My Story

Picture it: it was the height of the 2020 pandemic. All are locked in their homes. All the stores were closed. Everyone was bored out of their minds. I had heard of the app called TikTok, but swore I was too old to download it. Maybe it was desperation to keep my boredom at bay, or maybe it was a little bit of curiosity - but either way, I caved and downloaded the app.

At first, I was met with the traditional videos of influencers dancing to trending songs, but the longer I spent on the app, the more curated and personalized my For You Page got. I soon began to see recipe videos, dieting videos, nutrition videos, and the like. Now, I’ve been on social media since I was 12. I knew the game of constantly being inundated with “diet tricks” and “how to lose the pooch in 10 days” videos. However, I was also a junior in college, majoring in food & nutrition, with the eventual goal of becoming a registered dietitian. I knew these videos were BS. I was in the height of learning the exact opposite of things that were constantly being advertised by the diet industry. Still, I remained a silent watcher, with the occasional scoff if I ran across an especially egregious diet video.

One day, the boredom got to me. My creativity side was itching. I was already making dinner, so I thought “why not make a little video?” It was highly unedited, ugly, and didn’t even show to final product of the dinner! And yet, it picked up traction. 1 like, 30 likes, 500 likes, 10K likes…Wait, what?! A few followers hopped onto my page. Then a few more. And a few more. It was intimidating and exhilarating to watch the numbers go up.

I spent the next few weeks recreating recipes that I had been using for years. Ones that were super simple and nutritious. I began using the tagline “do you need a super simple dinner?” and I haven’t stopped since. Some videos flopped, but some videos gained the same traction as that first one did. I loved making the recipe videos, but my heart was still bothered by how much diet-culture was within the app. I began following a few dietitians and were inspired by their videos of debunking all the myths that were commonly seen on the app.

What if I branched out and made a different type of video that debunks the most common nutrition trends I hear about? No one is probably going to see it since it wasn’t the usual recipe videos I make.

Wrong.

Approximately 9 million viewers watched the video.

I was intimidated by the amount of people in my comment section telling me how dumb I was, but I stood my ground. I gained a significant amount of followers after this video. A lot of them reached out to me to tell me that it was refreshing to see this type of video, rather than the usual diet-culture videos that plagued their feeds. Even with the adversity from the occasional hateful commenter, I was encouraged. I wanted people to know that my page was a safe place from the diet industry. It was a safe place to talk about food without attaching morality to it. It was a safe place to reevaluate that relationship with food and dieting. It was a safe place for them to begin loving themselves.

So I ran with it. I ran with the momentum and began filming even more recipe and debunking diet-culture myths. I had a lot of videos go nowhere, but also had a lot of them gain traction. I filmed my experience of graduating college, enduring an unpaid dietetic internship, studying for my RD credentialing exam, and eventually obtaining my credentials.

All the while, I have done my best of keeping true to who I am and meeting my followers where they are at. I have been very open about my mental health, struggles, triumphs, failures, and everything in between. My followers have followed me through college, marriage, pregnancy, an internship, motherhood, different jobs, and traveling and moving.

I have a profound appreciation for every single person who has interacted with my content (positively or even negatively) and has given me this opportunity that not a lot of people get. I have been able to grow my TikTok platform to over 1 million followers and my instagram account to over 140K followers. I say this to emphasize how incredibly grateful I am.

A few years ago, I had a base level goal of working as a clinical dietitian in the hospital setting. Now, I am living my dream by creating daily content that is close to my heart and what I wish had been on my social media feed as a teenager.

I want to grow the NutritionalSarah brand as large as you’ll let me. I want to get my super simple dinner recipes to the mom who doesn’t want to cook a gourmet meal for dinner, but still wants her family to have some nutrition. I want my anti-diet culture videos to reach the teenage girl who is struggling with her relationship with food.

I have big goals for NutritionalSarah, but it is imperative for you to know that I could not do any of this without you. Thank you.