Learn about who I am, what I do, and why I do what I do.
My name is Kai Nemoto and I’m a registered dietitian.
For my career, I was always interested in something relatable to everyday life. After over 10 years of my own health journey through psychiatry and gynecology, I found nutrition and dietetics. It had been in front of me the whole time! When it finally clicked, I realized it would be a dream to talk about food all day every day with other people.
The following week, I attended a dietetic program informational session at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I started my dietetic journey by retaking 25 expired science credits at a community college. If you don’t get a degree (even Associate’s will do), college science credits expire after 5 years, regardless of your grade.
Healthy eating wasn’t foreign to me. I was lucky to grow up with homemade and even homegrown foods. Compared to the average diet, what I was eating was generally healthy. However, my eating pattern was aggravating my physical and mental health to a degree I was not aware of.
Things I was not understanding:
Effect of inconsistent eating time
Effect of inconsistent eating amount
Appetite fluctuation throughout the day and my menstrual cycle
Consequences of skipping meals go beyond the next meal
Alteration of medications on nutritional needs
Balancing meals and snacks to feel satisfied and stay full
The list goes on…
It took my own journey to learn that food and eating patterns have to be a part of medical management along with a medication and treatment regimen.
Despite this, knowledge does not directly translate to action. It was one thing to know what my body wanted and why it needed it, but depression obstructed my intentions to eat better. I was making progress with knowledge, but the struggle with the behavioral part of eating healthy was not budging.
Depression barriers to healthy eating include:
Being always tired and no energy left to allocate to self-care
So much time spent sleeping
Motivated and unmotivated at the same time
Overwhelmed to do dishes
No clean dishes to begin with
Dishes continuously piling up
Easily exhausted from
Making a meal plan
Creating a grocery list
Getting ready to go out to grocery shopping
Finding decent clean clothes
Taking shower
Maybe out of gas
Walking around grocery store
Not being able to find the ingredient but don’t have energy to ask someone
Coming home with groceries
Putting away groceries
Not being able to taste the food
Good and bad memories from food that upset you for hours afterwards
Difficulty finding cooking gadgets
Starting to cook and realizing you were out of a crucial ingredient
Medication affecting appetite
Eating time rearranged by medication such as instructions to take with or without food
Getting full from taking so many medications and supplements with fluid
The list is neverending…
There is no magical spell to solve these daily issues. But in a coping life, there are occasional sparks in motivation and energy that patch through day after day. My goal is to bring those sparks to you through small tips, hacks, and skills.
I became a dietitian to help people who are coping every day. I’ll be here to help you understand complex nutrition and health information. Not everything will be helpful for everyone,but I hope you find pieces of your brain clicking from elements here and there.
Stay tuned!
Also, I welcome topic suggestions at kainemoto24@gmail.com.
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