“Why don’t you do a nutrition blog?” my husband asked me. “What’s a blog?” I replied. I’m no techno whiz. I can do e-mail and write stories but have only just worked out how to twitter! Thank goodness my husband knows all about that stuff, as well as doing fantastic photography which makes my cooking look far better than it really is! Oh, he’s also a doctor which comes in handy for a second opinion on what I write.  So what about me? My name is Cindy Williams. I love to encourage people to feel great about themselves – through what they eat, what they do and how they think. The food we eat can make a huge difference to our health. But healthy eating on its own is not enough to ensure good health. How much we move our body, how we think, how we feel, how relaxed or stressed we are, and our relationship with family and friends also affect our health and our life. So pour yourself a cup of antioxidant filled tea, sit back, relax and let yourself be encouraged to eat healthy food and live a great life.

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Here are my qualifications: Accredited Practicing Dietitian in Australia and New Zealand , Master of Public Health – Nutrition (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia – I hated the statistics), Graduate Diploma in Communication (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane – this was much more fun than the Masters and they even gave me a distinction!)

Here’s the organisations I belong to: Dietitians NZ,  Dietitians Association of Australia, Australian Society of Medical Writers

Here’s what I’ve done: I started as a dietitian at Auckland Hospital in 1987. I liked working out tube feeds and running cardiac rehab programs  but was more interested in sports nutrition. So in my spare time I wrote for a running magazine and helped the kiwi yacht team work out what to eat during the Whitbread Round The World yacht race. Then I skipped over the ditch to Australia for one year but stayed for 17! I was the dietitian for the National Heart Foundation of Australia (Queensland) for a few years before ‘going it’ on my own. I became Woolworths’ Nutritionist in Queensland with my face appearing in everyone’s junk mail and I set up a neat program for Year 3 kids to go on a healthy eating tour of the supermarket. We had about 17,000 8-year-olds a year go through.  I trained the staff and they did a great job of teaching the children. The teachers liked it too because we gave them a manual of lessons that fitted their curriculum so they didn’t have to plan any lessons for a few weeks.

I also worked for a dairy company and a corporate health organisation where I advised lots of stressed out corporate high fliers and gave lectures. Twice a week I’d pop down to the Brisbane Lions AFL club-rooms to help the team with their diets and measure their skin-folds – not much fat on those boys! Of course, working for Woolworths, I did lots of supermarket tours and helped food companies with nutrition labeling on their products. I loved all that media stuff so would regularly go on the TV and radio and was an official ‘Media Spokesperson’ for the Dietitians Association of Australia.

I was Nutrition Manager for Beef and Lamb New Zealand for a year before plunging into parenthood and moving to West Australia, then Brisbane, then back to Auckland where I helped companies with their food labeling, gave talks and wrote for the Healthy Food Guide – NZ’s top selling lifestyle magazine.

I currently live in Sydney and still write for the Healthy Food Guide magazine as well as trying to write a novel that has absolutely nothing to do with nutrition!

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