For dietitians, the DI year is supposed to be a pre-professional experience, supervised work that prepares us for the realities of practice. One of these realities, I’m starting to realize, is the exercise of judgment. When I started the DI, I assumed that I’d be trained in guidelines and standards that would neatly inform all of my interventions and decisions. I’ve gotten plenty of exposure to evidence-based guidelines and best practices, but what I didn’t understand before the DI—and what I’m coming to…

Five or so years ago, I sat in my apartment in DC one late winter evening with my friend Reed. We were surrounded by dirty mugs (we’d actually taken pictures at the number of coffee cups in my dishwasher as a joke, to document how hyper-caffeinated we were), index cards, papers. It was a chaotic scene, and I was adding to the chaos with something resembling a meltdown over not being able to figure out a complicated genetics problem. We were approaching the…

It’s the last day of my little mid-rotation fall break. Of course I didn’t do all of the things I wanted to do this week: ambitious home cleaning and organization projects, getting up-to-date on my inbox, etc.. But it was good. I gave myself a lot of empty time. I lay around plenty. I cooked some recipes for the blog. I’m not exactly ready for the pace to pick up again, but I’m ready enough, rested enough. While I was resting, I gave…

After one week off, it feels like a while since I’ve checked in for the weekend roundup! It’s good to be back. And I’m back at the very start of a week long break between DI rotations. I haven’t quite settled into it yet, but I have high hopes for some rest, some cooking, and some time with Ashley, who’s coming to visit later this week. A few weeks ago, I wrote about riding an ugly wave of body dysmorphia, my most intense…

Hi friends. I’m taking a pause instead of getting weekend reading up tonight. No urgent reason, but I’ve had a lot of work to do today, and I’m feeling the need to wind down early. I’ve got something on my mind to write about, but doing so tonight would mean rushing, and it would give me less time to finish up my batch cooking, watch a little TV, maybe even pay a visit to my mom. These are things that my body and…

I’m sending this weekend reading out into the world from a hectic Sunday, which also happens to be an underslept Sunday. The combination of those two things means that I’m short on words, but last weekend’s post—which wasn’t short on words—did leave me with some follow up thoughts. Two of them aren’t my thoughts. They’re impressions and observations that readers were kind and good enough to share with me. Libby wrote, I don’t know that we are ever finished with anything. We have…

Whenever I write about my experience of eating disorders, I make a point of saying that the healing process isn’t linear. It’s full of odd, surprising twists and turns, realizations and moments that take one by surprise. Still, it’s natural to hope that a linear trend will emerge. After all, it’s the promise of change, of transformation, that keeps us going when the process is at its ugliest. When recovery was at its worst for me—when I was feeling the most robbed of…