Day In The Life: Nutrition

…Can I just say how much I loved and adored my nutrition rotation!? I wanted to set up a rotation in nutrition because I probably got about…one lecture on it in med school.

Yes, seriously. One.

Sure, there were bits and pieces scattered every here and there between blocks, but if I want to go into family medicine and one of my main focuses = preventative health, I figured learning more about how to counsel my patients on healthy eating habits would be a good idea.

So who better to learn it from than a dietitian? :]!

Overall, it was a laidback and super informative rotation–I’m very tempted to use my last 2 weeks of electives to do another one, since this one was so short (on account of Thanksgiving + my dietitian going out of town).

Day in the Life: Nutrition

A Typical Day

I worked with a clinical dietitian in Huntington who focuses on functional medicine, does nutrition workshops + community/corporate lectures, and teaches yoga on the side at a local studio! Here’s a blog post she wrote on emotional eating!

It was a lot of fun, and helped me to incorporate a whole lot of concepts I’d had floating in my head (thanks to The Recipe ReDux and all the healthy living blogs I follow!) into practice. The only downside was that all that talk about food and recipe ideas tended to get me super hungry. ;_;

I already try to eat fairly healthily as it is (especially when I have too much going on to make time to work out), but all that we discussed throughout each day did influence me to make healthier food choices too!

She followed an “all foods can fit, but food is medicine, so you want to prioritize and eat as much whole, unprocessed foods as possible” philosophy, and emphasized the importance of having nutrient-dense + balanced meals with the plate method:

• Start with protein (~25% of the plate).
• Add fruits + non-starchy vegetables–aka pretty much any veggie other than corn, potatoes, peas (~50% of plate).
• Starches, healthy fats, whole grains, etc. fit into the last 25% of the plate.

A typical day would start at around 8:15 in the morning, and I’d sit in on her Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT) sessions with patients.

I liked that she got to spend so much more time talking with each patient (I think in the future, I’ll get ~15 minutes vs. an hour), and it was so nice to see people who were motivated to make healthy changes in their diet and lifestyle! :] (Granted, there were definitely varying levels of compliance + motivation, but still, it was uplifting. :D )

She was awesome with her patients–super engaging, understanding and encouraging, but also able to lay down some tough love she deemed it necessary.

I got to write all the notes! They’re somewhat similar to the SOAP notes I’m used to, but instead of Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan, it went by ADIM:

• Assessment
• Diagnosis
• Intervention
• Monitoring

I’d calculate each patient’s total energy expenditure (TEE) with the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation, and was also given resources galore, so hopefully when things in my life calm down a bit (aka after interviews/traveling/possibly the match), I’ll be able to share more of the things I learned in future posts! :]

We’d break for lunch from 12-1, and resume again til anywhere between 3-5 p.m., depending on the day. Then I’d run off to do back-to-back fitness classes (group fitness with my friend at the hospital gym followed by BJJ at PCMAA) in the evening.

Meals

Lunch was free every day in the education room! :D

Parking

Free! I was encouraged to park further away from the entrance so that (a) patients could get the closer spots + (b) get more steps/activity in.

Housing

I bummed on my friend’s couch again for the duration of this rotation! (Same place where I lived whilst on my Anesthesiology rotation!) It was so nice to see a familiar face again! :]

Check out my other Day In The Life posts, and I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving week! :]