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How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
Dietitian Entrepreneur: Career Insights and Job Tips
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- [00:03]
A
I could actually technically and legally call my dog a nutritionist and I wouldn't get in trouble for that because it's not a protected title. But in order to be a dietitian, there's a lot that you have to do.
- [00:19]
B
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm your host, Mira Vozeri. Today we're diving into the world of diet and wellness with Ingrid Anderson. Ingrid has been a dietitian for 12 years. And about seven years ago she launched her own program, Hashi Warrior Transformation, helping people with Hashimoto's get their energy back and finally feel like themselves again. She built a thriving business and a community of over 14,000 Instagram followers and 100,000 TikTok followers. She is the living proof that you can turn helping others into a full time career. So let's jump right in and here is my conversation with Ingrid Anderson. First of all, Ingrid, thanks a lot for participating.
- [01:06]
A
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
- [01:10]
B
Yes. I'm so curious. So I know you're a dietitian, but you specifically work with people with Hoshimoto.
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A
Yes.
- [01:18]
B
Am I pronouncing it Hashimoto's? Hashimoto's. So I want to know briefly, why did you choose Hashimoto? Then we're going to talk about being a dietitian.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah. So Hashimoto's is actually the reason I became a dietitian because I was diagnosed with this autoimmune disease when I was around 18, 17, 18 years old. Hashimoto's is an autoimmune issue where your immune system attacks your thyroid gland and then that thyroid gland eventually stops producing thyroid hormone. When you don't have an enough of this thyroid hormone, what happens is pretty much everything in your body slows down. So your gut slow down, your liver slows down, your ability to metabolize food slows down, and you essentially feel like what I say all the time. You feel like a walking dumpster fire.
- [02:11]
B
Okay, so you discovered you have Hashimoto.
- [02:13]
A
Yes.
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B
And what made you go and learn dietitian?
- [02:16]
A
So when I went to my doctor, my mom brought me to an endocrinologist. And at this point I was babysitting for a woman who was a nurse. She was an rn, and she was also really interested in nutrition and did some nutrition work with the community and Woodstock. And so I was already kind of. The seed was kind of planted in my head how important nutrition is for optimizing autoimmune issues. And so I went to this endocrinologist and she essentially was like, well, there's nothing really I can do for you. You can try to take this pill. She gave me levothyroxine, which is a synthetic form of your thyroid hormone. And when I asked her, I was like, well, what about nutrition? Like, how can I change my nutrition? Miserable, I'm exhausted. I have brain fog. I just gained a bunch of weight. What am I supposed to do? And she just kind of laughed at me. I knew that there was a connection in terms of food and what was happening in my body. And at that point in time, I was a competitive swimmer. I was working out two hours a day, six days a week, I was counting calories, I was doing all of the things. And I just continued to gain weight. And even after being medicated, I continued to have all the symptoms I was having. So when my mom and I sat down to decide what I was going to do once I graduated high school, she was very encouraging in terms of kind of pushing me towards nutrition. And I was like, you know what? This would be great because then I can learn about what's happening in my own body and how to fix it.
- [03:41]
B
What school did you go to to learn that?
- [03:43]
A
So I ended up going to Russell Sage College. I did do one smart thing though. Before I went to Russell Sage College for my dietetics, I got my associate's degree through Ulster. So I went to a community college for two years. So by the time I got to Russell Sage, I ended up only having to do two and a half years there versus what most people do, which is, you know, four full years to be a dietitian.
- [04:07]
B
It's a program.
- [04:08]
A
So it's a four year program and then you have to do a ten month internship.
- [04:11]
B
Where do you do internship? Hospital.
- [04:13]
A
Yep. I kind of equate it to how nurses do their clinicals. So where nurses do clinicals with their undergrad, we do our undergrad first. And our undergrad is composed of pretty much all pre med classes. We have our microbio, we have our chemistry classes, we have our macronutrients, we have all different types of classes where we would be sitting in the same classes as nurses and pre med physicians. Once we were done with our bachelor's degree, then there's the option to become a registered dietitian. So in order to become a registered dietitian, you have to choose the school and then the school has to choose you in order for you to be accepted into the internship. So it's 10 months unpaid with Graduate classes attached to it, and then you have to sit for your board exam in order to become a dietitian, so.
- [05:00]
B
So you learned to become a general dietitian.
- [05:03]
A
Yeah, so I have always been kind of an autodidact. I've always learned on my own. But with college, one of the things that I was very intentional about doing was anytime I had the option of choosing what I did a project on, I would choose something like Gut Health, which is related to Hashimoto's, or I would choose metabolism, or I would choose something that's related to what I was going through. So that way I would essentially get credit for looking into the literature for Hashimoto's. The whole intention here was to help myself.
- [05:35]
B
You said that they start in hospitals.
- [05:38]
A
Yeah.
- [05:39]
B
And you mentioned doctors, but I had some autoimmune problem with Crohn's disease.
- [05:44]
A
Oh, yeah.
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B
And the doctors told me, literally, we do not learn about nutrition.
- [05:49]
A
It's true. It's true. So most doctors in the United States get less than. I think it's 25 hours of nutrition education throughout their schooling. And I actually worked in a teaching hospital that had a dedicated nutrition. Nutrition program. And I would teach the doctors about nutrition.
- [06:07]
B
I look on your Instagram, you have 14,000. Close to 14,000 followers. So you must have done a lot of work with a lot of people. But how did you get the first one?
- [06:16]
A
My very first person that I worked with with Hashimoto, she didn't know she had Hashimoto's at the time. She was someone that I met at the gym, and she knew I was going to school to become a dietitian. And she was like, hey, can you work with me? I'm having. I'm working out all the time. I'm having a really hard time losing weight. And so we started to talk. I did a little intro take for her, which is essentially asking her a bunch of questions like, what are you doing? How are you feeling? What are your symptoms? And I was like, you know, I think you actually have Hashimoto's. You should go get that tested. And so she did, and lo and behold, she had Hashimoto's. So that was even more fire for me to dig deeper into how Hashimoto's is healed through food now, just not.
- [06:58]
B
About Hashimoto's for a second. But who goes to advice from a dietitian, really?
- [07:04]
A
I think everyone should talk to a dietitian at least once just to make sure you're covering all your bases. But in general, dietitians can specialize in all sorts of things. So I actually worked at a, the teaching hospital I was telling you about. One of the things that I did was I worked in the neonatal icu. So NICU babies. I also worked with women who were pregnant, right. Making sure that, you know, they're getting everything they need for a healthy pregnancy. Working with people with gestational diabetes, there are people that work with people with kidney failure. Renal dietitians, There are dietitians that work with people with diabetes and insulin resistance. So there's a lot of different specialties. Nutrition really is game changing.
- [07:46]
B
You know about a lot of different area, but you chose Hashimoto. Is it more lucrative to be a specializing dietitian?
- [07:52]
A
So it is. It's always more lucrative to niche down in some way. Right. Because if you're speaking to everyone, you're speaking to no one. And the route of business that I took, I am doing all of my own marketing. So you saw my Instagram has almost 14,000 people. My TikTok has over a hundred thousand people. Oh, I didn't look on Eric. Yeah, yeah. So I have like almost 4,000 people on my email list. So I think this is important from a marketing standpoint, but also from a practitioner standpoint that the people that you're speaking to see that you're authentic and also they resonate with what you're saying. If you truly understand their problem and you speak to that problem, then people can relate to you and they're more apt to not only hire you to help them, but believe that you can help them. So I do a lot of social media marketing. I would say like 80% of my clients come from TikTok.
- [08:51]
B
Unbelievable. Tell me, what is the difference between a nutritionist and a dietitian?
- [08:56]
A
The nutritionist, you don't really need to have a background knowledge in how your body works. You can take a course online, pay a couple hundred bucks, and then you're a nutritionist. I could actually technically and legally call my dog a nutritionist and I wouldn't get in trouble for that because it's not a protected title. There's. You're allowed to call yourself a nutritionist no matter what. But in order to be a dietitian, there's a lot that you have to do. You need to make sure that you have your bachelor's degree, you need to go through that internship, the unpaid internship, and then you need to pass your board exam. And if you don't pass your board exam, you are not a dietitian. So that's the last kind of hurdle that you need to jump through. And then you need to stay on top of your, your continuing education, which incredibly important because things change, right? And this is why I'm very much not dogmatic in my nutrition. And I think a lot of people are. They hold so tightly onto these certain ideas and it's like, okay, well, we learn new information about nutrition all of the time.
- [09:54]
B
Is your job threatened by AI because people can put all their symptoms into AI and they can spew it out the treatment?
- [10:03]
A
Yes and no. I think, I think that there needs to be more education to the public about the limitations of AI. I've caught ChatGPT lying essentially and kind of spreading misinformation. So, for example, when it comes to Hashimoto's, there's a lot of food myths and there's a lot of information that is, has been proven untrue in terms of foods that you need to remove from your nutrition. So one of those is dairy. We know from the literature you do not need to remove dairy, dairy from your nutrition unless you have lactose intolerance or unless your gut is really inflamed. But in general, dairy is not going to impact your thyroid antibodies. And ChatGPT says yes. And when I press it, when I say I thought that the literature had been updated and blah, blah, blah, blah, it'll be like, oh, yes, you're correct. So you have to be really careful with ChatGPT. The other thing that I think is important to kind of distinguish here too is ChatGPT isn't going to hold you accountable. It's not going to reach out to you. It's not going to review your food logs and give you information that's actually helpful. It's not going to provide that human touch. It's not going to know what you're going through. It's not going to know that, oh, your, your kid had the flu last week. So, you know, here are things that you need to do in order to support your body better. So I think that there's a lot of limitations to AI. I do think that it's a great tool if you use it properly. But I think it's important to kind of know that Chachi PT is not the end all be all for sure.
- [11:37]
B
Do you have a success story that you can tell me? Anybody that came to you and really improved?
- [11:43]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [11:44]
B
Because of a diet?
- [11:45]
A
Oh, yeah, pretty much all of my clients. Anyone who, yes, anyone who actually follows the steps that I give them has incredible success. I have people who Struggled to lose weight. That's a big thing that kind of motivates people to work with me is the fact that they gain so much weight and it's possible for them to lose. And so I've had people lose 50 pounds, 80 pounds after not being able. Not in three months, of course, but, you know, after not seeing any progress on the scale at all, seeing that weight come off. My personal favorite is when I see people get their energy back. And so I'm thinking of a specific client from a few years ago. She is someone who came to me. She was, like, dragging. She was a mom of three kids. She worked full time. She could barely drag herself through the day. She was having such a hard time. So much mom guilt because she. She just couldn't function. She was putting her kids in front of the tv, which there's no shame in that. But she didn't want to be doing that. She wanted to be active with her kids. She worked with me, and within six weeks, she was like, my husband doesn't know what to do with me. I'm, like, cleaning out the garage. I'm, like, doing all these things that, like, she's like, I'm running circles around him.
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B
Amazing.
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A
I.
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B
When I researched a little bit for gut health, they say eat a lot of, like, pickles and cabbage and stuff, and you build the bacteria. Is that all it's about?
- [13:06]
A
Those are fermented foods. And so what fermented foods do is they replenish the. The good bacteria or the probiotics. So that's the probiotic side, and then there's the prebiotic side, including whole food sources of carbohydrates, like the sweet potatoes and bananas. Those are going to provide food for that good bacteria. So you need both.
- [13:29]
B
Does any doctor call you for advice for their patients?
- [13:33]
A
Not for their patients, but I've had doctors come through my program because they thought Hashimoto's was no big deal until they were diagnosed themselves. And then they were like, oh, this is not it. Like, you know, the standard of care is to do this. But I did that, and this is not helping me at all. And it's like, well, now, you know, and. And really, they've said to me, like, now, like, I feel so bad because I. I've, you know, kind of dismissed all of these people, and now I have this, and I understand, like, what it feels like. So I've had. Yeah, I've had doctors come through my program.
- [14:10]
B
Is it healthy for people that do not have Hashimoto to cut out carbs completely.
- [14:15]
A
It's important for them to make sure that they are getting adequate carbohydrates. Because when you, your fiber lives in your carbohydrates and if you cut out carbs completely, then you cut yourself off from a lot of nutrients. You cut yourself off from fib, you cut yourself off from prebiotics, which is a substance that feeds the good gut microbiome. It cuts you off from a lot of antioxidant sources. So personally, I don't recommend that anyone completely cuts carbohydrates from their nutrition. Portioning them properly. Absolutely. Pairing them properly. Absolutely. And when I'm talking about pairing, what I mean is carbs digest very quickly. And so a lot of times what can happen is say you put a saltine cracker in your mouth, right? That immediately dissolves, that's the enzymes breaking it down. So it starts digestion in your mouth, these carbohydrates. So by the time it reaches your stomach and your blood sugar, you get that blood sugar spike. But to slow that down a little bit, you can add a fat or a protein to it and it kind of slows that digestion of the carbohydrate and allows you to have a more steady energy flow.
- [15:22]
B
You mentioned stress before.
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A
Yes.
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B
And I'm curious if somebody, wow, there's a lot of people with a lot of stress today. Is there something that a stressful person should do as far as their diet?
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A
In terms of diet, one of the best things that you can do is make sure that your blood sugar stays very regulated. So making sure you're eating consistently throughout the day, making sure you're not under eating carbohydrates, making sure you're not skipping meals. And I know that there's a lot of hype around intermittent fasting and keto, but those things are very stressful on your body and it's registered as a stress on your body. The other thing that can be really helpful is mineral supplementation, because the more stress your body has to withstand, the more it kind of burns through minerals. So doing things like electrolytes in your water once a day can be really, really helpful. And then also just from like a lifestyle standpoint, making sure that you're doing some deep breathing every day, that can help help stimulate that vagus nerve.
- [16:19]
B
What is that?
- [16:19]
A
So this is a nerve that runs from your brain to your gut and it's your rest, it's part of your rest and digest nervous system. So when you experience a lot of stress, this can put a lot of wear and Tear and weaken the vagus nerve. And what that can do is it can lend to a bunch of digestive issues. So it's really important to make sure that you're doing vagus nerve exercises. The body box breathing, humming, singing in your car. I like to do box breathing because it's very, very short. It's, you know, intentional. And essentially what that is is breathing in four counts, hold four counts, out four counts, hold four counts.
- [16:57]
B
And that helps.
- [16:58]
A
Yes. And so this is something that Navy SEALs use also to help kind of just bring them down and center them. All of those things strengthen and exercise the vagus nerve. None of this is a magic wand. Right. None of this is like earth shattering stuff. It's all simple changes that everyone's ignoring. Right. It's all these simple things that no one is doing. So it can seem very overwhelming when you, like, look at the laundry list of these simple changes that you have to do.
- [17:28]
B
How much did it cost you to get to this level?
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A
Just to get my bachelor's degree, that was around $55,000 per year. And then the internship on top of that was around $20,000. So. And that.
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B
Wait, you had to pay for this?
- [17:43]
A
Yes. You have to pay for the internship. I know. That boggled my mind too. And to be 100% honest with you, I had no idea the internship was part of the package when I signed up to become a dietitian. So you have to pay for it and you don't get paid. So you essentially work 40 hours a week for free and also take classes on top of that. And then that's a travesty. Yeah.
- [18:06]
B
And the internship was in the hospital.
- [18:08]
A
Yep. But that's also kind of an issue with dietetics in general. In. In my humble opinion, I'm certainly not the spokesperson for all dietitians, but I worked in a teaching hospital. So one of the things that we would have to do on top of our caseload is mentor younger dietitians, which we were all happy to do because we had to be mentored as well. But the dietitians don't get anything from it. The interns don't get anything from it. It's just. Oh, it's kind of like a pay it forward thing, even though we're all paying for it, you know, so it is kind of frustrating, and it is something that has been point of frustration with many dietitians that I have spoken to.
- [18:46]
B
So, okay, I want to know about return on investment. So somebody finished dietitian school and then started to work at A hospital, what roughly can they make?
- [18:55]
A
So granted, this was back 2000, 2014, 2015. When I was hired at the hospital, I was making $23 an hour, 40 something thousand dollars a year. Now the, the same hospital is paying around $56,000 a year, which, you know, it's, it's more. But then when you think about the investment that you need to make in order to get to that place, you're talking $55,000 a year time times four. And then you add in the $20,000 internship. If my math adds up, that's 250ish thousand dollars to become a dietitian, and then you're getting paid $56,000 a year. So I did get my clinical experience because I did think that was an important thing to do. Just from a professional standpoint, I'm very grateful for that experience. I learned how to communicate with physicians. I learned how to read charts better, I learned, I learned how to read labs better. So there was a lot that I learned by getting that clinical experience. So I'm very happy that I did that. But I'm so grateful that I did take the leap to go into business for myself. I don't have my master's degree. I wasn't required and I felt like I had enough student loan debt, but now it's required. So now it's even more expensive to be the dietitian.
- [20:13]
B
Do you feel like you got good return on your investment?
- [20:17]
A
Because I kind of pivoted from clinical to what I do now. It's a great return on investment. I'm making well over six figures every single year from my business. And what's lovely about what I do as well is also the time freedom that comes with it. And you also just feel better in life and what you're doing because you can serve the people who you want to serve and then you're also able to pay your bills. And unlike, you know, working for a.
- [20:44]
B
Hospital, how much can you charge? Somebody comes to you for advice.
- [20:48]
A
I actually under, I don't undercharge, but I charge less than what other people do just because I do want to make my services as accessible as possible.
- [20:58]
B
Because you have.
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A
Right, exactly. So I have a couple different options. So first of all, for anyone who is unable to make the investment, I have a $33 masterclass that essentially goes over the basics of Hashimoto. So anyone can, can, you know, can, can do that. That's really helpful for a starting place. But for my group program, which includes a full nutrition assessment, chat, support throughout the week, weekly group calls and I call it a hybrid because essentially they get one on one information from me. But we talk as a group cause I think that community is important. So it's a 12 week program and it's $1,500 for the 12 week program.
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B
What's the biggest challenge of working with Hashimoto patients?
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A
I think probably one of the biggest challenges is they just feel so bad in terms of like brain fog and fatigue that the idea of eating breakfast in the morning makes them want to spiral out because they are just so exhausted and so fatigued that these changes feel really overwhelming. And it's also a very complicated disease. Right. There's so many possibilities of things that are happening a lot alongside of the Hashimoto's that it can get quite complicated.
- [22:07]
B
What's the biggest reward?
- [22:09]
A
I love when my clients again just feel like themselves again when they get that first win, when they're like, ah, this is working. And I've had so many people say like nothing worked for me before, but just these changes. And sometimes people think they're like very simple. Again, this is not magic wand. This is not like any earth shattering stuff, but it's effective. For me the most rewarding thing is when people start to feel better again.
- [22:37]
B
Okay, I have some quick questions.
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A
Okay, cool.
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B
What's your quick and easy meal?
- [22:41]
A
I am a big like bowl person. I like to do roasted broccoli. I like to do sweet potato, grilled chicken and avocado. That's like my like.
- [22:50]
B
Yeah, I'm salivating already.
- [22:51]
A
Yeah, that is my like go to like I don't want to think about dinner meal.
- [22:55]
B
Your favorite snack on the go.
- [22:58]
A
Oh man. Probably if, if it's like a convenience thing, I will go for like a perfect bar or fruit and like some nuts or like the, the packets of like nut butter or something.
- [23:08]
B
If you could give only one diet advice to a Hashimoto patient, what would that be?
- [23:13]
A
Trial. A gluten free diet.
- [23:15]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [23:15]
A
Because that can be, that can, that can be the difference between you feeling great and a couple days to a week to you continuing to feel stuck.
- [23:24]
B
All right, and on that note, thank you so much.
- [23:29]
A
Well, thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.
- [23:32]
B
Thank you. It was amazing information. That is a wrap for today. Big thanks to Ingrid for sharing her journey from dietitian to business owner while helping people feel like themselves again. It's a great thing. You can find Ingrid via Instagram. The link is in the show notes. And until next time, please write us a review and come back for more. Talk about real job with real people, real industries and real paycheck.