Building a Business as an Anti-Diet Dietitian with Christy Harrison

Pursuing Private Practice

Jennifer welcomes Christy Harrison to this episode of the Pursuing Private Practice podcast to share her journey of becoming an Anti-Diet Registered Dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. As an industry leader, Christy is a passionate anti-diet advocate, educator and published author, and you’ll love hearing her story of how she built a successful business in alignment with her values.

Reflecting on her own eating disorder, Christy shares her winding journey of discovering HAES and Intuitive eating. Working as a journalist in her first career and reporting on health and nutrition at a food magazine, her own recovery fueled her interest to return to school to become a registered dietitian.

Starting her private practice early on with the specialization of disordered eating, she recalls how she ardently pursued continuing education and deepened her learning of Intuitive Eating, and why she started her podcast to get at the heart of people’s relationship with food.

“If we want to prevent eating disorders at a public health level, we have to change the culture so people are not triggered into disordered eating by weight stigma.” – Christy Harrison

You’ll hear Christy’s process of creating her first online course - Intuitive Eating Fundamentals, plus all the steps she took with her first book deal, from pitching proposals to final product, and how working with a publishing company that believes in the Anti-Diet message was key.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• How her entrepreneurial family, and experience with freelance journalism prepared her for private practice and developed her business acumen and money mindset.
• Why she chose the direction of reaching more people with courses and writing a book instead of expanding her solo practice into a group practice.
• How she took her one-on-one client’s experiences and education piece of Intuitive Eating to build the structure of her course, and why working one-on-one for several years first was essential to its success.
• The power of the community that comes along with the online course and the need for more ongoing community support to help eating disorder recovery.
• Recognizing the privilege of being a successful entrepreneur and having time for creativity to write a book; the realization of her childhood dream.
• The ups and downs of having her book out in the world, and how she deals with negative feedback with the anti-diet message.

Visit https://pursuingprivatepractice.com/ to learn more about resources to start and grow your dietitian private practice!