Happy Monday! I hope everybody had a great weekend. If you live in Chicago, maybe you took part in the St. Patrick's Day craziness that sweeps over the city once a year. I wore my green and took part in the festivities on Saturday, but I went for a five-mile run first. 

 The Lakeshore path was eerily foggy on Saturday morning. It was one of those Chicago days where it was so foggy that I couldn't see the skyline heading south. It felt like I wasn't in a city at all. I went one mile to the lake, one and a half miles on the trail, and then I turned around to go home. Here's my running summary from last week:

Total miles logged: 8 (3 on the treadmill on Tuesday; 5 outside on Saturday).
Aches and pains: the underbelly of my right foot at the start and both knees towards the end of the 5-mile run. The lower back is stiff but just needs to be stretched and strengthened. 
Goal for next week: 7-8 miles total.

Once I was showered, stretched, iced, and presentable-looking, Al and I squeezed ourselves onto an overly-crowded train car on the Loop-bound Red Line. It was disgusting for the first stop or two, and then it thinned off as people in green got off the train to go to their respective parties. We got off in the River North neighborhood and went to a friend's apartment in the Trump Tower. 

As a side note, Chicago has a crazy St. Patrick's Day celebration. There are two parades, the Chicago River is dyed green, and the city goes nuts with parties. Everybody can pretend to be Irish for the day. I haven't been able to celebrate for the past three years due to exams or other commitments, so I was looking forward to this  year.

​The group we hung out with does something called a St. Patrick's Day Progressive. This year, we started at the Trump Tower, took pictures by the river, and then went to two additional apartments. Each host had everybody for about three hours and provided food and drinks. Each person paid each host $10. It was much cheaper than going to the bars, and we didn't have to deal with horrific crowds (other than the Red Line). We had a great time, and we took some good pictures. It's a nice view from the 48th floor!

The food was good, too. The second apartment served Lucky Charms treats (like Rice Krispie Treats), and they deserved a photo op! There was also crock pot mac'n'cheese, which was absolutely delicious. Many carbs were consumed on Saturday.

                                                                                 Making a Grocery Shopping List

I'm going to switch gears now and talk about grocery shopping. As much as I love recapping part of my weekend, this is still a healthy-living blog. At the end of the weekend, it's time to think forward to the coming week and plan meals. That's what I started doing when I was living in Australia, and it changed the way that I eat. The more that you buy food from the grocery store and prepare it at home, the more you'll save money and control what you're putting in your mouth (which could help you lose or maintain your weight). It's a win-win situation. While you have to put extra work in by planning and prepping, it gets easier with practice. 

Here are the simple steps I do each week for meal planning and grocery shopping:

1. Review your schedule for the week. Figure out which nights you will be home. This way, you will know exactly how many meals you need to plan. (Yes, schedules can change last-minute. If you make dinner plans after you did your shopping, you can move meals around or freeze foods that you're not going to use.)
2. Create your menu. As you see on my old shopping list above, I wrote out my daily meals on the bottom. You can see that I was going to be out on Friday, so I didn't plan anything for then. For Monday, I picked a Cajun salmon recipe from a cookbook. I also generally search through recipes that I've saved on Pinterest or Facebook to figure out what to make. If you need inspiration, blogs are a great way to start. Just look through the recipe sections of your favorite blogs and pick out recipes that you like. The possibilities are endless!
3. As you create your menu for the week, you can make your shopping list. You can organize it however you want. I usually do mine based on the grocery store sections. In addition,  I'd recommend making your list while you're in the kitchen. This way, you can review your current food inventory.  You want to look at what you already have so that you don't make accidental unnecessary purchases. For example, you don't want to buy eggs if you already have a full carton at home.You can also use your kitchen for inspiration. If you have celery and peppers that need to be used before they go bad, you can plan your recipes around those. 
4. Once your ingredient list is finished, add other foods that you want for snacks. I usually write down apples, bananas, and almonds. 

Now, you're ready to shop! It takes extra time to plan (as you see, there are two steps before you actually start making your list), but it's worth it! Make the list and stick to it. That's all there is to it.  

If you want to go the extra mile to save yourself time during the week, you can prep on Sunday night. Chop your veggies, grill your chicken or meat, and do whatever else is necessary to make the cooking process faster during the week when you have less time. 

Happy grocery shopping, friends!

P.S. I was reading my shopping list above and see that I abbreviate a lot. Bals ving=balsamic vinegar; mac nuts=macadamia nuts; chicken br=chicken broth; 3 ch br= 3 chicken breasts; diced tom w/ gr chilli= diced tomatoes with green chillies; TUPPERW= tupperware. 

Hi friends! Yesterday was National Registered Dietitian Day. Did you know that we can also call ourselves Registered Dietitian Nutritionists? After I passed my RD exam, I was able to choose whether I wanted to be an RD or RDN. Some people choose the latter, but it sounds like too much of a mouthful to me.  The RDN certification is relatively new, and it is completely interchangeable with the RD.  

I hope that all of my fellow RDs (and RDNs!) enjoyed and celebrated in style, whether that be a kale salad or a giant brownie topped with vanilla ice cream. Whatever floats your boat! I made my own "ice cream" yesterday, but I'll cover that later in this post. 

I didn't work as an RD on RD Day. I'm a registry/PRN/per diem employee at two hospitals, which means that I'm scheduled to work as needed.  I get 24 hours, or three days, guaranteed per week at one of my jobs, and I get one to two days per week at the other. This means that I occasionally have days off of work. It's good and bad. On one side, I get a day off to do what I want. On the other side, I don't get paid when I'm not working. The advantage to not working yesterday is that I was able to assemble a fun day-in-the-life post of an RD on National RD Day. Because who cares what I'm doing when I at work?

In all seriousness, though, I will do something similar to a day-in-the-life work post since people ask me all the time what I do in hospitals. Trust me, we do more than pick out diets for patients. 

Without further ado, here is my Day-in-the-Life (or photo vomit) from Wednesday, March 9th of 2016. 

7:45 am: I sleep in much later than I would on a typical weekday. Al gets up to get ready for work. I check my e-mail, Facebook, and the weather in bed. 

8:00 am: I roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and keep Al company while he gets ready for work. I open the door to let in fresh air. It's a beautiful March day. ​

8:45 am: I walk over to the Medical Office Center next to Illinois Masonic Medical Center. I had my annual check up last week, and I need to get my fasted blood test. Interestingly, I am looking forward to this. I look at patients' lab results every day at work, and I want to know how  mine compare since I know what all of these tests mean. The lab gets me in and out quickly. 

9:30 am: I'm hungry for breakfast. I whip up two scrambled eggs with coconut oil, a chopped yellow pepper, and a shredded basil leaf. I'm loving the natural light in the back yard. 

9:45 am: I multitask by eating breakfast and reviewing my friend's reactions to specific foods on her FODMAPS chart that she sent to me the previous night. I have more research that I need to do. 

10:15 am: I walk to my gym and go to my Pilates class. I mostly go to Pilates on Saturday mornings, but it's a treat to go on a weekday. The classes are much less crowded, and we get more individual attention. Like any other type of exercise, proper form is important for the best results and decreasing injuries. With smaller classes, our instructors can be more helpful with checking our form. 

Our class is just small enough today that we all get foam rollers. My instructor usually charges extra money for foam rolling classes, so we're a lucky group to get to do it for free. We don't roll on them as others do to massage sore muscles. We use them as a balancing tool. If you're familiar with Pilates, imagine doing the Pilates abs series while you're lying on top of this thing (parallel to your spine). Your core that's already working is engaging harder to balance. All of the exercises are modified since many of them are nearly impossible if done normally, but I think that it's a nice change from a regular Pilates mat class. 

11:00 am: I walk to Jan Dee Jewelry to pick up my bracelet that I dropped off months ago to get shortened (I kept forgetting to get it). 

This bracelet was given to me by one of my oldest friends who asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. All of our bracelets have the same bow but are customized with our initials. 

12:15 pm: I arrive home and go through my physical and virtual mail.
​
12:45 pm: Lunch is served! I heat up a homemade mozzarella-stuffed broccoli turkey burger, spaghetti squash, and oven-baked french fries. I add tomato slices to my burger (doesn't it look like a heart?) and top my spaghetti squash with herb-infused olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil. These are leftovers, so putting everything together only takes about five minutes. 

1:30 pm: I open my new shipment from Fabletics.  I get my workout clothes from many different places, but I've been ordering a lot from Fabletics lately. The Salar capri is one of my favorite workout pants. They're comfortable and are great for running, Pilates, and everything in between. I have the capris in pink and purple, and I wanted to try them in black. 

I decide to keep the Mosa tank. It's a fun and flowy top that is also great for running. I'm drawn to the detail in the back. I have to decide about the pants, though. They don't look as flattering on me as the colorful capris that I already own. 

2:00 pm: I make banana "ice cream". My cousin is a Beachbody coach and gave me this recipe from the Fixate 21 Day Fix book.  It's called Chunky Money Ice Cream in the book. To make a small, personalized version, blend 1 frozen banana (broken into chunks) and 1 Tbsp of natural peanut butter. You can top with chopped almonds or semi-sweet chocolate chips. That's all you have to do. It looks and tastes like ice cream. You must try it. 

2:30 pm-6:30 pm: I send e-mails back and forth for my friend's bachelorette party in Nashville in May, work on this blog post, and take a long shower. Al comes home. 

6:30 pm: I make dinner. I marinade wild cod in a bowl with lemon juice, 2 cloves of garlic, and olive oil. I bake it for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. While that's cooking, I use my spiralizer to turn one zucchini into "pasta". I chop up the last of a tomato in the fridge and add that, along with leftover spaghetti squash, fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil to the zucchini and mix. Once the fish is done, I plate it on top of the zucchini. 

The end result is phenomenal. Together, it reminds me of clam linguine at an Italian restaurant. Forget about the fact that the pasta is actually a green vegetable and that the fish is not shellfish. It just tastes that good. 

​7:30 pm: My hair has naturally dried into an afro. I blow it dry and straighten it. 

8:00 pm: I work on my blog, play around on Instagram, do some more research on my Nashville trip and FODMAPS, and eat some frozen mango with Al. 

10:00 pm: Bed time! 

Happy Monday! I hope everybody had a great weekend. My Friday night was quiet, because the rest of my weekend was nonstop. Just like a weekday, I was up at 5:30 am on Saturday. Instead of going to work, though, I went to the northwest suburbs for a fun nutrition seminar. 

As registered dietitians, we're required to log a certain number of continuing education credits every five years. This requirement keeps us current with research in our field, and in a bustling city such as Chicago, there are never shortages of options for us to get our hours. 

One of my friends from school caught wind of a half-day seminar by the Northern Suburban and Western Suburban Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and many of us jumped on board after reading the event schedule. It sounded very interesting. Plus, it was even more attractive with this seminar giving us  six continuing education credits (we're supposed to get 15 per year). 

The biggest downside was having to get up very early and drive about 45 minutes. Luckily, I carpooled with two of my friends and we made a pit stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee on the way there. 

Once we registered, we were given a delicious buffet breakfast that was sponsored by the Egg Nutrition Center. I should have taken a picture of my plate, but it included scrambled eggs (makes sense), shredded hash browns with bell peppers, bacon, sausage, croissants, fresh fruit, and coffee. We dove right into the lectures once we finished our breakfasts and had minimal breaks from 8am-2 pm. This was tolling at times, and we were very hungry since we didn't get lunch (just a few snacks from vendors). Regardless, the benefits outweighed the costs. 

I'll hopefully have access to the slides soon and will be able to write more about what we learned. The egg and cholesterol lecture, even though it was sponsored by the Egg Nutrition Center and had me worried that it would be overtly bias, was informative and confirmed what I already believe about eggs: whole eggs are very nutritious foods and eating eggs generally does not affect your blood cholesterol. A small percentage of the population are considered to be "hyper-responders" to dietary cholesterol, and these people are difficult to pinpoint unless they are in clinical studies. The jury is also out on whether diabetics need to watch their intake of egg yolks. 

We also heard good lectures on gut microbiota and alternate day fasting. There is still so much research that needs to be done on gut microbiota (or the bacteria that lives in our intestines that is good for our health), but recent studies on mice have shown that lean and obese bodies have different compositions of gut bacteria. Our diet can largely affect that. Also, taking prebiotics and probiotics are most likely good for us, but there is not one best type to take. Eating fermented foods (which contain probiotics), such as yogurt, kefir, kambucha, tempeh,  miso, and others are good, but there may also be benefits from taking tablets.

The lecturer for the alternate day fasting research was our Vitamins and Minerals professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, so my school friends and I were pretty pumped to hear her speak. I'll probably write another post about her research in the future, but I have been fascinated in the past (from her research) to hear about how eating approximately 1/4 of a person's calorie needs on fasting days (average of 500 calories per day) and eating unrestricted on the other days could lead to successful and manageable weight loss in obese, sedentary individuals. Now that I think about it, it may be easier to eat very light three days per week (and normally the rest of the week) than to constantly restrict my caloric intake every single day. There is still more research required for alternative day fasting, and if you're interested in trying this for yourself, I would highly recommend discussing this with your doctor and seeing a dietitian first! 

We also heard from six panel speakers (one of them was an author of Too Busy to Diet), and then, completely ravenous and slightly stir-crazy, we headed back to the city. My carpool party made a quick stop at L'Patron for tacos once we got back into the city, and then I was dropped off at home. I only had enough time to change, fix my hair and makeup, and put a few layers of polish on my nails before it was time for the next event. 

My parents were staying in the city for their birthdays (my dad is March 4th; my mom is March 6th), and my brother Jon decided to take us to The Aviary for drinks before dinner.  It was so generous of him, and I had some of the best drinks I've ever had. I'm used to going to hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bars and buying the beers on special, so this place was up about 100  notches from that. 

The Aviary is owned by Grant Achatz, who is a culinary genius. He also owns Alinea and Next, which are some of the best restaurants in Chicago. In order to guarantee yourself a reservation for drinks at The Aviary, you need to purchase tickets in advance. While I would usually roll my eyes at that requirement, I had heard excellent things about this place.

This place creates drinkable art in a glass. My first drink (pictured above) was called Up the Ice Ante, which contained oat, horchata, and peach. Our server told us that it was going to taste like the milk in the cereal bowl after finishing Cinnamon Life cereal (or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, as my brother said), and he was exactly right. I also nibbled on the ice cubes once I finished the liquid portion, and they were intensely flavored with components from the drink. Until Saturday night, I had never eaten an ice cube that tasted like a cinnamon peach pie.

Other highlights include my bite-sized melt-in-the-mouth tempura sweet potato on a cinnamon stick that was beyond delectable (above, left), Jon's over-sized ice cube that kind of resembled the Epcot ball at Walt Disney World (above, right), and my brother using a sling shot to break the solid ice sphere that held his beverage inside of it (not pictured). Once the ice shattered, the liquid filled the glass and the ice that used to hold the drink was just the standard ice cubes in the drink. I heard about the sling shot before, but it was fun to see in the flesh. 

Aviary-goers tend to visit for drinks prior to going to Next next door, but we went to a different, more normally-priced restaurant for dinner. While I can't say that I'll go back to the Aviary soon (I would really love to, but my preferred drinks are $5), I would certainly go back there for a special occasion. I'm very happy that I got to experience it. It was a treat.  We also did a larger family celebration in the suburbs on Sunday night for my parents and my grandma (her birthday is today!). We have a lot of birthdays this month!

On Sunday morning, I laced up my running shoes and hit the pavement for an easy four-mile run. It was 39 degrees by the time I left the house, and I was perfectly comfortable in running capris and long-sleeved pullover. I wanted to do my first lakefront run of 2016, so I headed east to Lake Michigan. It's about 1.1 miles from my house to the lakefront trail. Since it was Sunday morning, I was weaving my way in and out of brunch enthusiasts and small children on scooters. I also had to jog in place at some stoplights. Once I got to the park lands, though, I didn't have to worry about traffic lights anymore. 

The lakefront trail, even when crowded and exposed to the whir of cars zooming past on Lake Shore Drive, is peaceful and is a beautiful place to run. I generally plan how many miles I'm going to run in advance, and then I map out exactly where I need to turn around and head back home. For my usual four-mile runs, I go one mile to the lake, another mile to the Fullerton Avenue exit, and then I turn around and retrace my steps. Easy peasy. 

Although my pictures have few, if any, people in them, there were plenty of runners, walkers, and bikers of all sizes and athletic abilities. It's motivating to see all of the people out there. 

Aside from foot cramps for the first half mile, my Sunday morning run was pain-free. I'm hoping to continue with minimal pain as I increase my mileage. 

Total miles logged this week: 7 (3 on treadmill on Tuesday; 4 outside yesterday).
Goal for next week: 7-8. 

Have a great start to the week, friends!

Happy Monday! I hope everybody had a great weekend. Friday, February 19th marked exactly one year since I became a registered dietitian. The last time that I was active on my blog, I was nutrition student and about one month away from starting my internship, or supervised practice. Today, I will talk in more detail about that. For this post to make sense, I'll have to tell you a bit more about my nutrition program and the process for becoming a registered dietitian. 

The RD process: 
To become an RD, you must do the following: 

1. ​Obtain a bachelor's degree including a specific set of nutrition coursework that is set by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
2. Complete the Dietetic Internship.
3. Pass the RD Exam. 

One of the perks of my nutrition program was that it included all of the core nutrition coursework, my masters classes, and my internship. For many dietitians-in-training, these three (or two, if you don't get your masters degree) components are separate. Having my internship included in my program saved me from the stress of having to find one on my own, since there is about a 50% match rate with dietetic internships. It also meant that my classes and internship overlapped and made me a very busy bee at times. 

The Dietetic Internship is designed to make us apply our classroom knowledge to the real world. It exposes us to a variety of settings and teaches us how to be a dietitian once we  pass our exam. With the exception a few of our  rotations, we stayed at each location for four weeks at at time. There were required rotations (standards for ACEND or the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics), and then we had elective rotations where we could choose where we wanted to go.

During my third semester in February of 2014, while I was taking classes full-time, I started my 10-month internship. The rest of this post will discuss each of my rotations in more detail, starting with my community rotation. (I'm sorry there aren't more photos in here, but I did make chevron dividers!)

My community rotation was the first part of my internship. This portion of our internship went for 11 weeks, but we only went two times per week since we were taking our classes full-time. I was assigned to a homeless shelter in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. This organization that I interned for included two homeless shelters (one male; one female), a food pantry, a preschool, and many other services. I often helped in the food pantry as a personal shopper. Each shopper was paired with a volunteer who walked around with them, often held their food for them, and talked to them while they were shopping. We also kept track of their "points" while they were shopping (each person gets "points" depending on how many members there are in their family) and made sure they didn't go over their allotment. I, of course, encouraged shoppers to stock up on produce, especially since most of the produce was zero points! I also helped in the kitchen by prepping food and serving lunch to the men and taught a few classes. One of my favorite experiences was teaching the preschoolers about healthy snacks. I remember bringing humus for them. All in all, it was a very rewarding experience. I developed bonds with members of the community, especially since the majority of volunteers were from the neighborhood.The organization has flourished in the past couple of years, and I am so happy for them. 

My second rotation, clinical, started about two weeks after I finished my classes. At this point, we started going to our rotation five days per week, eight hours per day. The only exception was holidays and attending class every other Monday for seminars. I was finished with all of my coursework except for one masters class, so I took my final class online for eight weeks. I was incredibly fortunate to score my clinical assignment about two blocks away from where I lived. Since our clinical rotation lasted 11 weeks, I was lucky to have a tiny commute. 

Clinicals were, in a nutshell, awesome. This rotation was our nutrition classes in the flesh. I was assigned to an RD every day, who I followed around like a puppy dog for the first week. I observed them and started working while they observed me, and then, by the end, I was all on my own. I had my own floors and my own patients. I relied on my preceptors for guidance and to sign my notes, but besides that, I was essentially working as a dietitian. Now, in 2016, I am working in the same hospital and am teaching interns. It's pretty great.

I will probably write a post one day about what clinical dietitians do. In short, we screen for patients who need nutritional intervention (underweight, tube feeders, gastrointestinal cancer, etc), we collect information on them (weight, medical history, medications, etc), we assess them (visit them in their room, talk to doctors, talk to nurses), and then we make our plan (write the tube feeding recommendations, order supplements, discuss further interventions needed with doctors, etc). We also give bedside diet educations, and, in this hospital, we see outpatients. We are also involved with food service, which I'll discuss in my next section. 

To my delight, I was able to spend an additional four weeks at the same local hospital for my food service rotation. By this time, I was finished with all of my academic classes was able to focus 100% on my internship.

​My food service rotation had the largest syllabus from my program, because there were so many assignments to do. I wrote papers on the department's budget, worked with my preceptor to develop a project on the plate/pellet rotation in the kitchen, did a cost analysis,  performed inservices with the staff in the kitchen (talked to them about topics such as organization in the pantries, etc), did multiple test trays (took tray temperatures and tasted the food), created a bulletin board with food safety notices on it, developed a hypothetical patient menu for Labor Day, and made labels to organize the cooler. Each assignment required some kind of a paper to turn in to my program coordinators (as did each rotation, but again, this rotation had the highest paper yield by far). I grew very accustomed to using the laminator and label machine. On top of that, I made outstanding connections at this hospital. I'm very lucky that I'm working here almost two years later!

Towards the end of our school  year, we gave our program coordinators a list of our interests and electives that we wanted to do. There are so many different career paths for dietitians, and the Dietetic Internship is a great way to experiment. I chose Public Relations. Others chose pediatrics, oncology, weight loss counseling, CPS (Chicago Public Schools), and community outreach, to name a few. 

My PR internship took place in a fancy office in a downtown skyscraper where I worked in a sunny cubicle with unlimited access to cereal, soy milk, and coffee from an expensive machine. Every Friday afternoon, a woman wheeled a beer cart past my cubicle and told me to pick whatever brew I wanted. My preceptor kept me busy with assignments, mostly given to me via e-mail. Instead of walking to work, I stuffed my laptop into my over-sized purse every morning and crammed myself onto the crowded Red Line. I spent the whole day in my cubicle except when I was meeting with my preceptor, looking for cereal, or going to lunch.  It was so different from my previous work environment that I didn't know what to do with myself for the first week (except write, of course).

While I liked the busy, upscale work environment, I left my final day knowing that I was unlikely to choose PR for my career. I love to write, of course, but I like to write what I believe. I would find it hard to support food brands that I don't actually like. My favorite part of the internship was weeks later when I went to FNCE (Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo) in Atlanta. My preceptor was very active with putting research together for a presentation there. She gave me assignments that were related to that, and I saw some of my ideas reflected in that presentation in Atlanta. I had a very good relationship with my preceptor, and it was her enthusiasm for PR that made me second-guess, even after I decided it wasn't right for me, whether I should pursue it. For those who enjoy writing and want to make very good money, this is a good way to specialize in dietetics. Could I consider doing something like this one day? Maybe. But for now, I want to work with patients and write what I want. 

October came before I knew it, and I only had two rotations to go. My next rotation was an outpatient diabetes rotation, and it was also my favorite. I've never mentioned this before, but I've wanted to specialize in diabetes ever since I took biochemistry while talking my prerequisites. I was fascinated about how insulin works and the differences between the types of diabetes. I told my program coordinators that I was interested in this, and they rewarded me with an outstanding placement.

This practice was on the southwest side of the city and had a large Medicare/Medicaid population. We saw Type 1, Type 2, and gestational diabetes patients. My preceptor was also filling in at the bariatric (obesity) clinic once a week, so I got to help her with counseling and she let me teach a class for bariatric surgery patients. This was the first time in my life that I got to do counseling, and I fell in love with it. My preceptor was extremely helpful in critiquing me and prepared me so well for the outpatients that I see now. In addition to the counseling practice, I used a glucometer for a long weekend (a device that reads your blood glucose levels after you prick your finger), gave myself a saline insulin shot on the side of my abdominal area, and wore an insulin pump (filled with saline) for 24 hours. I learned an immense amount of information from these four weeks, and I can say with full confidence that I want to continue to learn about diabetes and specialize in it. Once I am an RD for two years and get enough hours working with diabetics, I'll be able to sit for another exam and become a Certified Diabetes Educator. I can't wait for that day to come! 

 Our final rotation was six weeks, and we also got to choose where we wanted to go. This was our professional rotation. Examples of my friends' placements include clinical rotations with specific focus (e.g. renal), food service for schools, and working with media dietitians in Chicago.  I was interested in corporate wellness, and I got lucky again with a great experience.

I was placed in a large hospital system with hundreds of employees who wanted to lose weight. Once a week, my preceptor and I met with the participants in person. We weighed them, gave them nutritional advice, and handed them recipes to try for the next week. Each participant was expected to hand in a food log and list how many times they ate out or ate processed food. I didn't get to help with those logs or recipes since they were already done by the time that I started, but I was able to help with the program for January 2015. We brainstormed weekly challenges (e.g. make bone broth, avoid added sugar for a week, etc). It was a fun, creative internship. When I wasn't weighing or counseling patients, I was working on the 2015 program, helping my preceptor with data entry, or doing e-mail counseling. My preceptor was very influential over the way I eat now. I no longer count my calories but try to eat real foods and avoid processed foods as much as I can. You'll see a lot of that reflected in my recipes! 

I remember working from home in my pajamas on the last day of my internship. At the end of the day, I sent my last assignment to my preceptor and completed the final paper of my internship to submit to my program coordinator. I was done, and it felt weird. My program met one final time as a class to fill out paperwork stating that we had finished our internship. About two weeks later, we received an email from the Commission on Dietetic Registration that gave us permission to  register for the RD exam. But that is where I will end this post. The RD exam will be for another day. I'll conclude with this: 

After our last day of filling out paperwork at class, one of our classmates threw a giant party. We ate, drank, and were merry. I'm still happy to call these girls my friends! 

Thanks to Lexx for this wonderful photo collage!