Gloria Williamson
Since becoming a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) in 2009, Gloria Williamson has purposefully accumulated a diverse clientele ranging from infancy to 80+ years old and spanning the gender spectrum. Additionally, Gloria has picked up affiliations with The International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, the Association for Size Diversity and Health, and The World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Gloria’s diverse range of clientele stems from her diverse and inclusive upbringing. Her grandparents were all born in Europe or Asia and she still has cultural ties to much of that heritage. Her family also inspired her loving relationship with food as her mom would often say that, “in Slovakia there were six instead of five love languages, the sixth one being food.”
Gloria pursued her passion for food after her employment as a costume designer. She decided she needed a profession that would allow her more time for relationships, cooking, and self care. She still brings her respect for the artistic spirit into her connections with her clients as an RDN.
After earning her masters degree in Nutritional Science and becoming an RDN Gloria joined the Professional Child Development Associates (PCDA) family clinic. At PDCA Gloria was able to work on a team with a wide range of therapists. Gloria’s experience at PCDA gave her, “so many different ways to look at a family relationship and how family culture affects food.”
Gloria’s past experiences and role as a mother have influenced her acquired specialties as an RDN. One of these specialties is one that few other RDNs have a background in: Avoidant Restrictive Food and Intake Disorder, or ARFID, which is an anxiety related presentation of an eating disorder. Additional specialties of Gloria’s include sensory concerns, eating disorders combined with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, multilayer mood disorders and mental health with disordered eating, family nutrition and Attention Deficit Disorder.
How Gloria brought these specialties to the Your Life Nutrition (YLN) team was quite a story of fates aligning. It was at a Nutrition and Neurology Seminar where Gloria had the pleasure of meeting Nancy King, who happened to fill an empty seat at her lunch table. After learning that Nancy was one of the authors of Moving Away from Diets, Gloria was in awe that she was sitting with a pioneer of the anti-diet movement. By the end of their conversation, Gloria was taken by the grace and knowledge of Nancy and declared, “I am going to work with you.”
Gloria sharing her excitement in voting in the 2020 presidential election with her two daughters.
A month later, Gloria was on the YLN team, but her good fortune did not end there.
Gloria set an intention to apply her experience as a member of the queer community and her knowledge of eating disorder disparities in the trans/non-binary community to her work at her new home. As fate would have it, her first client was YLN’s first ever transgender client.
Now having worked at YLN for three and a half years, Gloria feels lucky to be a part of a culture where each team member’s strengths and needs are honored. Gloria sees how this translates to how they practice as RDNs as they don’t assume they know the client’s needs, but instead honor the individual. They give the client space to tell them what their body needs, as Gloria recognizes, “we don’t know their body better than they do.”
When reflecting on her years as an RDN, Gloria says, “I feel very grateful to have a job where I can’t ever see myself not wanting to go to work, it is amazing. I feel really lucky and really grateful.”
Click here to learn about Gloria’s nutrition counseling philosophy.