Welcome

Welcome to Food for Thought RD!  I’m Kimberly Marsh, a registered dietitian, stay-at-home wife and mom, blogger, self-taught cook, and food lover.

To start out, I’d like to share a bit about myself and my background:

I was a fairly average eater as a kid, or so my mom tells me.  I didn’t really care for many veggies besides corn, but I was never known to turn down chocolate.  In high school, I became addicted to the Food Network, which led to some experimentation in the kitchen.  As with all experiments, I met with mixed results: my family loved my cheesecakes, but mocked my inability to make one of Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meals in less than 2 hours. (Ok, I still struggle with the last one sometimes.)

When I went to Brigham Young University for college, I got to make my own decisions about what to eat.  I loved trying new foods while I went on a study abroad to England and France.  I joined a dinner share group, which helped me improve my cooking.  I discovered that I felt better when I ate more veggies and less junk, but I did have a limit on how many days in a row I could eat baby carrots for lunch.  I also began trying foods in the “I don’t like that” category.”  Some I grew to like, others stayed put.  Most importantly, I found there was a major entirely about food—dietetics.  Perfect for me.

Don’t get me wrong.  College wasn’t a breeze.  I was often lonely being far from home and family, and school caused me a lot of stress.  As a result, I often turned to food for comfort and relief, making weight gain a bit of a struggle.  I still miss the pumpkin cookies and chocolate milk from the student center (but I don’t miss the 20 or so pounds they helped me gain).

After I graduated with my BS in Dietetics in, I went to Rush University in Chicago, where I eventually completed my dietetic internship and MS in Clinical Nutrition. Chicago was an AMAZING environment to try different cuisines from all over the world and eat food from world famous chefs.

After grad school, I began working at a community hospital in northern Indiana.  I worked with patients from all walks of life and with a variety of nutrition issues – cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, tube feeding, weight loss, etc.  They often were confused by what they had seen/heard/read on TV, radio, internet, from friends, etc.  They also struggled to make any dietary changes (it can be really hard).  My daily challenge was helping them make sense of all that information and find ways to make even small changes.

In 2013, my first baby was born, and I became a stay-at-home mom.  Now as a mom of four kiddos, I work hard to make healthy, interesting, and tasty food for my family.  We are definitely not perfect.  But we try to be better each day.

I also try to avoid a diet of “kid” food. My “foodie” taste buds I developed before I had kids have not vanished. I fully believe my kids can and should try ANYTHING I am willing to try. Again, we aren’t perfect here. Life, your eating included, is a balancing act.

My nutrition philosophy is this:  good nutrition is not complicated.  Humans are.  What we eat is a habit we have developed over a lifetime, which makes diet change difficult.  But small changes in your diet can have large results over time.  Every day, we have a chance to live a healthier life.  Holidays, celebrations, or heck Wednesdays that are just awful happen, and we may eat that pan of brownies.  But, we can pick ourselves up the next day and try again.

My goal for this blog is to help you keep trying to eat more healthfully.  I hope to simplify the mess of nutrition information available.  I promise to post recipes that are delicious, kid AND parent friendly, easy, affordable, and nutritious.  Together, we can do this!