Starting 2014 Off Right: Blogs on Fitness and Healthy Eating
One of the strengths of WordPress.com is the community — a global network of users, learning from one another and supporting each other. Earlier this month, Michelle shared blogs within the mental health community, and we’ll continue to highlight blogs that promote health and wellness. Today, let’s take a look at blogs focused on exercise, fitness, and healthy eating. (As a bonus, we’ve included steps on how to use our new recipe shortcode, which might be handy for those of you with food and recipe blogs.)
Exercise and fitness
You’ll find many bloggers writing about exercise and fitness in the Reader. Personal trainer Ariana Dane offers general advice on exercise and nutrition at Living a Balanced Life that is motivating but realistic: from skipping new year’s resolutions to slowing down and being mindful of what causes you stress when it comes to weight loss.
Over at Fit, Feminist, and (Almost) Fifty, you’ll find commentary and opinion pieces on fitness and health. The backstory: two feminists in their late forties with active lifestyles have goals to be the fittest they’ve ever been by age fifty.
They ask: what does it really mean to be fit? The writers approach fitness and health with a critical eye, and often challenge common assumptions. If you’re not sure where to start, read their thoughts on naked yoga, body shaming, and women-only workout spaces. It’s a refreshing space for provoking discussions.
Tony at One Regular Guy Writing About Food, Exercise, and Living Longer is a former men’s magazine editor and writes straightforward, candid posts about general health — from big bellies to soft drinks to smoking. Being retired for twelve years, he’s had more time to work on personal goals (and is even considered a success story by the National Institute on Aging). From his About page:
When the blog started, I was talking the talk; three years later I am walking the walk. You can do the same. I am just a regular guy.
Sure, you’ll find tons of posts from “fitness experts” on the web. But Tony’s take is frank, no-nonsense, and from the fresh perspective of just another guy.
Healthy eating and living
Last fall, Ben highlighted an assortment of food blogs. Here’s a glimpse at a few more that focus on healthy eating and cooking.
Jamie Phipps at The Hearty Herbivore shares vegetarian and vegan recipes, from tropical kale salad to vegan crust and white pizzas. Her photographs of food make these fresh, healthy concoctions hard to resist; we also dig her sweet treats, like her vegan banana toffee pie and a peanut butter and banana smoothie.
Julie Montagu at The Flexi Foodie is all about yoga and a plant-based diet. Her blog is focused on eating and cooking nutrient-dense food, and ideas to strengthen your body through stretching, breathing, lifting, and opening. In addition to recipes, she talks about healthy eating in general: from cutting down on the use of oil to promoting cancer-fighting foods.
Russ Crandall launched The Domestic Man to explore where our food comes from and to reconnect with nature. His blog, which is soon to be a cookbook (released in February), chronicles his cooking adventures and a dietary lifestyle modeled after the Paleo diet, which focuses on natural, unprocessed foods.
Check out his recipes for Karniyarik (Turkish stuffed eggplant) or Brudet (Croatian seafood stew) or Blaukraut (German red cabbage) for a tour of the natural flavors of the world. We also like following his adventures in gardening, too. (We’re interviewing Russ next month — stay tuned.)
Embed a recipe with shortcode
As you can see from the food blogs above, recipes are key component of these sites. We’re happy to announce that you can now embed a recipe on WordPress.com sites, with consistent formatting and basic metadata. You also have the option to print it with the click of a button. All you need to do is put your recipe between a set of shortcode tags.
Here’s a summary of how it works: to add a recipe to your site, insert the [recipe
] shortcode when you’re creating a post or page. Everything between the opening [recipe
] and closing [/recipe
] tags will be set apart as the recipe.
You can include optional attributes to add extra information, like the number of servings or the difficulty of the recipe. (This also helps search engines index your recipe properly, since the code uses special microdata intended for recipes.)
Recipe attributes
- Title: title of your recipe
- Servings: number of servings the recipe makes
- Time: total time the recipe takes
- Difficulty: how hard the recipe is to create
- Print: a link to print the recipe is displayed by default if you’ve added one or more of the attributes for servings, time, or difficulty. (Alternatively, you can hide the print button by adding print=”false”)
For more details on inserting the shortcode, check the recipe shortcode support page. You can also see one in action for Caribbean chicken curry. (We apologize if you read that on an empty stomach!)
Do you have any favorite blogs on fitness, exercise, and healthy living? Let us know.
- January 24, 2014
- Community, WordPress.com
Thanks for mentioning my guysandgoodhealth.com. Much appreciated.
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Interesting that you are missing a big chunk of the community that provides health and wellness advice, and that is the alternative and complementary therapists, who have been advocating healthy eating and exercise long before the research said it was healthier for us. Hippocrates said “When in sickness look first to the spine” and this is exactly what Chiropractors do. Spinal health is so important where are health is concerned as it houses our spinal highway, where all nerve impulses have to travel via. Problems here, cause health problems elsewhere. Please consider including them in this topic.
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With everything out there, it can be overwhelming though. So just find what resonates for you and start moving and doing.
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Muscleheaded is a lot of fun. Here’s his exercise blog:
http://muscleheadgym.wordpress.com/
(His other blog is on my blogroll, but this one is also solid.)
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Thanks for sharing this suggestion, bumblepuppies!
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Interested in a well-researched guide to preventing and fighting cancer with food? Check out http://www.eatandbeatcancer.com.
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I agree about Musclehead. I don’t follow his fitness blog, but his regular blog (muscle headed.wordpress.com) is hilarious and informative about a lot of quirky subjects.
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The new recipe shortcode is great! I just used it on a post this morning: http://the-magpies-valise.com/2014/01/24/soup-fit-for-a-magpie/
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Wish I’d had this yesterday for my Tuscan Baked Egg recipe! Will be using the shortcode from now on, thanks!
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I am leveraging 2014 gardening trends and doing a 30 day ‘Gardener Shape-up, Being Mindful of Health’ event. Inspirations on fitness, healthy eating, mental wellness and gardening for health can be found. Recipes too! Thank you for the info on embedding a recipe.
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That’s excellent advice, thanks I’ll try it on my next recipe post 🙂
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Thanks for all your posts guiding us in being better bloggers as well as exploring with success the larger blogger world!
I was hoping to plant a seed. The recent brouhaha over people ‘blogging as they die’ (see Lisa Adams, Bill Keller (NYTimes), The Guardian and more) got significant attention this month. It seems it might be cool to have you do a frame of the many websites you host on the topic.
warmly, marcy
Marcy Westerling http://livinglydying.com/
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Interesting — thanks for the topic suggestion. Not sure if it’s broad enough for a post here, but it’s an intriguing topic and I’ll read more about it, and see if there’s an appropriate time to talk about it, here or on our other blog, The Daily Post.
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Hi! I wanted to let you know about my blog, Dr. Deah’s Tasty Morsels. It is a blog that promotes the HAES(r) philosophy which is Health at Every Size. This means that different people can be healthy at different weights and there is no one size fits all standard to Health, Wellness, or Fitness. I promote self acceptance as the first step to any healthy life style and beating yourself up for not “fitting in” to a narrow definition of health and beauty does not result in a healthier you. No matter what you weigh, you can still engage in healthy activities and when you take the scale out of the equation, people begin to value fitness for its benefits to the whole person, not as a conduit to wearing a certain size or weighing a certain number.
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FOR YOUR GOOD HEALTH
is about anything and everything related to good health. My last post was about sleep and how we as a nation don’t get enough. I offered suggestions for getting a good night’s sleep. I also included a segment about not being able to stay awake. As usual, I included amusing photos because, after all, humor is good for your health! Thank you for the embedding information. I will be checking that out because I do include recipes when I write my monthly post called New Food Friday.
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Hi, I am a cancer health educator and dietitian in the UK blogging on food that I term as ‘accidentally healthy,’ focusing on colour and variety of mainly plant-food. But some slightly decadent stuff too on there too. Great blogs to visit in this post: looking forward to exploring them over the weekend. Great to know about other blogs with a similar outlook and ethos. I’m at kelliesfoodtoglow.com, btw.
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PS Very very pleased to see that we can embed recipes now. Thanks lovely WordPress!
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I cover healthy living and a healthy life all-around, giving recipes, sharing articles about how to live a healthier lifestyle, its connection to the environment, talking about GMOs, gluten-free myths, non-toxic cleaning products, and tips to eat healthy and organic on a budget! Because eating and living healthy shouldn’t be complicated.
I publish in English mostly but also translate some posts in French for my francophone audience.
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yes, for heavens sake. here you go:
http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/author/danceswithfat/
this destructive, passé topic is so over i cannot tell you. in a year all thats gonna be left to eat along these lines are yr words.
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I run my own running and fitness blog over at:
http://www.runmoderatelysizedmiddleagedduderun.wordpress.com
But I’m also a big fan of:
http://hemingwayrun.wordpress.com/
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A post on weight loss, new years resolutions, and exercise maintenance.
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Thanks for the information on the shortcodes . I occasionally put recipes into my blog as well.
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May we suggest our blog over at http://www.oneactivelife.com? We are 2 Aussie sisters blogging daily about health and wellness.
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Hope people like Fit, Feminist and Almost Fifty –there’s lots to learn. I visit there often.
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I used to have an eating disordered blog but ever since I recovered I changed mine to a healthier one and geared towards weightlifting and healthy eating. But i never changed my name and site because I want to attract people who are like me when I used to be unhealthy.
This is my site:
http://www.thinspirationaljourney.wordpress.com
I really like this recipe shortcode. It will be really useful for sharing meatless monday recipes in the future! Thanks WP!
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http://ashtangayurveda.wordpress.com/
is my blog on ayurveda and health.
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Great article — wish I had managed to also get on the list. Will have to set that as a goal for next year.
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Wow. This site just landed right in my lap at the perfect time. Im a new blogger needing fitness pages to follow. I write a fitness blog myself (fitinfatcity.wordpress.com). These sites are awesome! Thanks.
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Happy Guide
is recommended — 25 years of health and happiness expertise lovingly poured into one WordPress site.
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Thanks you so much for the shortcodes!! I post about 3 to 5 recipes a week. This will be so helpful and will make my page look more polished! THANK YOU!
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Thanks for the mention, and I love this new shortcode! Going to start using it immediately.
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Anyone interested in diet/fitness advice is welcome to check out http://www.ironcookclean.com as well. We’ve just gotten started – I’m a new mom with a lot of kitchen experience and my husband is a Navy physician; we’re very excited about helping other people with their goals. If you do stop by, feel free to ask questions – it gives my husband good ideas on what to talk about in our articles section. Thanks!
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I have just started my first blog. Do you have tips on how to find followers? I will be writing on topics relating to sports injuries and other conditions affecting the muscles and joints.
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You might want to read the posts on traffic and growth over on The Daily Post. Also browse the site in general, as there’s a variety of tutorials on blogging and writing, building your blog, connecting to social accounts, and more.
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Great to see such a vibrant community spreading the gospel of health and fitness and nutrition. Please check out my site at: http://eatdrinkhealthy.wordpress.com/
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I am trying to get it right for 2014. I would love to see more on fitness and healthy living.
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Perfect blog post for me — thanks. Always looking for health and fitness blogs. I started mine this month.
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I am new to the blogging world, and don’t know how to get listed on the community board as an official health and fitness blog, but I do have one: http://www.phoenixfit4life.wordpress.com The concept is to educate about the connection between the body and mind for long term health and wellness.
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This is brilliant. Lovely inspiration for new blogs to follow and I love the shortcode thing!
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Hey! I started a health and fitness blog after a large circle of people around me continuted to confide in me. I am 20 years old and have battled and learned to manage some heavy stuff such as thyroid disease, depression, and anxiety. All of this was succeeded through my change in lifestyle. I thrive off of helping other people and I’m so glad to see health and fitness is such a hot topic lately.
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I’ve got creative, innovative, fun, healthy, and easy creations–in addition to simple and challenging workouts. I’ve also been trying to include the reasons and whys behind eating what you eat from a multitude of nutritional perspectives. It’s not one-sided. And this year, I’m going to focus on this. It’s not Paleo only. It’s not going to be low-carb only because I’m going to be adding more carbs to my recipes with great reasons why they need to be included versus excluded including…gluten. (http://scarfmedown.wordpress.com/)
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Thank you Cheri Lucas Rowlands. I too am trying to get it right for 2014. For any that are interested you can find me at ‘A Fast Diet’.There are millions of us over sixties “Baby Boomers” out there and I suspect that a majority of us have stretched our physical envelopes?
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Awesome post. All the links you gave are actually good.
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This is great. Im working on using the recipe short code. My site fabfitfine.com is mostly about foods Ghanaians can eat to keep healthy, fabulous and fit.
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Hi! I also have a fitness/running/health blog. You can find a lot of useful information in there. Hope you like it 🙂
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Thank you for sharing this.
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Well, I do need to work on my fitness level — it’s just hard though, ever since I started my first-ever blog about a week ago I think I’m doing alright, besides the fact I’m hardly getting any visitors and I only have one subscriber to my blog ( myself ) I believe I’ll keep posting and see what happens 🙂
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The traffic and growth posts on our blog, The Daily Post, might be a good resource to check out.
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I love to blog about Fitness and Health! I’m a Triathlete and post lots of my healthy recipes and Fitness tips! Take a look! 🙂 Greetings from Austria
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That is a nice post. Thank you for sharing this info.
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Thanks for all the resources and tips. I’ll be sure to use them in my new healthy eating/ living blog!
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Great to see health and fitness is such a booming topic with so many fantastic blogs. Thanks for the links. I’m a fitness journalist from the UK blogging at http://www.fittersphere.com.
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Hey Cheri,
I’ve just turned 40 and I love the idea of Fit, Feminist, and (Almost) Fifty, it’s given me inspiration to set my own age-related fitness goals. Wonderful information and structured in a very easy to read way – thanks for a great post!
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Thanks for this post! Very helpful 🙂 I’m a fitness model and writer living in Australia.
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Don’t forget about all the dietitian bloggers! 🙂
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2014 is the year that I am going to continue to fulfill my goals of living healthier mentally, physically and financially. Last year I lost 80lbs by chaining my eating habits and creating a work out regiment. This year, I am transitioning from a legal career that I have spent the last 17 years of my life in to the medical/mental health career. Thus, I created my blog. It is good to read about others and how their lives are changing.
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Thanks for getting such nice information about health and wellness advice it’s really an excellent post.
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