Why I Became a Dietitian

A note before you read: This post touches on disordered eating and body image. Please be gentle with yourself as you read.

I was seven years old when I quit gymnastics because I thought I looked fat in my leotard compared to the other girls.

Seven.

That's where this story starts for me. And if I'm being honest, it's probably where it starts for a lot of us, earlier than we should ever have to think about any of this.

I grew up in the early 2000s and if you were there, you know. Magazines were covers full of diet tips and celebrity bodies being picked apart publicly like it was entertainment. The actresses we looked up to were tiny and under the same pressure. America's Next Top Model. Low rise jeans. Clothes that left nowhere to hide. You could call someone fat out loud and nobody flinched. Everyone was on a diet. It was just the air we breathed.

And it wasn't just the media. It was the dinner table too. Comments from family that were never meant to be cruel but landed anyway. Watching the adults around you, women who looked perfect to you, complain about their own bodies. Learning before you even knew you were learning that a woman's body is always a project. Always something to be managed or hidden or fixed.

Then social media arrived and gave all of that a megaphone. Suddenly there were accounts and aesthetics making restriction look inspiring. Girls posting about their routines, their discipline, their bodies. It all looked like wellness from the outside. Like goals. You're a teenager absorbing all of it, thinking this is just what taking care of yourself should look like.

I didn't know it was disorder. I just wanted to fit in.

By the time I was eighteen I was restricting heavily and exercising excessively. I was only eating 1200 calories a day because some article said that’s all your brain needed. It felt like control but it was obsession. I only consumed content that fed it. Anything that made me feel like if I just tried harder, looked a certain way, I'd finally feel okay. I even hid behind choices that looked healthy and responsible from the outside, things that had nothing to do with my restriction on the surface, but I used them as cover. I wasn't being honest with myself or anyone around me about what was actually going on. Well I didn’t really know what was going on, it was my normal.

Then depression hit and everything flipped. The restriction gave way to bingeing. I gained 30lbs in a year from antidepressants, overeating on fast food, and just not caring about my health. I just couldn’t care about anything. I felt like I'd failed at the one thing I'd been trying to control for years. I've been on both ends of this and everywhere in between. I know what it feels like in your body on each side.

I took my first nutrition class in college genuinely just trying to learn how to lose more weight. Something unexpected happened. The more I learned, the more I started to understand what had actually been going on all those years. The science didn't just educate me. It slowly started to heal me. My professor told me I had a natural eye for it. I changed my major. Became a Registered Dietitian. And the obsession that had been hurting me quietly became the thing that healed me. I spent six years studying nutrition and over time the food noise lessened and I wasn’t scared of food anymore.

I share all of this because I don't think my story is unusual. I think it's incredibly common. Diet culture didn't start with us and it won't end with us. But what I know now that I didn't know at seven, or fifteen, or eighteen, none of it was ever really about health. It was about shrinking. About earning your place. Trying to be accepted. Trying to be perfect.

Your body was never the problem. The world that taught you to see it that way was.

That's why this page exists. Not to give you another set of rules. Just to help you find your way back to something simpler. Trusting yourself, nourishing yourself, without all the noise.

You deserved that from the beginning. We all did.

— Ivy ♡

Disclaimer: This blog is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or personalized nutrition counseling. It is not a substitute for care from a qualified healthcare professional. If you are struggling with disordered eating, support is available through the Alliance for Eating Disorders at 1-866-662-1235.