A Guideline for the Healthy Living Blogger

I'll start this off with a disclaimer.  I have never thought of myself as a Healthy Living Blogger (HLB for sake of this post).  I have heard the term before but never really thought about it until the other day when I was reading some old posts on Carrots 'N' Cake.  She had mentioned that her post Yes, I’m Still a Healthy Living Blogger had been "controversial" so I went back to read it (again) along with a bunch of the comments (both good and bad) and it got me thinking.  I read this on Monday morning when I was feeling the motivation of a new month.  I thought about what it means to be an HLB and if I was one.  My conclusion?  


No.


I mean, I think I used to be a better HLB but lately I have been slacking and I felt like I didn't deserve that title.  So I spent the rest of the day trying to only do things that I would want to see from a healthy role model.  I didn't strive to be perfect, I just did what I thought would be expected and here is what I came up with.  A guideline to being an HLB!

Source

Eat Healthy Most of the Time
This one is a bit in defense of Tina (Carrots 'N' Cake).  I've noticed she is very often attacked for her food choices.  I think people expecting an HLB to eat 100% all natural health foods 100% of the time are just being unrealistic.  But an HLB should be generally eating healthy with a treat now and then (even if its a treat every day or maybe even a whole day of non-health foods).  There also might be regular items that the person can't avoid (my hubs won't let me switch our protein powder and its not exactly "clean").  But its not everything that I eat!  So most of the time works!

Prepare Healthy Meals
This one goes along with the the first one but I thought it deserved special mention.  I like to see HLBs that cook and take pride in their meals.  Obviously, its kind of hard to eat all natural healthy foods without cooking often but I like to see the preparation and attention given to those special meals.

Be Active

Whether its just a sporadic "do whatever exercise I want" or a regimented training plan, an HLB should be generally pretty active.  It can be walking, running, Zumba, whatever!  But it is nice to hear about their activities or workouts to get ideas for yourself.  It shows that exercise and activity are essential for a healthy life so I would expect an HLB to show that they move their bodies regularly!

Care About Your Readers
Blogs are very personal and very self-centered but I think an HLB should care about her readers.  An HLB should show that she cares about the comments on her blog and the fact that people take the time to stop by and read.  It can be through reply comments or by reading a fellow HLB's blog.  It can even just be something like taking the time to write interesting blogs that are solely helpful to the reader and not the writer.  Take the time to do things other than just writing about your own life!

Have a Positive Attitude
Having a positive attitude is essential for mental health which is just as important as physical health, if not more.  An HLB should be enthusiastic, cheerful, happy.  Of course, everyone has an off day but negative comments probably won't come across the screen of an HLB very often if at all.


So that is what I managed to come up with as a guideline for me to follow in my day to day life.  On Monday, it really helped thinking about how my day would look in a blog later.  Would I want to show my readers that I pigged out all day AND skipped my workout?  No, of course not!  Its an accountability system for myself.  I can't be relied on to just go at it by myself so I'm going to work on not letting my readers down so that I can feel like I'm a Health Living Blogger!