My mother was never, ever overweight but that didn't stop her from pursuing the cultural ideal and trying every new diet that hit the books. I started young reading those books and educating myself on the likes of cellulite and calories and the tricks of the trade. By age 14, I was all-out dieting. By 16, I had gotten pretty darn good at it. What began as an innocent "lose a few pounds" effort turned into an eating disorder. And it almost killed me.
After I began recovering from the Pit of Hell, which included my first encounter with a registered dietitian, I chose to put much of the knowledge I had already gathered to good use. I opted to major in nutrition at the University of Tennessee.
I was part of the Coordinated Undergraduate Program in Dietetics, which basically crammed four years of academics plus a one-year internship into just four years. The early-on classes were tedious (general chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, analytical chemistry, to name a few) but the later classes I loved. Body parts and diseases and lab values and consumer trends and on and on. And I loved working with patients.
My first job out of college was at a hospital here in Western North Carolina. I dealt with some general med-surg patients and I had the orthopedic floor, but my main responsibility was inpatient cardiac rehab nutrition education. I developed a voracious appetite for the latest research and even considered moving deeper into the medical field as a physician's assistant. Instead, I met my husband.
When he moved to Atlanta, I followed him there and got a job at another hospital. This time I was thrown into some areas that were way out of my comfort zone (ICU) and others that had my heart (Eating Disorders). There, I was primarily responsible for the nutrition portion of the Preventive Medicine program. It was a great job and paid quite well but the management was terrible and, after a few months, I quit.
Little did I know, when I quit, how hard it would be to find another job in the field. At the time, 60% of the registered dietitians in the state of Georgia were in Atlanta and a large number of them had gotten their Masters of Medical Science degrees from Emory. How can anybody compete with that?
After three months of job hunting, I gave up and took a job as a receptionist at my church denomination's headquarters. I never worked in the nutrition field again. Two years later, hugely pregnant with my first child, I gave up trying to take the Continuing Education and paying the large annual sum to keep up my professional registration. Thus ended my life as a registered dietitian and credentialed nutrition professional.
That doesn't mean, however, that I haven't paid attention. I have watched fads come and go lately with more vigor than before. People no longer have to pick up a magazine or book to find nutrition information or misinformation It is all right there now at the click of a mouse or, even better, on their phone.
I have written before a number of times about why I don't jump on these bandwagons. I have ranted about all the questionable advice out there.
I may no longer be a credentialed professional (that doesn't stop a lot of people anyway) but I would like to be able to share some of my thoughts. I do believe that my formal education has value. I believe that my work experience in the field has value. I believe that my recovery from an eating disorder has value. I believe that what I have learned about people has value. And most of all, I believe that what God has taught me about food and priorities and life has value.
So brace yourself for my opinions, coming soon, to a blog post near you.
looking forward to it!
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