The Genesis (& Exodus) of Reformed Nutrition: Part I
My career aspirations began with a personal connection to healthcare; my dad was a radiologist, and my mom was a registered nurse before she chose to stay at home with my sister and me. Visiting Dad at the hospital meant being able to go “behind the scenes” where only staff (and sometimes two random blonde children) were allowed. We met a lot of special and super smart people taking care of patients back there. I was immediately intrigued about the inner workings of a hospital and always loved visiting Dad at work.
“Daddy’s Girls”
The late Dr. Huey Bullock with Baby Reformed Nutrition & her big sister.
As a kid I loved food and always had a good appetite. I never thought too much about the quality or purpose of food, I just knew I had to eat my vegetables at dinner and that I wasn’t allowed more than three Fruit Roll Ups a day. (I know what you’re thinking, “3?!” I wish I could run that “limit” by my mom now.) We ate our fair share of junk – some of that junk was obvious, like the fruit roll ups, but some not-so-obvious, like copious amounts of cow’s milk and breakfast cereal. We didn’t know what I do now. Generally, I was always fed, fueled, and pretty active. Mine was the generation told to go outside to play and not come back in until dinner and I did my best to comply.
My sister is 6 years older than I am, so she was in the full throws of her teens while I was just entering adolescence. I desperately wanted to be as cool as her so when she wasn’t home, I’d snoop through her room, her bathroom, read her magazines, etc. One day I found a box of “Dexatrim” in her bathroom. I remembered those ridiculous commercials on TV and thought, “Why would she need that? She’s perfect.” Then I read the box, combined that new knowledge with what I saw in the fashion magazines, and I had my first lessons in diet culture. I was fascinated by fashion models like Cindy Crawford, Kathy Ireland, Claudia Schiffer, etc. But the models of the 1980s were a lot curvier than the waif, Kate Moss, types that would follow in the 1990s. My own body image issues and insecurities were off to the races. Along with all my peers.
I went to a private Christian high school. Stereotypically, young white women are more likely to develop an eating disorder. In reality, that’s not true, it just happens that there were a lot of us there. But you add perfectionism, competition, adolescence, and high expectations and – yes - there was a lot of disordered eating going around. I went from barely thinking about food to thinking about it all the time. I also began to worry about how sick one of my best friends was with her disorder, frequently missing school for weeks at a time for treatment. I knew there was such thing as too much food, but I was conflicted with the knowledge that too little food was VERY dangerous as well. Sixteen-year-old Stacie did what she could to navigate it all, but the relationship with my friend eventually fizzled as the college years came. Very soon, I would be going to away to school and I had put in very little thought to what my career would be.
Choosing a college actually wasn’t that hard. While I wanted to do what my sister did and go to College of Charleston, they didn’t have any majors that really stood out to me. Then a friend that graduated a year before me said she was majoring in Nutrition and bells went off… “I don’t want to be a doctor (grades), I don’t want to be a nurse (bodily fluids, no thanks), but I LOVE food…I can major in FOOD?!” I thought maybe one day, I can work in a hospital like my dad AND help other people with eating disorders. Clemson had the right major and my dad went there for undergrad, so I was sold. I was Tiger Town bound.
I majored in Food Science & Human Nutrition and completed the Dietetic Internship after that. Luckily, I passed the registration exam in one sitting. I remember calling my dad right after, “We did it! Dad, I’m a Registered Dietitian!!” I was LEGIT! He was proud. And I was ready to get to work in clinical nutrition immediately.
I still felt that Charleston was calling. I was determined to move there forever, get married, and work in a hospital like those smart, nice, compassionate people I saw when I was little and during my internships. But I was single and jobless, I needed an excuse to move there: Ah! Graduate school! There was no master’s degree program for nutrition around, but The Citadel had an M.A. in Psychology: Clinical Counseling. It was not an easy pitch to my dad (after all, he literally spent all day staring at black and white images), “You haven’t even started your career, Stacie. Why are you changing it??” Begging him to just trust me, “Dad, these go together, counseling and nutrition. I promise, this is a great combination of degrees for my career as a dietitian.” He did trust me, and I earned my second degree.
While earning the master’s degree, I started working part time at Roper Hospital. I progressed from general medical / surgical floors to specialty units, to intensive care units. The surgical intensive care unit at that hospital was a wonderful experience, I loved the math involved in enteral and parenteral nutrition, but most of my patients were on ventilators…unable to talk…which kind of makes a degree in counseling useless…. Before I could dwell on that discrepancy too much, I was quickly promoted from clinical dietitian to clinical nutrition manager, I just had to move to Greenville, SC. Charleston was my happy place, I never wanted to leave, so I just chalked it up to, “This is temporary. I’ll just go for the experience and come back and take my boss’s job.”
Turns out I loved managing a team of dietitians in Greenville. They were and still are exceptionally smart and accomplished professionals. I was able to start and grow the outpatient, medical and surgical weight management programs. This is where the counseling degree came in extremely handy: behavioral change theory, cognitive distortions, personality types, family dynamics, self-esteem, trauma – it ALL affects someone’s diet, nutrition, and wellness. (And I’m sure I reminded Dad more than once how brilliant this combination was.) It made me a better dietitian then and it still does now.
It also turns out that I did NOT love managing food service and was burning out badly by my 6th year there. I started looking and took a temporary lecturer experience with Clemson and absolutely loved teaching. Eventually, I found my next full-time role with a biotechnology company, a laboratory. The labs were extensive, cutting edge, and not mainstream medicine. The milieu of doctors at that time definitely wasn’t taught this in medical school and once they understood the labs, they certainly didn’t have time to explain them to their patients in a 15-minute appointment. This was my favorite job. As a Clinical Health Consultant, I regularly visited doctor’s offices to meet with their patients, discuss lab results, and counsel for diet and lifestyle behavior change. THIS is the most rewarded I’ve ever felt, and the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my career. This is what I want to recreate with Reformed Nutrition.
So why didn’t I just launch Reformed Nutrition years ago? Simply put: I was scared. I wanted the security of being corporately employed. Ironically, I went into pharmaceutical sales - and would come to learn and experience that it is NOT a generally secure field. But I was still in the outpatient setting, still working with doctors and clinical staff. It was a very different experience though. I was received very differently than I was as a health consultant. Sales can be a pride-swallowing roller coaster of a career. After the last layoff with pharma I searched for months for a new pharmaceutical, sales, or outreach position and never found the right opportunity or fit. I decided to start cooking up my private practice, quietly, on the back burner, “just in case.”
““For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” ”
There came a time that I couldn’t put it off anymore. Circumstances were perfect for a private practice and I couldn’t deny it. From the jump, I believe that God was leading me here. Every position I had added valuable tools to my tool box. I’m finally ready to get Reformed Nutrition off the back burner. And this time I’m not scared.