“I really regret eating healthy today,” said no one ever. There’s a lot of advice out there about the best ways to eat healthy. That’s why we decided to start 2019 by going to straight to an expert and sat down with our member Dylan Murphy of Dylan Murphy Nutrition.
Dylan Murphy is a registered dietitian who offers counseling from an anti-diet approach, helping clients better their relationships with food and their bodies through lifestyle changes that allow them sustainable growth. In her practice, she focuses on the roof issue of a client’s eating pattern or lifestyle in order to best help them make improvements and come to a point of not feeling controlled by food or body image thoughts.
Dylan knew she wanted to be a dietitian since high school. She says, “I’ve always had a passion for nutrition and the way our bodies are so affected by the foods we do (or do not) put in them.” In her journey to become a dietitian, she found a deeper love for private practice and being able to connect 1-on-1 with clients and journey them to reach changes in their overall health (physical and mental) that they never thought they could reach. She worked in a clinical setting as a dietitian for 3 years before jumping into her practice full time last September.
Dylan is inspired by the incredible change she gets to see in her client’s lives. Most of her clients come to her with years of eating disorder behaviors, restrictive eating patterns or chronic dieting. “Being able to help them walk away from all of that and step into food freedom and feeling empowered to nourish their body well is a very fulfilling part of my job.” She continued, “I love connecting with people, so being able to help my clients set and reach goals, but also being there to help them when they don’t reach them and figure out strategies in those harder days is very rewarding.”
Dylan credits her success to passion and networking. As an entrepreneur, she believes that if you find something you are passionate about, then do it! She recalls going out on her own, “it’s scary of course, taking a leap out of a well-paying clinical job to jump into my own practice not knowing if it would succeed. But I’m so glad I did.”
After finding your passion, she is a stronger believer in networking when starting a business. “My biggest thing I learned leading up to going full time (and even still today) is the power of networking. I made it a goal to network with other dietitians, counselors and health providers in private practice at least once a week so that I could learn from them – how they got to where they are, what they’ve learned, etc.” She adds, “that was so helpful to me, gaining insight from people who have been in my shoes.”
The question she gets asked most often is how do I start eating healthier? She says the worst thing you can do is to focus on weight. “A drive for weight loss is what can catapult you into jumping from diet to diet and leaves you feeling defeated and exhausted. Weight loss as a secondary goal is okay in certain cases, but when it’s our primary goal we are not setting ourselves up for success.”
To start down the path of healthier eating, she says, “you should ask yourself what you are really wanting in a healthier lifestyle. Are you wanting to be around as long as you can for your kids, grandkids, family, etc. Are you wanting to gain control over your eating habits, such as wanting to cook more at home?” Dylan stresses to think what your healthy lifestyle looks like first, without weight being the focus. And then ask yourself, “what is one small change I can make today to reach that goal? Maybe it’s eating breakfast, trying a new recipe at home, not eating out for lunch, adding back in a food you’ve been afraid to eat or scheduling an appointment with a dietitian. Those small changes over time will help you reach your goals in a way that is sustainable and life changing.”
Dylan appreciates running her practice from Green Hills Office Suites. Before going full time, she was renting office space in the evenings from a therapist who has an office there. She loved the location and how comfortable and nice the office building felt. In regard to working from Green Hills Office suites full time now, she says, “my experience has been wonderful!” To begin your path to a healthier lifestyle, you can schedule a consultation with Dylan and sign up for her recipe club. You can also follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
