Interview by Mercedes Arnold

Maine Vibes Magazine: Can you introduce yourself, state your pronouns, and what do you do?

Caroline Bowman: My name is Caroline Bowman, my pronouns are she/her and I am a private practice registered dietician, and nutritionist. I work with clients one-on-one, to help them heal their relationships with food, work on meeting their health and wellness goals, and provide individualized support around food and nutrition.

MVM: What was the driving force to come for you to become an RDN? 

CB: Like many young adults going to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, other than knowing that going to college was the next step. Throughout that time, I came across nutrition and realized I always liked exercise, fitness, and nutrition, so I decided to pursue that field. At the time, it was very diet-centric, which is not at all how I practice now. But that's the lens I learned through and the place that I was as a person in the early 2000s. As a young adult, it took me like five or six years as a dietitian to begin questioning and realizing that it didn't feel right to me, putting people on diets and seeing that it wasn't effective. 

MVM: What made you start questioning your education?

CB:  It was a combination of things. I followed the path in undergrad and my supervised internship training to become a dietitian, and it was very weight-centric, diet-focused at the time, and that's what I learned, so that's what I did. After doing that and working with kids and family, I saw that type of care wasn’t effective, it felt icky and felt like I was causing potential harm by focusing on weight and calories with children and young adults. I began to question it and lost a lot of passion for being in the field. I almost considered switching careers, but then I discovered intuitive eating, which is a 180 flip from what I had learned at school, but it's a well-researched approach.

MVM: Can you talk more about what intuitive eating is? 

CB: Intuitive eating has been around as a way of practicing nutrition as a studied approach for over 25 years. It was developed by two registered dieticians, named Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Tribole and Resch also came from a place of teaching nutrition and providing counseling using a weight-centric model. They studied the data and realized it wasn’t effective, especially for eating disorders, but also for the general population. I read their book, took the courses, and taught myself how to incorporate that into my practice. 

Intuitive eating works on getting to the root of where our struggles with food begin. Often that comes from dieting messages that we hear as children which are modeled to us from our early caregivers and role models, and what we hear in the media. We live in a society where the media portrays one type of body as the right type. That was especially prominent in the early 2000s, which we talked about before this interview started, we both grew up with a lot of that messaging like that. 

MVM: Where does that unlearning start? 

CB: It's really slow, and that can be challenging for people.The work that I do, is to set up the framework from the beginning. This is not a quick couple of visits, and then everything is better. This is about the long game, this is the undoing of years of harm, and body trauma that you've had. A lot of it comes with body acceptance, body grief, going through grieving the idea that you have in your head for what a body is supposed to look like; it’s probably not coming from reality, it’s what we've been conditioned to believe from the media to movies.

MVM: Everyone, including myself, has an idea of who they are and what they look like to the world, and it's likely different from how people view you. Starting to unlearn that conditioning can be scary from an identity standpoint. 

CB: It can be really scary. A lot of this work is learning that everything about you as a person is not about your physical body. We grow up to put such value on our appearance and it's reinforced in our culture which is messed up, but people are praised for having a certain body type or looking a certain way and beginning to unpack that and finding value in things that you have to offer that are separate from that. A lot of the early work of Intuitive Eating was unpacking how I see myself what my beliefs are about my body and food, and giving myself permission to eat food because I'm a human who needs it. There is no need to earn your food or think you don't deserve it.

MVM: I see a lot of the good food versus bad food posts. Is there any value to those posts?

CB: The very last principle chapter of the Intuitive Eating workbook is on gentle nutrition. We save the nutrition focus for the end because if you focus on it earlier on, you run the risk of turning it into another diet. Our brains on diets will equate any sort of rules or recommendations into eat this not that, this is good, this is bad, and that's not the goal. It all goes back to binary thinking, i.e., this body is good, this is bad. That's not how we're trying to function.

MVM: We had been talking about your holistic approach to health, can you explain how you go about that practice?

CB: I think it's really important that clients have a good care team. Depending on the reason I’m seeing the client, I will get a release to speak with their therapist or counselor. I think having the mental health support is an important piece of this work. I also have working relationships with physical therapists and personal trainers. I make it a point to find other safe spaces for me to refer clients to. 

MVM: Continuing to talk about food, children can often be picky eaters. Can you talk about the messaging around food for kids?

CB: Early food settings can really impact how kids view food. It is great to have all the foods there to choose from and not have the pressure to choose certain things. It can be frustrating to get them to eat, but when kids feel forced to eat, it feels scary to them. I often talk with parents about not putting a lot of food on their child’s plate, if possible, serving family style and allowing them to self-serve so they can add things to their plate that they want. If you're going to put something new on their plate, I’d start with one or two pieces, because for a child's brain to see a whole pool of food they aren’t familiar with is really daunting and overwhelming. It causes them to shut down from wanting to try anything. My recommendation is to put something new or different, just a little of it because it also reduces the stress of having to eat a lot of something unfamiliar. Keep in mind, they will eventually get curious and try things. It may seem like it’s not moving anywhere fast, but it will. It’s also good to involve them when it comes to food. Have them choose foods at the grocery store or have them help with dinner. 

MVM: Family-style serving sounds fun, I’ll definitely try that. Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs or someone looking to get into becoming a registered dietician, or nutritionist?

CB: Yeah, those are two great questions. I think in terms of becoming an entrepreneur, it took a long time to take the leap to leave my comfortable, stable day job. When I had that first inkling that I might want to, I didn’t end up leaving until five or seven years after. The fear of the unknown and the instability and risk held me back. I do wish I had left sooner. 

MVM: Why did you eventually end up leaving?

CB: It got to the point where I wasn’t happy, there wasn't an opportunity to move up. It was very limiting for me. I could make some changes, but it wasn’t part of a bigger organization. When you work for a larger organization, you fall under all of the bureaucracy and rules, and I didn’t have the ability to practice in the way I wanted to practice. Balancing family life and work was exhausting and I was burnt out. I had an opportunity, because of a women's health practice with a doula and physical therapist who were starting a practice nearby. They had reached out to me in 2019 and I officially left that job about three months before COVID hit. Being part of that group, and working alongside other women made it a little less scary to leave, but was still terrifying. 

My advice to other entrepreneurs is to get okay with taking risks, even if you don't know where you're going to land. That was really hard for me. I'm very much a risk-averse person, and leaving my job was the biggest risk I've ever taken. I'm glad I did though because I'm so much happier. Doing this work, I work with amazing clients, and I come in happy every day that I get to work with them. I did not have that feeling in the previous setting I was in which was really challenging. I know a lot of entrepreneurs have that risk gene in them and that's why they can do it, but sometimes it has to be activated.

For those out there listening or reading who are like me, and are very risk averse, get okay with taking big risks. Find your network and community of people to cheer you on and lift you up. Prior to leaving my job I had a great network of close friends who also happen to be entrepreneurs, and since starting on this journey, I have made even more connections, and that has been huge. It's helpful to have someone else who can understand the struggles, who can cheer you on, can collaborate with you depending on the field you're in, and refer clients or projects back and forth which helps you to feel less isolated.

MVM: What was the process like to become a registered dietician nutritionist? 

CB: For people who are going to the field of nutrition, it's a long journey. It's a full four years of undergrad, then around two years for a master's, and then the internship. I don't know if they've increased the length, but it was a 1500-hour, one-year supervised practice internship. It’s not accessible to everyone, it's an expensive and challenging path. 

For anyone considering this field, talk to someone who already is in it, find out what options there are out there and what type of nutrition you’d like to practice. The professional as a whole is grappling with becoming more accessible. It’s traditionally a very female-filled field and very white. The way the structure is set up you have to have access to certain resources. Thankfully, in recent years, there has been an effort on making programs available to BIPOC communities, providing more internships, paying interns, etc.

MVM: I appreciate your insight about that!  Do you have any mentions of women-owned, BIPOC, or LGBTQ+ -owned businesses you want to share? 

CB: Absolutely. There's a new practice in South Portland that I'm going to be doing some work with, it’s a more holistic, whole-body-focused dental practice, it's called Mind Your Mouth. It’s an all-women staff. They are incorporating the whole person and not just in a clinical setting. Rachel Pelletier is a personal trainer who works with women, she owns Mama Bear Fitness. 

MVM: Thank you, Caroline, this has been so informative!!

Thank you, Caroline, for taking the time to talk with Maine Vibes Magazine!

Web: https://www.carolinebowmanrd.com

Instagram: @mainenutrition

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