Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Nutrition Coach, and Faster Way to Fat Loss Coach

Victoria Byrd, RPH, NASM-CNC, CWHC, BCS

From the time I was sixteen, I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist. I loved the community setting, creating relationships with patients, and feeling like I could make a difference. In 2011, after our second daughter was born, I took a step back from managing a busy pharmacy along with other corporate duties I had taken on to stay home with them. While leaving a career I loved was difficult, it was the best choice for our family and I am grateful every day I am able to be home. As the girls got older, headed to full day school, and I began to come out of the haze of having two small children, I realized I wanted something more for myself. I wanted to get our family on track with health and our nutrition but didn’t know where to start. A former classmate and colleague of mine graduated from The Institute of Integrative Nutrition and I became fascinated with all she learned and how she was incorporating it into a business. I not only enrolled in the IIN program for Health Coaches, I also became a Certified Nutrition Coach through NASM. I have since made such better food choices for our family as well as created an overall sense of health and well being I never thought we would have. We’ve brought the joy of cooking whole foods, finding exercise we love, and prioritizing the Primary Foods (spirituality, education, career, relationships). Raising daughters, I want to teach them to cook healthy foods without a stigma of diet culture and be a role model for them to see that healthy doesn’t mean restrictive eating or an obsession with the scale.

My daughters mean the world to me. I want to set them on a healthy path with food and lay the foundation to make smart food choices when they are older and on their own. I want to squash diet culture in our house and focus on cooking together with whole foods so they understand nutrition and feeding your body, not the size of your jeans is what matters most.

*Since creating this blog post, I also became certified with the Integrative Women’s Health Institute as a Women’s Health Coach and I was certified with the FasterWay to Fat Loss to offer group coaching in 6 week programs and a VIP membership. I realized coaching women required more specialized education- especially midlife women. I also realized that Fasterway was the most effective plan I ever used myself so I wanted to bring it to clients. Being able to meet a woman where she is in her life to help her change lifestyle habits into healthy, sustainable ones is my passion. I truly love finding unique methods for clients because no two women were built the same way.