“Back to school”: three words most kids dread to see come mid-August.   You see the phrase plastered all over general stores and hear it in about every other commercial when you’re watching TV (typically followed by the word “sale”).   How is it possible for two and a half months to fly by so quickly?   I ask myself this same question every year.   It feels like I just began at Kindred Nutrition yesterday and here I am now packing all my things and preparing to head back to Blacksburg to take on another school year at Virginia Tech.   Although I am by no means dreading my return to school, I still feel like I didn’t have enough time at Kindred Nutrition as there’s so much more that can be learned from Amy, Dawn, and their clients. I want to use this blog final blog post before returning to school as an opportunity to make a short reflection on my time at Kindred Nutrition, but first I would like to thank both Amy and Dawn for allowing me to be one of thei...

Oh Macros, how I love thee. You are the foundation of my nutrition recommendations. You should be individualized and different for everyone although you are "prescribed" routinely the same person to person. You are scientific , there is not a one size fits all , and frankly you are misunderstood . A couple of years ago Macros started to become more popular in the www world when a brilliant someone decided to market magical macro percentages to induce weight loss, body massing, and everything else under the sun. The thought process is to start with grams of protein needs dependent on body weight, to then look at range of fats between 25-35% dependent on goals and body type, and to provide the remaining of your macro goals from carbohydrates.  How easy, especially since everyone has the same protein needs, insert sarcasm here. A food label providing grams of fat, carbs, and protein Right away many bought into this bullet proof hope and we now have too many folks determi...

When we look at foods and are deciding what to eat, we will often label certain foods in our minds as “good” or “bad” usually in respect to their calories, carbohydrates, fats, or sugars.  For this reason, if we were choosing a dairy product to add into our meal plan for the day, we would probably chose something like Greek yogurt over something like ice cream.  But, what if on whatever particular day you’re having a strong craving for some ice cream?  Do you go ahead and just give into your craving or do you settle for something a little less satisfying like the yogurt?  Often times, people will refuse to give into their craving and will eat the yogurt, but will also eat a number of other things in order to attempt to get the satisfaction they may have gotten from just eating the ice cream – Amy would refer to this as “eating around” the craving.  Since I have begun at Kindred Nutrition, I’ve heard many clients speak of “eating around” the craving.  In th...

We've been so lucky at Kindred Nutrition this year to have two great interns. Read below to see how a student athlete views her experience so far at Kindred Nutrition. We can't wait to follow her season this year! I’m Maryellen Hauver and I am one of the interns spending time at Kindred Nutrition this summer. I just completed my sophomore year at Bridgewater College, studying Nutritional Science. As I got into my major at school, I began to consider what job I would like to use my degree for after school. In my classes I mostly heard about working as a Registered Dietitian. Before choosing this as my career of pursuit, I wanted to get some experience that would help me understand exactly what the job entails. Knowing that I would be home for the summer, I did some research about dietitians in the Frederick area. Through the magic of Google, I found Amy! I also discovered this blog and saw that she had taken college student interns in the past. It appeared to be the per...

In order to lose weight, we often are told that energy out must be greater than energy in.   In other words, calories taken in must be less than the calories we use in all of our daily activities.  So, to lose weight we cut calories and try to increase activity.  (Granted, there is more to weight loss/maintenance than just an exchange in energy.  What if we cut too many calories or don’t eat enough? Since I started at Kindred Nutrition, I’ve heard many of Amy’s or Dawn’s clients talk about how they’ve cut back on calories to lose weight but have hit a weight-loss plateau.  Many a time when a client discusses this occurrence, we eventually come to the conclusion that the client is not eating enough.  This probably sounds foreign but you do need to eat in order to lose weight!  If you’re not eating enough your body goes into “starvation mode.”   Then whenever you do eat your body automatically stores those calories as fat because it...

What a tricky relationship it can be with your dietitian, especially if you aren't 100% committed or if you don't really like him/her. Do you ever feel like you dread your appointments or that you don't think it's worth your time? If so you may just not be a great fit  OR you may just not be ready to change.  I tell my interns I can usually tell within the first 10 minutes of a meeting how successful someone will be. Sometimes I am surprised but usually I am spot on. I thought this would be a helpful guide for anyone who is thinking about going to a dietitian, has gone to a dietitian and had a "bad" experience, or is currently seeing a dietitian and not getting the results they want. Tip #1 - Research, research, research .  Check out their website, check out their Facebook page. Do they have Instagram? Most importantly ask around. Has anyone you known worked with this dietitian and if so what was their experience like? How does the dietitian work? ...

We hear so much about carbs and protein.  Some people claim a high protein diet is the best way to lose weight, or there are people who insist everyone should only eat carbs from the low glycemic list. But fat doesn’t make the conversation much, and that’s because we all know we need to avoid it, right? Fat is evil.  Almost as despicable as gluten...but not quite.  Dietary fat (I wish we could come up with a better word for this) is found in animal products - meats, dairy - yogurt, cheese, milk, and eggs, but we can also find it in nature with our nuts, seeds, and avocado.  Of course, our baked goods like muffins and cookies have fat are included in the ingredients to make them moist and tasty!   Food companies have made it entirely POSSIBLE to eat a fat-free diet.  And why wouldn’t you want to? Fat (okay, I’m thinking of a new word now) has been demonized during the past few decades.  We’ve heard that eating too much fat, or any at al...