earlier, if you are able to speak with someone, whether that's an admissions person or you're able to find someone that is willing to talk with you, usually the admissions department will have some people on file, they'll like, yeah, this version has said they're totally fine. Whether that's a phone call or email correspondence or things like that, definitely read as many reviews from people as possible and see if what they were looking for it, aligns what you're looking for.

Because again, this is about what you want and what you need. Think about if this school and this education fits into your schedule, fits into your life. And also an important thing to know is that whenever you're considering a program, yeah, there may be ones that have specific start times, like the NTP programs, it runs twice a year, it runs in May and then it runs in September, know that if you quote, miss that window, if the program you choose doesn't just like constantly run all year round, that's totally okay. You're definitely going to have a chance to get to do that program again.

I guess I said earlier, I decided to do the program right in the middle of another program, so I waited and waiting was really helpful for me. I was able to wrap my brain around, I prepare, buy all the books. So if you feel like you've missed the window and heavy air quotes, that's okay, the window's gonna come back around, you're gonna be able to enroll again and figure things out. So you don't need to, oh my God, figure it out right now.

Really connecting with what you want and what works for you and seeing what program works for you rather than like, do you work best for the program. Also, if you feel like this was a really helpful thing for you, if you are like, yes, I'm going to become an international therapist or practitioner, I'm going to look into stuff, I feel really, really confident. If you mentioned that I sent you, so if you write Amy soon or if you click the link that I'm gonna have in the show notes and you enroll with that link, I will get a little thank you, I will get a referral bonus for you at signing up in the program. So yeah, if you have any additional questions about the NTP program or any other ways to make things more efficient, please reach out via Instagram, please send me an email, I would love to talk with you about the program and get more information.

All right, until next week, remember, you can do this, including a 10 month program, one small step at a time.