My Journey to Becoming a Dietitian

 
Lauren Twigge, How I Became a Dietitian

One of the most common questions that I get asked is, “Why did you become a Registered Dietitian?” Let me just say, there are so many twists and turns to how I ended up here so buckle up, I’m going to tell you my story.  

My story begins all the way back with little Lauren. As some of you may know, I grew up surrounded by agriculture. My family is involved in various forms of farming including dairy, nut, and tree fruit farming. Many of my summers were spent on a small calf ranch cutting hay bales, feeding calves, and scrubbing water troughs. Don’t let my Dallas zip code fool you, I am actually a farm girl at heart. I had a deep love for animals of all kinds. I loved them so much that there was a solid chunk of my childhood in which I truly believed that I was a cat. Some would say that I was weird, my mom would say that I was “creative”. LOL, thanks mom.

Do you know how there is always that one girl in your grade who absolutely loves horses? Well, it was me. I was that girl in my grade. I owned basically every horse book, horse t-shirt, and model horse that you could possibly think of. I was well-known for bringing home any stray animal I could find, rescuing tadpoles whose water holes were drying up, and spending time sitting in the pasture with my horses talking about who knows what. It was this innate love for animals coupled with my childhood spent surrounded by dairy cows that motivated me to pursue becoming a veterinarian. Y’all I went to vet camp… I was committed. Becoming a veterinarian was my dream and I was so excited about my future career.

With my passion to become a vet, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in Animal Science at Texas A&M University (WHOOP) and hoped to attend their vet school. I was loving every single class that I took from wool judging to animal anatomy but my eyes were being opened to a new reality. After moving away from my small agricultural town where many families worked in the same industry as my own, I realized that the big wide world and most people in it had a completely different view of the agricultural industry.

The negative image that is often associated with food and farming hit me square in the face during my college years. I began to understand how far removed people were from the agricultural industry and food production. I often found myself stepping up to the plate to explain certain farming practices, tell the farmers story, and educate those around me on where their food comes from. I constantly found myself correcting misinformation and desired to advocate for agriculture in a way that impacted people… and this way was through their nutrition.

People eat every day yet they have very little insight into where that food comes from, how it is grown or produced, and how it gets from the farm to their grocery cart. I have found that this uncertainty can cause a lot of stress and fear in people when they think about their food and their health and my goal is to lift that fear off of you through education. With this new passion, I gave up my goal of becoming a Veterinarian to pursue my dream career as a Registered Dietitian.

I graduated Suma Cum Laude from Texas A&M University with a bachelors in Animal Science and went on to receive a master’s degree in Clinical Nutrition from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. I passed my registration exam shortly after I graduated from grad school and became a Registered Dietitian in the Fall of 2019. My ultimate goal as a dietitian is to take the stress and fear of food off of your shoulders.

We live in a society where Hollywood actors, Netflix documentaries, and the latest fad diets can make us unsure of what the best decision is for our health. As a dietitian, I can tell you that the best decision for your health is the one that you can maintain and that you feel good about. You want to buy organic foods? Cool. You want to buy conventional foods? Awesome. Does going dairy free and gluten free sound miserable to you? Then don’t do it. You do not need to do what your neighbor does and you do not need to fear the foods that a certain Instagram account told you to be scared of. I want you to feel confident in your choices and make your food decisions based off of fact and not fear. I think back to my childhood on a farm where I got to see food at its most basic level. Before society had a chance to complicate it and diet culture was able to eliminate it. My goal is to bring you back to that place with food… to answer all of your questions and bring nutrition back down to its roots.

 
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