Hello. I’m Philippa, a London based registered dietitian originally from Cape Town. I originally started blogging (briefly) way back in 2007 during my time studying and more in-depth during my intern year where I was thrown into the sticks to work. As I was sent to the furthest town away from where I was from in South Africa, knew no one and was in for an interesting experience living in “the bush” and working in a very rural hospital, writing a blog was the only thing that kept me focused and sane, trying to make light of the situation. But after making friends in the town of Hoedspruit and having a rather interesting and fun experience living there, my blog slowly faded away becoming a distant memory a bit like my internship year is to me today.
Since then, I volunteered for a year in a hospital in Cape Town (jobs in this field were far and few between) while waiting for my registration for the UK to be approved. I also assisted in a research thesis about HIV and nutrition for the University of Cape Town and did a bit of private practice work on the side.
In 2012, I moved to England and worked as a locum dietitian in hospitals all around the country, until I met my now-husband, which is when I decided to move permanently to the not so little town of London. I worked for 4-5 years in a private hospital ranging from patients with respiratory and cardiac health problems to neuro rehab, ICU and oncology. After years of feeling a bit drained and exhausted from the emotional stress of working in with often terminally ill patients, I made the move to a private startup to work as a dietitian and health coach. As my role slowly became less dietetics orientated and I covered operations for the business, I felt it was time to close this chapter on dietetics (and the short stint of operations) and try something new.
I quit my job and decided to learn how to code – something I always wanted to know how to do. I completed my studies in coding and was glad I did it and could code … but decided this was not what I wanted to do. Feeling a little lost, I dabbled in different ideas, until coronavirus hit. And then I decided to restart writing this blog, write a dietetics based recipe book and try some food photography.
This blog is a little different to what I originally started. It aims to bring educational information that is factual and scientific-based about nutrition and diets, as well as some recipes, reviews on foods and health-related products and some extra health guidance that i learnt while working as a health coach. The name should say it all, that I hope to be straightforward and honest about the information and my opinion.