A lot of you may not realize it, but today is a very important day. And I mean, very important!

Well, maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s still a fun day for us dietitians. It’s National RD Day!

It’s always nice to have a dedicated day during the year to be recognized for the work you do (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparent’s Day…there’s just so many and each are just as special as the next for that person being honored).

National RD Day rolls around every March, which ties in with National Nutrition Month, a nutrition education and information campaign created by The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics every year. Each year a different theme or slogan is created for dietitians to focus on. This year it’s “Enjoy the Taste of Eating Right.” I love this because it goes right along with my philosophy of eating (my guidelines I mentioned earlier). For most people, the flavor and taste of foods override nutrition when deciding what to eat. So why can’t we combine nutrition and taste to create healthy, tasty meals? That’s the goal for National Nutrition Month and my goal for this blog, too. Who said healthy food had to taste that way?

This post is a special shout out to all my fellow dietitians—thanks for all you do and the difference you make daily in peoples’ lives!

I especially want to give special recognition to my awesome dietetic intern class—we’re all celebrating National RD Day for the first time as registered dietitians. No longer are we the ones thinking up and organizing a party for dietitians, making thank you gifts for our preceptors, professors, or mentors, or wishing that it was our turn to be getting the recognition…because it’s finally us! I’m so proud of each of you for where you are and how successful we’ve all become! Keep being awesome. ;)

For those of you who don’t know, the dietetic internship is a required step in becoming a registered dietitian. The internship has to meet the requirements of the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), such as completing a set number of hours and experiences. Most internships are around 10-12 months in length, are unpaid, and can be pretty intense. Not to mention, the tedious application process and the stress of even getting matched with an internship (let alone the one you actually want) in the first place all before beginning the internship!

But, I have never had a better experience than I did with my internship and the four other ladies I shared an office with for 12 months. As my father-in-law likes to say, last year was definitely a “high watermark” for me. Let’s not forget, I met my husband during that year, but even still, God definitely knew what he was doing when he placed me in Peoria, Illinois, for my internship. I learned so much from my preceptors and all the opportunities I had from working on the clinical side in the hospital to creating and teaching nutrition classes, giving cooking demos, developing recipes, and even going on TV; it made me more than ready to handle anything my next job would bring me. What really made the internship great and memorable, though, were my office mates—Karli, Rachel, Janet, and Kate. I love my current job, but sometimes I wish I was back in our little office, tucked away from the rest of the hospital, laughing and having fun working away together.

We all graduated in June 2013 and moved off to different parts of the U.S. ready to start our careers and, as it just so happened, to get married (we’re now all engaged or married! Something had to have been in the water…). We may not be close geographically, but I’ll be thinking of all my dietitian friends today as we celebrate a day dedicated to us.

Here is a video we created for our graduation from the internship…we were quite the group! Enjoy a glimpse into our year as interns!

Happy RD Day, everyone!