We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Medinah Bey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Medinah below.

Medinah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back at internships and apprenticeships can be interesting, because there is so much variety in people’s experiences – and often those experiences inform our own leadership style. Do you have an interesting story from that stage of your career that you can share with us?

Many people do not know what being a Dietitian/Nutritionist consist of as we typically are looked at as “cooks”, “servers”, or even just known to make meal plans. But being in this field of science is deeper than that. The definition of a dietitian according to the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science is “dietitians are health professionals who are experts in nutrition and the human diet. Dietitians blend scientific research, nutrition, behavioral science, and social science to promote health, prevent disease, and shape the dietary choices of healthy and sick people.” This career field can range from clinical (hospital) settings to community-based (schools, day-care centers, correctional facilities, or counseling programs, etc.) settings with a wide range of jobs and paths you can go into. To become a dietitian you must get you bachelors degree in some type of science specific field or major in food and nutrition/dietetics. You then must complete a dietetic internship, which is a years worth of hours in all aspects of nutrition including education, food service, clinical, community, etc. I was lucky to get my dietetic internship experience through my undergraduate institution. As we had many rotations, one of my favorites was the education rotation. During my education rotation I was assigned to teach a basic nutrition college course to college freshman for about a month. This as you may know had taken me much time, research, and preparation. It’s so ironic that I stumbled upon a video of me teaching on of the college classes I was assigned during my internship, about a week ago which made me want to highlight this experience. As I watched myself teach I observed that I spoke with passion and confidence, I kept most of the classes attention, and I knew from the back of my hand the information I wanted the students to know. I was observed of course and I received excellent feedback from the professors overseeing me. From this experience I realized I had chosen the right career and I was destined to teach it to others it. That specific experience gave me a challenge to overcome and allowed me to see the bigger picture of my life’s purpose, which is to teach others nutrition to create generation health. Just getting one student’s attention was enough for me. I am gratefully passionate and knowledgeable about the field nutrition and from that lesson I knew Allah revealed to me my life’s purpose. Generational health through the diet.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello all! My name is Medinah Bey and I am a black dietitian nutritionist. A dietitian is defined to be a nutrition expert that uses science in all forms , as a way to assess our dietary practices and utilize food in place of medicine. During my undergrad career, I had learned that first in the career of nutrition and dietetics there is a very small percentage of people of color that work in this field. I also discovered that the African-American community was the least knowledgeable about nutrition and the impacts it can have on your overall health. From that point, I knew it was my goal to make sure that black and brown communities learn about nutrition, so that we can stop being a statistic about health adversities. That is when my business Prettynourished was born. Many people have came to me about losing weight or gaining weight, questions about meal planning, without any knowledge of how to eat properly, or about food groups and many other things. This indeed shocked me, and of course, I took it upon myself to teach others a plethora of things that I feel would benefit them, as well as their families and their children. My knowledge is not here to be held in and kept of myself. Which is why again I created Pretty nourished. Now you may ask well what exactly do you do with Prettynourished? Prettynourished is a nutrition service that provides personalized meal plans , nutrition education, and knowledge for those seeking it. My goal with Prettynourished is to educate and provide a blueprint which people can build upon and pass on to generation to generation, ultimately creating generational health. I want to inspire people and to allow them to know and gain awareness that if they are sick or have some minor health issues that it can be changed. Our health issues always starts within. It starts with what we put into our bodies and that is always the baseline of why many health problems develop. I am also a firm believer that because I am a woman of color it will make the black and brown community more comfortable speaking to me and getting my advice as they have something in common with me, and can relate to me in a way. My ultimate goal with Prettynourished is to eventually open my own private practice, and to team up with other health professionals so they can refer clients to me that can gain from my nutritional help and knowledge. Prettynourished is a small black owned health based business and our main priority is to educate and give our clients the tools to be a more healthier them.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Besides training and knowledge, I think what is most helpful for succeeding in my field is passion and the love to see how it positively impacts people. If you don’t love what you do it makes things 10x as hard when hardships comes. It is a journey to get to your goals and without my passion and love for nutrition all the bumps in the road would’ve been hard to come past. Those who you are serving matters the most, to make them happy and to see the impact you left on them is the best heartfelt moment that pushes you to want to continue what you’re doing to be better. Without passion and love for what you do getting to that successful point will be tough.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One lesson that I was taught was that if a service is popular you would get clientele easily. That lesson was something I had to unlearn. Building up clients was and is still one of the toughest tasks I have to come by as business becomes slow, then picks back up, then becomes slow again. You actually have to put yourself out there and promote in order to get clients because if you don’t business would be slow. The thing about this lesson is that if you are creating a service that is popular you have to consider competition in all aspects which is why I had to unlearn this lesson. You have to determine your niche and what makes you special and different than the rest. Once that is established you can then venture off and seek those in your niche who you feel would best benefit from your services the most.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/prettynourishednutrition
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prettynourished_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/medinah.bey.7
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/medinahbey/
• Other: Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/_dineroo/

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