This Q&A session was recorded with myself and Emily. We wanted to give the option to watch and listen, or simply read the transcript as Emily shares both her background with OnPoint and her work with her clients. Enjoy!
Brittany Lin: Hello, everybody. It looks like we are live today! As far as our new series, we will be interviewing dieticians and nutritionists on our team. Well, I will be interviewing dieticians and nutritionists on our team so that you can get to know everybody a little bit better.
We are going to have Emily, our lead dietician joining us in just a few minutes and any questions you have, you can drop them in the comments. I'm just going to introduce myself really quickly. My name is Brittany. I am one of the registered dieticians on the team. I help run the Instagram - or I should say I run the Instagram. I do a lot of behind-the-scenes things for our client experience, our client portal - all that good stuff.
Hi, Emily! So, how are you doing today?
Emily Horstman: I'm pretty good. It's a busy Wednesday for me, but yeah, doing pretty good. How are you?
Brittany Lin: Awesome. I'm doing well. So, I'm just going to jump in and ask you some questions and we'll keep it casual. But of course, my first question is how did you get started in your career as a dietician?
Emily Horstman: That's a good question. And I really just think it was kind of luck. I thought I was interested in it and the science behind it in high school, I visited some college colleges. My parents really liked the job prospects. Like my dad in particular really liked that they have like really high job placement and everything like that. So they were super supportive and I just went for it. And here we are now. So I've been an RD for six years now. Yeah. So no crazy story just kind of happened and I'm glad it did.
Brittany Lin: That's refreshing! Things just happened the way they're supposed to. And what did you do before OnPoint?
Emily Horstman: I spent some time in clinical settings, so I worked in hospitals. I worked in long-term care facilities. I spent some time teaching classes to adults that were in cardiac rehab facilities. Yeah, I mean, that was the bulk of it. A couple of different facilities, a couple of different jobs, but those were mainly clinical settings.
Brittany Lin: And you've been with OnPoint for like the whole time, right? Like, basically since the beginning?
Emily Horstman: A little over four years now. OnPoint started in 2016 - it was just Britney and then she hired another person and then she hired another person and then she hired me!
Brittany Lin: I love it. And that's also why you're the lead dietician. So, tell me a little bit about what you like the most about working at OnPoint. What is like your top moment?
Emily Horstman: Really the, the number one thing that I love about this job is that I’ve had the opportunity to really pour my heart into it. I've been able to help shape what we do. I've been able to influence the way that you counsel, the way that the rest of the team councils, the way that my clients live their lives. You know, that impact is something that I'm so proud of and being able to really help lay the foundation. And all of that has been, you know, really such a gift. And it makes me feel really proud. So it's, it's really nice.
And my favorite part from today? We're very call heavy Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. So, I have a lot of staff meetings on Wednesdays and that's always really regenerative for me because I get to talk with you guys, the team. And that's just really nice. It's also my only socialization these days. So, I like my Wednesdays.
Brittany Lin: I joined the team and you trained me at OnPoint, but I wasn't around when we had the office. So why don't you tell maybe people who don't know like what the setting used to be? It was always virtual, but like between the team, what did it used to be?
Emily Horstman: We've always worked with clients virtually, but we used to be a lot more involved in the community when we were able to pre-pandemic. We had an office in center city [Philadelphia], it was on 15th and Pine. And we would come in anywhere from two to four days a week. And it was really nice. But it's a really nice thing too, that we've grown so much that we've outgrown that office space and are not returning to it. So post pandemic, TBD. We're working on emulating some of those things on a virtual basis too, for the team.
Brittany Lin: So tell me is one food or beverage you can't live without. And it can't be like water, water. Really can't live without water,
Emily Horstman: Food or beverage. It's so seasonal for me. I gave up caffeine for a while and I could do it again, but I would say I really get a lot of pleasure out of my morning coffee or tea. Probably peanut butter would be the one thing I absolutely can't live without.
Brittany Lin: That is your answer now and forever. So tell us a fun fact about you - maybe from your childhood, any quirky habits you had from childhood?
Emily Horstman: Totally - and some of them I don't even want to like, think about, you know, everybody has their quirks. I wanted to be a paleontologist or an archeologist when I was like younger. I love my career, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I fantasize about what it would be like to be an archeologist. So I do think that would have been really cool in another life. Yeah. I love that. I was all into like digging up rocks and I would always have kits of fake fossils and stuff. So, yeah, that was fun.
Brittany Lin: Oh, that's great. There's Netflix shows about archeology expeditions and that kind of thing. Is it like ancient Egypt?
Emily Horstman: There are a lot of really good shows. Have you watched expedition unknown? That's a good one. It’s got like 5,000 episodes about every different area.
Brittany Lin: I'll have to do that! So, okay - random question number three. What book are you reading or what podcasts are you currently listening to?
Emily Horstman: I'm currently reading two. I'm the kind of person who reads more than one book at a time to satisfy different desires from books. I'm reading a Montessori toddler book because my son is about to be a toddler and that's something I want to learn about. And I'm also reading this book that I bought from the author here in New Jersey. I live in Clinton, New Jersey and he was selling this book on the street one day. And it's about his life as a private investigator in New Jersey. So that's super interesting. So I'm reading both of those.
Brittany Lin: Oh, you're one of those people who can multitask in the book department.
Emily Horstman: Yes, the same day and everything. They're so different. One is what I want to learn about and the other one is just for pleasure.
Brittany Lin: Love it. So, we have some questions coming in. She's asking for some tips on how to remain sane during COVID. Now maybe we can put some sort of a nutrition spin on that too. The way we're counseling now in COVID is a lot different in some aspects because other people's lives have changed a lot.
How do we stay sane during COVID, especially around food?
Emily Horstman: You have to just take care of yourself. You have to find what makes you feel good. You have to find, you know, what foods, what habits, what movement routine. You have to be really steadfast in those things to keep yourself sane.
A lot of you have heard me kind of go on about this before either in a session or just in conversation. We’re so used to putting ourselves as this very low priority.
We have to work so hard that we personally get sacrificed and pushed to the side. We sacrifice things like getting enough sleep, drinking enough, water, eating, healthy food, eating enough.
You have to satisfy those basics. And then you have to just figure out what restores you and you have to do that.
And it's so much easier said than done, but I think that's the only way to kind of get through this and you know, it's up to everybody. What foods and habits make you feel good? You have to figure out what those are and you have to do them.
Brittany Lin: So the routine piece of things sounds like it's huge, right? Not just drinking water once in a while, but everyday drinking water and doing those basics in a routine like manner.
Emily Horstman: Routine can be a scary word to people. It definitely used to be a scary word to me. It can be whatever you need it to be, you know, it's, it can be like very regimented or it can be, you know, I do this at some point in the day.
Brittany Lin: When we're just working hard and busy in general, what is your go-to weeknight recipe?
Emily Horstman: The easiest thing is tacos!
We always have the building blocks for tacos, and I kind of see those as a blank canvas. Like you can pull any protein you want any, any vegetable, we always have corn tortillas because they keep really well in the fridge and they're delicious.
And you can have multiple of them for a starch serving. Beans, protein, slaw, side salads, salsa, vegetable, whatever you want. And then if you want cheese on it, you can do that! So yeah, I would say just tacos and just having the building blocks is our quickest one.
Brittany Lin: I do want to ask one last wild card question. If you were on a desert Island, what two items would you bring with you?
Emily Horstman: Can it be Stuart and Sawyer or does it have to be items? Stuart is my husband and Sawyer is my son.
Brittany Lin: Great choice, but let's go with items.
Emily Horstman: Yeah, let's go with something more practical. I feel like the responsible answer is water and a knife. But maybe a phone or tablet and, and seeds so that I can grow some food.
Brittany Lin: Look at that! That's a new civilization your building on this desert Island.
Emily Horstman: Hopefully something would grow!
Brittany Lin: Oh, that's great. Love the answers. So, a couple things to sum up for everyone who watches, we're going to start doing dietician and nutritionist interviews on Wednesdays to get to know everybody. So yeah, this was our first one and I hope everyone enjoyed! Emily is there anything you want to add before we sign off?
Emily Horstman: No, this was really fun and hopefully people will give us some good ideas for what we can call it. Q and A with the team isn't very fun, but I mean, I would click on something like that. If anybody has ideas, obviously let us know.
Brittany Lin: We'll, we'll stick with that, but we'll be doing this every couple Wednesdays as we start picking up. They’ll usually will be at three o'clock.
Emily Horstman: Thanks everybody for joining and anybody who's watching this recording can always reach us on Instagram with questions and stuff, right?
Brittany Lin: Yes, exactly. I'm so happy we did this. Bye!