Hey friends!

It’s been a while since I did my last “Dietitian Day in the Life” post where I walked you through what a full day of work and eats (it’s kind of like a fun twist on “What I Ate Wednesday” posts) looks like in my clinical dietitian job. If you missed that post, check it out here.

Today, I thought it would be interesting to walk you through what a full day of working looks like when I’m not in working at a hospital. I will mention that as a food & nutrition blogger and consulting dietitian, not one day looks the same. Most of these days I am doing some variation of testing/shooting recipes and other content, researching, sending e-mails, writing, and planning for and posting on social media. Oh, and going to the grocery store. I do that a lot. But I do also see nutrition counselling clients part-time or take on other projects like speaking engagements or seminars. So that being said, keep in mind that this is a representation of one single day in my life.

Enough talk! Let’s dive in to this day in the life.

6:00 am

Pat an I were up and at em’, headed down to the gym in our apartment building. I didn’t have anything to eat before this workout as I wasn’t hungry and I was planning to do a 30-minute strength based workout – I try to eat something before a run/cardio-based workout as I feel I need more of an energy boost – so on this day I didn’t feel the need.

I completed a full-body BBG workout by Kayla Itsines that I found on Pinterest. I have actually been considering purchasing her SWEAT app so I was interested to do the workout. For the last year have been using the Studio Tone It Up app for guided workouts. I love the Tone It Up workouts but they aren’t downloadable and we don’t get WiFi in the apartment gym so I’m trying to find a new app with workouts that I like that are also downloadable to my phone. Anyone know if you can download the workouts from the SWEAT app? Let me know!

7:00 am

After our workout I showered, got ready and grabbed some fuel + coffee. I had a client session at 9:30 am so I prepared overnight oats the previous night for a quick and tasty breakfast before heading out the door. In case you didn’t know, overnight oats are like, my thing, and they’re a great way to refuel with protein + carbs after a workout. I recently posted 3 new overnight oats recipes that you probably wanna check out – do that here.

9:00 am

I made it to the clinic with some time to prepare for my 9:30 client session. Here’s a little snapshot of one of the desk areas/office spaces at the clinic where I see my clients. I just had the one client in the morning and then headed back home for the rest of the day.

11:00 am

When I got home I was a little hungry but not ready for lunch. So I snacked on an apple with almond butter and some coconut chips before getting into some computer work. A lot of people assume that food blogging is mostly cooking and taking pictures all day, but what takes up most of my time is working on my computer. From e-mails to writing to googling how to do things (lol) I feel like most of my time is spent on the computer. I had a lot of e-mails to catch up on so I checked that off the list before making lunch.

12:00 pm

When I started thinking about lunch, I decided I was craving some eggs with loaded sourdough toast. I really wanted cream cheese on that toast, but we didn’t have any. I also had to pick up some ingredients for a recipe I was testing out that afternoon and luckily the grocery store is only 10-minute walk away. So I bundled up and made my way to the store – where I bought my cream cheese, coffee (we ran out that morning), milk (to make lattes!), coarse sea salt (for my recipe), and coconut oil (also for my recipe).

If you’re wondering why I bought refined coconut oil versus virgin coconut oil, it’s because refined coconut oil has a much milder taste – which I prefer to use in recipes that I don’t want to taste like coconut.

1:00 pm

When I got home from the grocery store I whipped up lunch. Two slices of sourdough toast spread with cream cheese, topped with sautéed grape tomatoes, mushrooms, and spinach paired with scrambled eggs. De-licious. As you can see, I’d also changed out of my nice pants into leggings. Because why wear real pants if you don’t have to?!

2:00 pm

After eating lunch and cleaning up, I sat down to do some more computer work. This time I was editing an e-book that I’m working on (!!!) that I will hopefully release very soon. I worked on this for over an hour before Pat got home from work and I decided to switch to recipe testing so that I could chat with him while I did so. I made a nice mess in the kitchen as well. Here’s a little sneak peak at my recipe testing…

4:15 pm

I joined Pat on the couch to help fold some laundry while watching 30 Rock. We recently started this show on Prime Video and get a good laugh while watching! After folding laundry I let myself get a little too comfortable on the couch and ending up dozing off for half an hour or so…oops!

5:30 pm

I was awake again and we were getting hungry, so I started on dinner prep. As you know, I love to cook so Pat and I have a great system where I cook dinner and he does the clean-up. It’s great. 🙂 I grabbed a little snack – some dried apricots to munch on while cooking and then got to it!

I prepared two pieces of salmon in my cast-iron skillet (sprinkled with salt, pepper and paprika then cooked in a mix of avocado oil + butter) along with a creamy sweet potato puree and roasted brussels sprouts + red onions. It was a delicious dinner, I must say! I then relaxed a bit while Pat cleaned up.

7:00 pm

Turns out we both needed to head to Staples to pick up some business supplies so we did that together. I grabbed some pens, sticky notes and a big paper calendar (I plan to use it for blog/social media planning purposes). Fun!

8:00 pm

Time to relax a bit and catch up on The Bachelor – I know, I’m guilty. It’s so bad but like, in a good way, right? Lol. We set up our snacks – some kettle chips (salt and vinegar AND honey dijon) to share and a homemade peanut butter cup each – and relaxed. I did most of the Bachelor-watching while Pat scrolled his iPad and kindly tried to respond enthusiastically to my comments on all the silly drama.

10:00 pm

Bed time! That wraps up a full day in the life of this dietitian. I hope it gave you a little snapshot of what my blog-related work days look like, although they really are never the same.

Now as promised, I thought I’d answer some of your questions from Instagram about blogging/consulting as a dietitian!

Q: How do you get the inspiration to create posts that your audience will want to read? A: That’s a great question. I stay true to me and write things that I am inspired about, but I also try to tune into my audience’s response to my posts and get a better idea of what they respond well to and what they don’t respond as well to. This gives me an idea of what they like reading – or what kind of recipes they like – and what they don’t care as much for.

Q: What does a privately practicing dietitian do on a day to day basis? A: Honestly, it’s probably different for most privately practicing dietitians! Like I mentioned, private counselling is a pretty small part of what I do right now, so preparing for clients/counselling/documentation doesn’t take up a ton of my day. A larger part of what I do is the media//blogging side of things – which I guess helps to market my private services as well.

Q: What’s your favourite thing about being a dietitian? A: Well, I love food. I’m pretty passionate about it and how it impacts our lives and our health. I think my favourite thing is helping people get excited about food, and showing them that you don’t need to lead a life of restriction or only eat “healthy” foods in order to lead a healthy life. I love showing people that a healthy relationship with food is as important as food itself.

Q: What’s your least favourite part of the day as an RD? A: I don’t know if I have a least part of my day specifically, but I do have a least favourite part about being a dietitian. It’s the popular misunderstanding that dietitians only want to help you lose weight/judge your food choices. Neither of those things are true and there are so, so many different roles that dietitians can play, too.

Q: What is your strategy to grow your audience? Have your approached brands for partnerships? A: If I’m being totally honest, I haven’t really committed to a specific “strategy” to grow my audience. That being said, I used to put a ton of focus into Instagram – as this is where my largest following lies – but once the algorithm really started messing with that I decided to put more focus into my other social media platforms, my website itself, and other ways to market myself. Also, at this point I have not approached any brands for partnerships but one of my goals for 2019 is to start pitching myself rather than just waiting to be approached by brands or organizations that I want to work with!

Q: What is your approach with clients? Meal planning? Diets? Intuitive Eating? Etc? A: I definitely take a non-diet, weight-neutral approach to seeing clients. I never want a client to diet, restrict their eating, develop food rules, or count calories/macros/etc. I incorporate intuitive eating principles into my counselling as well but would prefer to seek further training in intuitive eating counselling before I feel confident in taking clients solely seeking intuitive eating help.

If you have any more questions about what I do, feel free to leave a comment below or send me a message!