When Brandi Koskie joined the dietsinreview.com staff five years ago, she didn’t realize what she was getting into.

She also didn’t realize how unhealthy she was living. 

“It’s kind of dramatic, but I’ve told people before that this job saved my life,” Koskie said. “A few years ago those snack jars would have been filled with chocolate-covered pretzels and Twix candy bars. Now there are almonds and pistachios.”

Koskie is now the managing editor for the Wichita-based website, one that has become one of the premier diet review websites in the country. 

Just last month it hit 10,000 likes on Facebook. 

The website started in February 2007. Koskie, a graduate of Oklahoma, joined a couple of her college friends in the endeavor with no ideas on where it would take them. 

“There wasn’t an unbiased, third-party diet site. There’s all these books and pills and programs and gadgets, but there is nobody out there lending an unbiased voice,” Koskie said. “We just jumped head first in this billion dollar industry. We turned five February and we have millions of visitors a month.”

The site has more than 2,500 reviews, the first 200 of which Koskie wrote herself. Today a lot of the writing is left to the interns, which include current Wichita State students Danielle Lagow and Samantha Bandasack.

Lagow and Bandasack are both paid and get their work published on the website, a luxury not all interns have. 

“At first when I took it, I was thinking it’s going to be a normal internship, but it wasn’t,” Bandasack, a marketing major at WSU, said. “It was a lot of writing and I hated writing before I got into Diets in Review. But it’s helped me build my communication skills.”

Much like Koskie, Bandasack has found a whole new appreciation for health and nutrition since she joined Diets in Review. 

Even Lagow, who used to work for Genesis Health Clubs and is currently a personal trainer, found a new appreciation for fitness. 

“I think ever since I started working here I’m very vocal about what my family puts into their mouth and what my boyfriend put in his,” Lagow, a communication major at WSU, said. “When you are reading all this information about food and all these workouts that can help you live a healthier lifestyle, you become an advocate. You start wanting others around you to get healthy as well.”

Just as important as learning to be healthy, Koskie also learned how to be adaptable in one’s career. 

She has spoken to several classes at both OU and WSU over the years, and she tells them all the same thing—don’t be married to an idea of what you want your career to be. 

Koskie always wanted to go into advertising and copy writing. Instead she finds herself as a nutrition writer for a national-level website. 

“This isn’t exactly what I ever thought I would be doing,” she said. “I love what I do now and can’t imagine doing anything different.”