Hi this is karene

is karene. Hi this is katey from Washington DC and you're left to know me

athlete radio. Maddie Saliva, Saliva, thank you so much for joining us today, also known as the

plant-based nutritionist, but not to confuse people because you are a registered dietician

nutritionist, the real thing, an R.D. and we're so excited to dig in.

To your area of expertise in particular, which is weight loss and flexible eating and we'll start

beginning to know you first. But thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.

Of course, I'm very excited to be here. So maybe that's the best place to start at the beginning.

What was the journey to become an R.D when you decide that you wanted to play with food for your career?

Yeah, play with food. I guess that's part of what I do, but I actually never thought that I would end up where I am now. I think a lot of people probably have that same experience but I definitely had my fair share of

dieting that started pretty young and while I've always like been into

nutrition like I've always liked healthy food like even as a kid. My grandma like jokes that I used to ask for more trees on my plate like broccoli when I was like a very little kid and so I've always liked nutritious foods and then

probably around that pre-teen teenage years I actually was really into like the singer-songwriter thing. I would

perform at like restaurants or bars that they would let me into. And so I was really into music and that was kind of my first

experience with dieting, the dieting side of nutrition because I wanted to you know get you know be

In shape I wanted to be able to perform better and I knew that it takes a lot to be able to you know play a

guitar thing on stage move around so a teacher suggested to me you know like why

don't you start working out or, you know, it's something to like improve my cardiovascular endurance for that. And so I did that and it turned pretty unhealthy pretty quickly of like counting calories,

pretty strictly dieting on and off, like working out excessively and eventually I

realized I didn't want to do music for the rest of my life.

Like I love it. It will always be a part of me, but like I didn't want that lifestyle.

So that's really when I went, I switched my major to nutrition in college and really took off from there and just I just knew that there was so much more to it than like eat healthy and really becoming a dietician and like really digging into like the science and just everything that comes with it the food science part of it, the metabolic health,

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