Sadia Badiei (Pick Up Limes) – Detailed Biography

Sadia Badiei is a popular YouTuber.

She has over four million subscribers on her YouTube channel Pick Up Limes.

Sadia was a registered dietitian.

Introduction

Sadia Badiei was born on 6 March 1991 in Pakistan.

Her parents hailed from Afghanistan but they, along with the six-month old Sadia, emigrated to Canada due to a war in their home country.

Sadia grew up in Vancouver, Canada and is a Canadian.

She has two sisters. Her eldest sister, Sara, is an engineer and entrepreneur.

The young Sadia loved eating grilled cheese sandwiches and instant noodles over fruits and vegetables even though her parents tried to feed her home-cooked meals.

But this changed when she later started studying nutrition.

It all started with a TV show

At 15, while in high school, Sadia decided to adopt veganism for health reasons but lacked the willpower.

But everything changed when she watched The Walking Dead TV show.

After watching one of its episodes where humans were forced to resort to cannibalism in a post-apocalyptic world, Sadia couldn’t justify eating animals, as she felt that animals would also feel pain much like humans.

So, she became a complete vegan in October 2014 and has been a vegan ever since.

At the time, Sadia was studying nutrition and plant-based lifestyle which she found very nourishing.

Studying nutrition

Sadia joined The University of British Columbia in Vancouver to attend medical school to become a surgeon.

There, she learnt about the dietetics degree and enrolled into it as it seemed a good back-up plan in case she didn’t make it to medical school.

Also, dietetics seemed a tangible career in the healthcare field and as Sadia had no proper knowledge of nutrition, she decided to learn it through her degree.

She studied for a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) Dietetics, from 2009 to 2014, and completed the degree with honours.

Initially, while studying at university, Sadia survived off burgers, ice cream and chicken fingers.

She worked at several restaurants and H&M before joining university.

In 2013, Sadia worked as a Teaching Assistant at her university for Nutrition Concepts and Controversies and also worked as a Dietetic Intern.

In 2014, she worked as a Clinical Dietitian at Vancouver Coastal Health and Provincial Health Services Authority.

Later, Sadia worked as a Registered Dietitian at MSK Health and Performance Clinic, and Provincial Health Services Authority.

Pick Up Limes

In January 2015, Sadia started her food blog Pick Up Limes as a hobby to share with her family and friends.

She got help from her web developer friend to create the website.

Sadia wanted her blog name to be cheerful, fun and food related. While walking home from work, she was thinking of different names and the name Pick Up Limes popped into her head.

As the Pick Up Limes domain name was available, she started her blog with that name and published her first blog post, “Cranberry Lime Bliss Balls,” on 15 January 2015.

Sadia published only a handful of recipes in the first couple of years.

Initially, she used to create recipes in her mother’s kitchen.

Sadia’s love for cooking and sharing recipes stems from her upbringing and her parents’ Afghan background.

Travelling made her a YouTuber

Sadia badly wanted to travel the world after B.Sc. but as she had student loans to pay off and was working at a good job, she postponed her trip.

But after one of her beloved persons got terribly ill and passed away, she realized that even though life is beautiful, it’s too short not to follow her dreams.

So, Sadia decided to travel the world. Having vision boards and listening to The Success Principles book gave her the courage to travel.

In 2015, she packed her backpack and travelled for six months in Southeast Asia.

At the time, Sadia started vlogging for the first time and posted her vlogs on YouTube to document her journey and keep her family and friends updated on her journey.

She met a YouTuber who inspired her to start a nutrition YouTube channel as she can reach thousands of people through it in contrast to working as a dietitian in the hospital by which she can reach only a limited number of people.

This inspired Sadia to start Pick Up Limes YouTube channel.

She started her channel to share her interests of nutrition, recipes and minimalism. At the time, she was inspired by watching a lot of YouTube videos and decided to reciprocate through starting her own channel.

Sadia started her YouTube channel on 26 October 2016 and published her first video, “Ruby Red Green Smoothie » pre- or post-workout drink” on 9 January 2017.

Initially, even though she produced a few videos, she didn’t publish them as she was nervous about how people would receive them.

At the time, Sadia’s mentor advised her to publish them right away and said “if you’re proud of the first content you put out there… you waited too long.”

Also, her mentor’s advice kept her going when she was initially discouraged with the low number of views on her videos. Back then, she felt that YouTube was saturated and she could never get millions of views like other YouTubers.

In the beginning, Sadia had only a few subscribers and used to get only few views but she persisted and bettered herself over the time which helped in the growth of her channel.

Being stubborn

Initially, Sadia wasn’t confident talking to the camera and when she shared that she is going to start the Pick Up Limes YouTube channel with one of her acquaintances, she was discouraged.

She was told that it wasn’t a wise decision to leave her secure job for YouTube. Even when Sadia said that she really wanted to start the channel as she had a vision, she was discouraged as she was told that there was too much competition and it would be difficult to earn money.

So, Sadia decided to not share about her YouTube channel with others as she didn’t want to get further discouraged and as she was stubborn, she started her Pick Up Limes channel and believed that her channel could go places.

As she produced a video every week, she practised speaking to the camera regularly and this helped her overcome the fear of speaking to the camera.

Following her passion

It took Sadia five years to become a dietitian and, in the end, she got accepted to the medical school at The University of British Columbia.

But she turned it down to work full-time on her YouTube channel as it was her passion and its community was growing and she was positively influencing many people.

Sadia realized the potential of her channel as she had 100K subscribers on the day she received the acceptance letter to the medical school.

At the time, she was satisfied with working on prevention methods through her channel and didn’t envision herself working as a physician.

Also, Sadia didn’t want to give up on her channel as she saw its potential and felt that if she wanted to join medical school in the future, she can re-apply.

In 2017, while in the Netherlands, she became a full-time content creator and started working seriously on her YouTube channel and blog.

At the time, Sadia also counselled clients one-to-one for a while.

During the time, she worried what her family, friends and colleagues might think of her switching career from a full-time dietician to YouTuber.

Sadia used to teach nutrition to people suffering with illness while working as a dietician in hospitals and loved her job. But through her YouTube channel, she decided to teach nutrition to the general public, so that they can prevent illness.

Also, she wanted to show that eating well and leading a simple lifestyle isn’t complicated.

It took Sadia two and a half weeks to grow from 10K to 100K subscribers on her channel but just three months to grow from 100K to 500K subscribers.

Currently, she has over 4.3 million subscribers on her channel.

Sadia films her videos with Canon EOS R6, Fujifilm X-T4 and GoPro. She has a team for helping with her channel.

In one of her videos, she collaborated with Nathaniel Drew, a popular YouTuber.

Sadia loves making recipes. She creates them in her studio with a lot of experimentation.

Initially, she used to film videos in her living room but in 2018, she upgraded to a studio.

In 2019, Sadia published a recipe e-book.

In 2026, she published Simply Plants: Feel-Good Vegan Recipes to Nourish the Body and Soul book.

Her favourite books are The Success Principles, Becoming Vegan: The Complete Reference to Plant-Based Nutrition and How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease.

Overcoming self-doubt

Sadia’s channel grew rapidly in the first year.

Even though she was happy with the growth, she started feeling the pressure of expectations and self-doubt.

As Sadia was feeling home-sick, she wanted to quit everything and go back to her old life in Canada.

Thankfully, having a conversation with Robin and learning that all those pressures were normal parts of being a YouTuber helped.

Personal life

After getting engaged to Robin on 26 October 2021, they got married on 23 July 2022 in British Columbia, Canada.

This couple has a girl, born in 2025.

Sadia met him while travelling Thailand, on a beach under a palm tree. They became friends and travelled Thailand and Cambodia.

Their relationship started when they started travelling together in Europe.

As Robin was Dutch and hailed from the Netherlands, Sadia moved to that country, in late 2016, for the relationship.

Robin works as a Software Engineer at Pick Up Limes.

Sadia is a complete vegan whereas Robin is mostly vegan. Her favourite dish is aushak.

She is a Pisces and knows Dutch and Farsi.

Sadia lives in Eindhoven, North Brabant, Netherlands.

She loves the extensive cycling routes and the ability to travel to almost all places in the Netherlands by bikes.

So, how are you inspired by the story of Sadia Badiei?

Share with me in the comment section below.