Today we’d like to introduce you to Allison Cleary.
Hi Allison, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Well, I guess I should start from the beginning. I graduated with both my Bachelor’s and Master of Science degrees from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. I suppose at that point I could have called it quits and worked just as a nutritionist, but I knew I wanted more from my career, so I pursued the Registered Dietitian (RD) credentials. I got accepted into a clinical nutrition internship, finished the entire 1200+ hours, and then passed my national board exam in 2015 to finally get those two letters after my name.
Afterwards, I worked in several hospitals in Texas, primarily in the ICU and oncology units. During COVID, I worked in a hospital here in the DFW area until the latter half of 2021, when I decided to start traveling to work in different hospitals across the country. That was a lot of fun because I would work in different cities I would have never even thought to visit; it was like I got to sample different versions of life 2-3 times a year! I also got to work alongside some incredibly brilliant dietitians, which was really fun and special. Some of my favorite assignments were in Hilo, Hawai’i, at the University of New Mexico Hospital, and at The Johns Hopkins University.
While I enjoy traveling so much, I also wanted to expand my expertise beyond the hospital. I got back home from my last assignment in April and decided to finally start seeing clients in my own private practice. It was something I had wanted to do in the past, but it didn’t work out, and I wanted to give it another shot. Once I started, I was able to accept a few clients at first, and it turns out I absolutely loved it! I developed my own unique style of nutrition counseling, saw a few of my clients start to make real progress, and I was hooked. I opened up my schedule and availability, and it took a few months, but now my schedule is full, which feels really satisfying. I am so happy and grateful that I decided to try again for my private practice because this is the most rewarding job I have had. The amount of 1:1 support I’m able to provide and the joy of watching my clients reach their nutrition goals are absolutely incredible. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Originally, I wanted to open up my private practice back in 2020 when I was working at a hospital during COVID. There were a lot of scary things that were happening in the world during that time, and working in a hospital provided a unique, up-close view of some of them. I knew I wanted something different, so I hired a business coach to help me launch my private practice, and she was absolutely incredible. She helped set up my professional Instagram account, and I started posting daily to attract my ideal clients.
I started gaining a small following, but it was slow-moving. I was told that it just needed time to grow, but working in a hospital during a pandemic, starting a new private practice, and posting to social media daily was taxing. I was burning the candle at both ends in my career. In my private life, I was undergoing a major personal transformation and experiencing life-changing events that kept stretching my bandwidth. A very long story short, I ended up suffering from severe burnout and had to give up my private practice for the sake of my mental health.
It took me five years to be able to return my focus to my private practice, but I am so thankful I did. My quality of life is amazing, and the fact that I get to help guide my clients from feeling frustrated with nutrition to finally having their ideal healthy lifestyle is incredible.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Allison Cleary Nutrition?
My speciality is working with women who want to stop yo-yo dieting and build a solid nutrition foundation that promotes weight loss and increases energy.
I personally guide my clients using a non-diet, intuitive eating approach, specifically focusing on supporting the body with nutrition rather than focusing on restriction. I find that by focusing on restricting foods to promote health, we end up only looking at the foods we can’t have, which can increase food noise and cravings. Additionally, following restrictive diets often does not address the root cause of unhealthy eating habits. For example, following a keto diet focuses only on restricting carbs; it doesn’t address other habits, such as not being able to cook meals at home because of a busy schedule. Finally, restrictive diets tend to be high maintenance and unforgiving. They typically require a lot of work that isn’t sustainable, and, given the stringent rules, it’s very clear that you are either on or off the diet. There doesn’t seem to be much grace for life to happen, which can be a big contributor to yo-yo dieting. Starting diets, losing weight, and then ultimately getting off the diet, resulting in weight gain, can not only negatively affect your body’s metabolism but also your mental health.
By taking a gentler approach, adding nutritious foods, and consciously not removing foods from the diet, we are able to approach nutrition from an abundant rather than a scarcity mindset, which can help break the cycle of yo-yo dieting and help build sustainable, long-lasting healthy habits. When that happens, we consistently support our bodies through nutrition, which helps optimize our health and promote weight loss.
I’m so proud that I use this approach because I see it work so well for so many of my clients. There’s a true sense of relief when I tell them that they don’t have to diet, that they don’t have to count calories or give up their favorite foods to be healthy and to promote weight loss, and that is so beautiful, BUT THEN seeing them develop a better relationship with food, actually lose weight, and achieve their nutritional goals?! It’s absolutely remarkable and an absolute honor to witness..
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I personally think that risk is a scary-sounding word for something that we do all the time as humans. It is necessary for us to be able to get outside of our comfort zone and to be able to grow and evolve.
When starting a business, of course, there are a lot of risks involved. You’re risking whether or not your dreams will come true, whether or not you’ll lose out on a good amount of money, a risk that you will fail in a big and public way, and all of those risks are super scary to think about.
But when I look at those risks, I realize I have already lost at all of them. I’ve already started a business and failed, my dream didn’t come true, and I did lose a good amount of money. When I first wanted to start my business back in 2020, I was working at a hospital during COVID; it was a super scary time filled with uncertainty, but I had such a deep desire for a different lifestyle that I started my business anyway. I paid a lot of money to a fabulous business coach and started grinding out social media content daily. I stretched myself thin, and then my personal life crumbled. All of those things contributed to the severe burnout that took me years to recover from. And to be honest, that burnout in and of itself was the scariest, depressing, most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. It was the accumulation of all of my fears of “what if it doesn’t work out,” and that was painful, and it was hard, but looking back on it, I survived it. Now that I am only focused on my business, the other components of my burnout no longer in play, I feel grateful for my trial by fire.
My burnout allowed me to really understand and get to know myself on such a deeper level. I know now what works for me and what doesn’t work for me. The way I approach business and the way I built my business structure are all aligned to make it easier for me to succeed. When I think of the risk I took back in 2020, that feels a lot like chance, which is really scary. Now, when I think of taking risks, it’s not that scary at all. It feels a lot like betting on myself and the structure that I built through my own self-knowledge. And that almost feels like a guaranteed win.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allisoncleary.rd/
