Last Monday, October 24^th, The Center for Science in the Public Interest hosted Food Day, a nationally recognized day for people to cook meals with whole foods and promote nutrition in their communities. Food Day was a huge success, with celebrations everywhere from a Food Day Open House at the Nation Achieves in Washington DC to a conference on food deserts and prison food in San Francisco. We challenged our community to get involved and were blown away by what we saw!

In Las Vegas, several IIN grads got together to host “Local Foods Make A Difference”, a community camp out at Tonopah Community Garden. The group had quite a turnout as people brought their families, sleeping bags, and healthy snacks to watch healthy food-related movies such as Food Inc. and Forks Over Knives.

We had such an overwhelming response from all of you when we posted our series of NYC Healthy Living Guides, and had so much fun writing them, that we decided to take it a step further and create guides for the cities that you all live in! We’ll start with another New York City borough, famous for its appreciation of health and wellness, and home to several of our students and graduates: Brooklyn.

Check out all of Integrative Nutrition's Healthy Living Guides!

Restaurants

The V Spot
156 5^th Avenue

A completely vegan restaurant in Park Slope, The V Spot offers a large variety of flavors for a low price. They have a beautiful garden space in the back, but get there early as the tables fill up quickly!

Iris Café
20 Columbia Place

This lively café on a quiet street in Cobble Hill is definitely the place to be on a Saturday morning. Iris café fills up quickly and the wait for a table could be a while, but the avocado toast topped with a poached egg is definitely worth the wait!

On October 24, 2011 the first annual Food Day will bring awareness to the need for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. Food Day seeks to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and people who just love food. Thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals are being planned all over the country. 

When we announced our partnership with Food Day we began to hear from our community of students, graduates and health coaches, about the amazing events that they are planning.

We asked our community for some tips on how they got involved with food day and here is what we found out:

Making a major change to your lifestyle can be difficult, but when it makes you happy, it’s completely worth it. Integrative Nutrition graduates Leigh Rogers and Togo Keynes learned this first hand when they decided to quit their jobs and focus on doing what they love. Now, they have a blossoming Health and Wellness brand, Me Organics in the United Kingdom with a very bright future ahead! Check out their story here:

What were you doing before Integrative Nutrition? Leigh was working for Commission Junction as a senior account manager in affiliate marketing in New York and I was a senior management executive working for leading sports marketing company, IMG in New York. 

What led you to explore Integrative Nutrition's program? We were always really interested in health and wellness, and out of the blue Leigh got chatting at a friend's wedding to a past Integrative Nutrition graduate who was raving about the course. After checking out the IIN website we both signed up!

What happened since you enrolled in Integrative Nutrition's program? We left New York when I was recruited to become CEO for a multi national sports TV production and content distribution company. I commuted between London, Dubai, and Melbourne virtually every month for business, working 18 hour days, seven days a week to re-build the business. After almost 18 months working in a stressful environment, I decided to change my life once and for all and dedicate my time to doing what I loved. I am now helping Leigh and her sister with our new business called Me Organic. Since we returned to London, Leigh has spent most of her time working on building our health and wellness company which offers health coaching, our gluten and dairy free products and our recently launched cooking classes.

As the world continues to battle rising obesity and diabetes rates, it seems that health coaches are more important than ever. We recently spoke with IIN grad, Kris Barrett who told us about her experience at IIN and the need for health coaches in her native country of Australia. Check out what Kris has to say here:

What were you doing before Integrative Nutrition?

Running my own business importing and supplying specialty foods for people with multiple allergies.

What led you to explore Integrative Nutrition's program?

Every day I'd have new customers on the phone asking me all sorts of questions about what to feed their child, and how to get them to try new foods. I really wanted to be able to offer more advice but felt I wasn't "qualified" enough to do it, even though I had been doing a special diet with my son for 7 years after his autism diagnosis and knew the power of food in healing. When I finally learned about Integrative Nutrition, I was so excited, as this was exactly what I was looking for!

We recently caught up with one of our graduates of the Health Coach Training Program, Alvaro Matta, to hear about the amazing things that he is doing as a Health Coach. As it turns out, he is doing a lot! Alvaro, a Marine, is working hard to introduce health and wellness to others that are in the military and to veterans. Here is what he has to say about his Integrative Nutrition experience. 

What were you doing before Integrative Nutrition?

I am a Marine Corps Veteran that served in the first Gulf War & Somalia. After serving, I went to work for a wine, beer, spirits & new age beverage company. Staying true to the food and beverage industry I made a lateral move to the food side & went to work in sales for SYSCO Food Distributors.

What led you to explore Integrative Nutrition's program?

Our grads are constantly amazing us with the interesting and worthwhile things that they are doing with their Integrative Nutrition education. Amy Kalafa is no exception. Master-mind behind Two Angry Moms, a movement that pushes for healthier school lunches, Amy just finished her first book, Lunch Wars, which is due to be released this summer on August 18^th. We caught up with Amy for a first-hand look on what we can expect from Lunch Wars. (Hint: we also teamed up with her to create a special offer for you…read to the end to find out what it is!)

What is your new book, Lunch Wars, about?

Lunch Wars is a guide for parents and school administrators who want to know how to create a sustainable, delicious and healthy school food system in their district.

How did your experience at Integrative Nutrition inspire you to write the book?

So much!  I had just been accepted into a PhD program when I happened to read the brochure for IIN and realized that I didn’t need seven more years of school and that the education described in that brochure was exactly what I wanted.  I’d been a filmmaker for 25 years, and my year at IIN gave me the confidence to make an independent feature documentary about school food, Two Angry Moms.  IIN brought me back to speak to students and the response I got from students, alumnae, parents and others in the holistic health field was overwhelming!

Samantha Neier, Integrative Nutrition graduate, knows a thing or two about traveling. Not only does she travel to see clients of her Health Coaching business, Faith In Food, her job in sales at Nike also takes her all over the country for meetings and product presentations. Luckily, her Integrative Nutrition education has allowed her to stay healthy on the road. Samantha wrote the following essay with suggestions on how to eat healthy while traveling for a newsletter that recently went out to her co-workers.

Eating Away From Home

There’s no denying that everyone, at one time or another, gets hungry on the road. Who hasn’t had a snack attack, while traveling? When we are removed from our home environment, unable to prepare our own meals, eating nutritious, satisfying food, can be a challenge. As we begin to travel more in the summer, it is not common to find ourselves reaching for fast foods that are highly processed and nutrient poor.

We recently caught up with Jennifer Moore, a current student of our Healthy Coach Training Program. Jennifer is based out of the United Kingdom, and decided to quit her job in the financial field to pursue her passion of health and nutrition. She has made some amazing changes to her life; check out her Health Coaching Practice and keep reading to see what Jennifer has to say about her Integrative Nutrition experience!

What were you doing before Integrative Nutrition? I was working in a private bank in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK doing marketing and event planning for the branch.  I was also teaching yoga in the evenings and weekends.

What led you to explore Integrative Nutrition's program? I kept coming across people in the media and would think I want to do what they are doing! So I would Google them and they were Integrative Nutrition, (IIN) graduates.  So I decided to take the steps to get me to where I wanted to be and signed up for IIN!

"I have been able to pursue my dreams and study with IIN from the UK due to the convenient long distance learning format.  The flexibility of the program allowed me to study while working as well."

Lana Purcell, winner of our "What's Your Vision" Essay Contest brings us up to speed on her goals and progress as she works her way through the IIN Health Coach Training program.

What were you doing before IIN?

Before IIN I was a stay at home mum on a mission to change the world, I just didn't know exactly how.

What led you to explore IIN's program?

IIN came to me through Facebook. I read about it on someone’s blog, and I liked the page. I then went on the the IIN website and was BLOWN away that everything that I was doing, reading, researching seemed to be all be tied up with your program. I felt like I had found heaven. Having started and stopped numerous degrees, certificates, diplomas through the years because they didn't combine a truly holistic approach, my heart stopped as I knew this was something special.