national body challenge

I'm so excited to tell you about this. One of the massive projects I was working on back in October has finally come to fruition. EatingWell has partnered up with Discovery Health to provide over 1,000 healthy recipes for their National Body Challenge. The coolest thing about the project isn't so much the recipes. It's the meal plans that we came up with to help users through the 8-week challenge.

I worked with our nutrition editors to come up with heart healthy, vegetarian, and diabetic-friendly menus at three different calorie levels, according to individuals' needs and weight-loss goals.

The menus were a lot of work. Not just because of the quantity and the calorie and nutrient considerations, but we had to work with our tech producer to figure out how to import and store them in our database; relate the menus to different recipes, days and health considerations; incorporate information from the USDA database; and then deliver the whole shebang in one tidy XML package.

If you register (it's free!) you'll be able to see how cool it all is. Hey, you may even be inspired to eat a little healthier or exercise a little more. (Registrants get a free 8-week pass to Bally fitness clubs!)

If this sounds like a commercial, I guess it kind of is. Cause I'm really proud of what we pulled off. Thanks to Sylvia, Nicci, Paul, Rose and Paula at EatingWell for all your help. And to Joy, Jen and the team over at Discovery--what a fun partner to work with!