Healthnut Launch & 2017 In Review by Natalie Thompson
At the start of 2017 I was still rehabilitating my left ankle, which I had sprained during the Breakneck Trail Marathon in April of 2016. But I had made a promise, and I was determined to keep my promise. By the time October 14, 2017 rolled around, I had completed Breakneck Trail Marathon, Cayuga Trails Marathon, Ithaca Half Marathon (not officially ;), Whiteface Sky Marathon, Watergap 50K, and Cat’s Tail Trail Marathon (plus a few other trail and road races thrown in for good measure). Without fully realizing what I’d gotten myself into, I had made a promise to Ian Golden that I would run all of his toughest races in 2017 as part of a promotional video for the races. Ian is the founder of Red Newt Racing, an excellent race directing company based in Ithaca New York that showcases the beautiful and varied trail systems in New York State.
Suffice it to say, by mid-October, I was beat. Fortunately, the timing was right for me to start a brief running hiatus.
Since running that last race in October (Cat’s Tail Trail Marathon), I’ve been keeping a pretty cool 10-mile-a-week running program, and this has freed up lots of time for me to work on other life creations. In those last few months of 2017, I found some great new inspiration for my health and wellness business, Happy Belly Life.
That time and inspiration manifested in Healthnut.
Healthnut is a community-based, subscription meal plan program developed by Happy Belly Life. In the Healthnut program, we will release one new 5-day meal plan on the first day of each calendar month. Each meal plan will provide 7-8 seasonally-based recipes, a grocery list, a schedule for batch-cooking the recipes during the week, and a schedule for what to eat and when.
The Healthnut program will also be a space for community and learning.
All Healthnut members will be invited to use our private online discussion forum, and gain access to our recipe-builder and meal-planner worksheets, which provide guidance for creating your own recipes and meal plans, based on the 5-day meal plan that we'll provide.
I will be present in the discussion forums regularly, as will be my invaluable recipe-creators. The forums will be a place for all Healthnut members to pose questions directly to me, my recipe-creators, and all other Healthnut members. We can share questions and ideas about nutrition, ingredients, cooking techniques, kitchen tools, meal planning, and much more. The online community will also serve as a place of inspiration, motivation and celebration!
And here’s what I think sets Healthnut apart from the other meal plan services that I’ve seen.
Healthnut provides one new 5-day meal plan every four weeks. We did this intentionally. First of all, I can't meal prep and cook every week of the month...and food is my business! So how can I expect anyone else to meal prep and cook every week? I get overwhelmed when too many things are tossed my way at once - for example 1000's of recipes and 100's of meal plans - how do I manage that!?
Healthnut is designed to not overwhelm you. Rather than throw 1000's of ideas at you at once, Healthnut will give you just the right amount of useful information, and time to apply it at your own pace. While we hope you will cook at home more than just one week out of the month, we don't want you to feel like you have to. If you cook healthy foods at home one week out of four, I say that's something to be proud of! And if you can do that once, then you can do that twelve times in a year ;)
We want cooking to be fun and enjoyable. If it feels overwhelming, it probably won't be much fun. And if you have to do it alone, it probably won't be much fun either. So, we'll do it together, one week, one month, at a time. We want you to feel a sense of accomplishment for the effort you will put into planning and cooking healthy foods. And we want you to really revel in those feelings of success, joy and relief that you'll experience when you come home after a busy day and you already have a healthy dinner waiting for you, ready to eat, that you made yourself!
Yes, cooking takes time and requires thought. But if we can accomplish those things, together, one week each month, then we've accomplished eating well at least 25% of the time. And once we establish that base, then we can build from there, eventually turning the corner to eating well, to nourishing our bodies and minds, a majority of the time.
The Healthnut meal plan program is housed at HealthnutGatherings.com.
Head on over there now. You can learn more about the meal plans by registering for the free Introduction to Healthnut program. And if it feels right for you, then you can either jump on for the one-year subscription, or give Healthnut a try one month at a time.Thank you so much for reading. We hope you'll join us in 2018 for a year filled with healthy, seasonal home-cookin'!
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about our Healthnut meal plan.
natalie@happybellylife.com
The MPF community receives 30% off until January 22nd! Just use the offer code MPFHEALTHNUT2018.
In Great Health and Happy Bellies, Cheers!
Natalie & The Happy Belly Life Team