Sophia, one of our course attendees. Is currently taking part in our latest online Intentional Health course. Each week, Sophia is writing about her journey on the course. This week she discusses what she learned during week 3 and a few areas for us to improve on our course. Now we’ll pass it over to Sophia.
Getting Intentional: Week 3
“This week, I had to miss joining in live with week three of Intentional Health’s online course due to work commitments. Instead, I logged in to my account and watched the replay of it the following day. I was really grateful to have the option to do this, but I did find the experience different.
Firstly, the positives: Those of us watching in replay mode were very much welcomed and mentioned, so I still felt included! The leaders recorded the Zoom meeting, and so I was able to access all of the teachings, hear the group discussions, and watch the videos. It’s a fantastic feature, which I guess you couldn’t do in an in-person course, and it was great not to miss out (especially since we were learning about food labels, of which I knew very little!).
On the downside though, if I’m honest, I was much more distracted, and didn’t think twice about getting up to make a cup of tea mid-session, instead of waiting until the allotted break time, which I wouldn’t dream of doing if I had been in the live interactive session! This probably meant I was less engaged, but I can’t blame the course leaders for that: that’s all on me! The one technical limitation I noticed, was that only the main speaker is recorded, so at one point in the course, unfortunately, some information was missed. It was an interactive exercise where people discussed how much sugar and fat they thought was in various food products, and one of the course leaders had measured the actual amounts into pots as a visual demonstration. Frustratingly, the recording didn’t capture her holding up her pots (as she wasn’t speaking at the time), so I couldn’t see them (though judging from the gasps of the participants, I imagine the amount was shocking!). Still, I don’t doubt that this is something that could easily be amended for future courses, and is just one of those teething problems which are part and parcel in developing an online course!
I’ve never read food labels before, so I found the content quite helpful, as we were given pointers on what to look for and how to make sense of the information displayed. It was interesting how misleading packaging can be — for example, whilst a product may well be advertised as low fat (and indeed, have a low-fat content), often the sugar content of such products is huge, and you only realise that when you know what to look for. As our course leaders have been reminding us over the last few weeks: facts are our friends!
As a result of this session, I have compared the food labels on our cereal boxes, to work out our healthiest options: porridge oats and Weetabix both came out well! I was also mindful whilst shopping for certain food products this morning- I checked the labels before choosing which yoghurt and which cereal bars to buy!
I really do appreciate all the practical applications from the course, as I feel empowered to make changes.”
You can read more from Sophia on her blog here – Or come back to our Intentional Health blog next week to read how Sophia is getting on with her fourth week on our online course.
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If you’re tempted to join in with our next cohort of students, you can find out more and sign up for our next course online here.