The Healthy Giraffe is four years old! In some ways it seems like I have been at this for so long and other times it seems like yesterday. What is this you may ask? I wrote the purpose of The Healthy Giraffe just over four years ago…
The Purpose is to provide resources, support and community in an effort to live a healthy lifestyle. Take personal accountability for your health – no one else will. I have learned a lot of personal lessons in recent years…
The tagline, Add Health to Your Life, can mean just about anything in the spirit of – when we add and continue to add healthy things in our lives, we move less desirable things out. This can be nutrition, fitness, relationships, how we spend our time, etc. So if it’s going out to walk once a day, running a block, a 5k, eating one more serving of fruit and/or veggies in a day – it’s about adding good (healthy) things in our lives, not missing what we think we are going to miss.
I have learned so much on my journey from living an unhealthy life to living a pretty darn healthy lifestyle now. I have so many people to thank for that. You can see more how my life transpired on the page – My Story.
To support the purpose, my commitment was to write a blog, “The Giraffe Paper,” once a week. I am proud I have stuck to this self made mandate, not missing a single week in four years totaling 220 posts. I have written blogs spanning topics on nutrition, performance, the mind, our community and more…
It’s interesting looking at the web page metrics. It makes me feel good that some people either consider the content meaningful or entertaining to visit and hopefully come back. Some pretty cools statistics for 2021 include:
- Visitors from 59 countries viewed the page this year with the top 5 including:
- USA
- China
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Ireland (new to the top 5)
- Total views of the website increased 52% this year
- The top five blogs from 2021 measured in amount of views:
- Live a Great Story
- Failing to Success with Veganism
- A Fast Start to 2021
- 3 Easy & Healthy Desserts
- Erectile Dysfunction – The Long & Short of It (oddly on Facebook this only had 2 likes and 1 comment…ha!…#plantpower)
Also in support of the purpose and power of community, when I started I wanted to organize a monthly event, “The Healthy Giraffe Event,” where we would either gather at my home or go on a road trip to a local restaurant offering plant-based options. COVID-19 took havoc on this plan in 2020 & 2021. Look for more creative things soon.
Pulling from a recap about these events will give you a flavor if you have not attended one:
At the gatherings at my home we would usually watch a brief video on health, cook a healthy meal together (so much fun!!!), and then enjoy it. “Game Night” has been a fun addition to the events playing a game with a mix of learning on the theme of the night with fun random trivia. If you want to get a feel for one of the events, read my recap from the latest event, A Glorious Saturday Night Full of Life, hosted at Joel and Celia Dubey’s home. Thank goodness we had it there as we had 41 incredible people join on one fantastic night.
In 2021, the purpose will remain the same. I will continue the weekly blog and get back to monthly events as soon as it is safe. I think the Road Trips could be back sooner…stay tuned… Please send me ideas on things you would like me to cover and where we should go in the Tampa Bay area to try out healthy plant-based cuisine. I am also working on a website redesign where you will be able to find information much easier on topics of performance, nutrition, the mind, recipes, stories and more… I’m finally working up another idea that I will provide updates on in the near future… Exciting stuff…
Continuous learning is paramount to me. As I learn and share with you I hope to add value to your life and in some way – Add Health to Your Life. I know I have learned something from each and every person I have interacted with this year and it inspires me to continue on…
Thank you so much for an incredible four years!!!
Let’s keep this community building in a small way, big way, in your way –
– Add Health to Your Life
The Healthy Giraffe 
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