Fall 2017 Updates and Announcements!

There is so much to update I had to do it by video!

Watch and find out more about:

⇒Updates on the “back end” and how the effect you on the “front end”

⇒More security on the site.

⇒Faster pages.

⇒A big personal announcement :)

⇒An exciting change to how you find a meal plan for you.

⇒Something exciting to come at the end of the month!

Video Notes: 

I have a lot of updates and announcements that I want to get through, hopefully quickly so I’m going to jump right in and not look too much at my notes…BUT be sure and catch the big announcement at the end!

My husband and I have been busy this summer with big projects that you may not see but do make a difference with your experience on the website!

First, we added an additional payment option outside of just PayPal. If you’ve been happy with PayPal we can absolutely still use that account, however, if you want to update your card, you want to try the membership for the first time, we now have two ways to pay…through PayPal or simply inputting your credit card information onto the checkout page of the site! As a reminder we don’t keep any card information on our website, its only housed in the third party sites which are PayPal and Stripe. They are very secure and supported and they process the payment but I don’t see any card numbers on my side.

Somewhat related to that note, another update we made was increased security to our site by becoming a https site. This means the data is encrypted and much more secure which is so important when it comes to your information on the web. You’ll notice the little lock icon on on the search bar next to https which signifies a secured site.

The other really big update, which I’m most excited about and was the biggest project, was a big big change on our server. You probably saw emails and Facebook posts from me. This project was like the major maintenance item that just had to happen on your car but you knew it would be inconvenient and expensive but the card was only getting worse so it had to be fixed to make sure it would run! So we went through the process and changed to a server that is much more robust and large and can handle the size of website and the amount of users we have. It’s amazing to me when I think about it because what started as a hobby blog on the side while I worked full time in a bariatric clinic didn’t need a big fancy server but now it’s my full time job, we have over 500 recipes, 35 meal plans and growing, a meal planner app, several video courses and way more visitors than ever before so we needed to move up to the big leagues. No longer will you run into timeout errors or pages that take forever to load. Yay!

So that’s what we’ve been up to BUT there’s more. On a personal note, I’m really excited to announce I am expecting our second child and am in the second trimester of a pregnancy! The first trimester proved to be quite a healthy one with lots of the traditional symptoms which paired with some large deadlines to other companies for meal plans and recipes, lets just say September was quite the month. I couldn’t be more excited to be moving into October with these website updates in place, those deadlines met and the symptoms of pregnancy easing up a bit.

Which brings me to my two final items that I think you’ll be really happy about:

Number 1: this week you can expect to see big changes to the meal plans page. I’ve wanted to do this for a while. Currently if you are not a paying member you cannot see the meal plans at all which makes it hard to know if you’d ever want to be a member because how would you know if it would be a good fit? And for those of you who are paying, logged in members – you can only see the links to the PDF but you can’t see what meals are ON the meal plan until you click through to the PDF.

So this week, the meal plans page will be visible to anyone, and you will be able to see what meals are on each plan very easily without leaving the page. You do have to be a paying member and logged in to access to full document to get the grocery list and recipes. At this point in time the first 14 days of membership are free! We don’t have plans of changing that currently but that giveaway does change from time to time. Sometimes its two weeks free, other times it’s a free e-cookbook or something else.

FINALLY! Thanks for hanging on with me…this is the big announcement with a date you will want to write down.

The 28 Day Fall Challenge is happening!!! Starting October 23rd we will embark on a 4 week wellness challenge specific to bariatric surgery patients.

You’ll get:

• A meal plan each week
• A workout video
• A goals sheet that you’ll submit to me
• Should you want to be paired up with an accountability partner we can do that for you

It’ll be fun, supportive, engaging and send you into the holiday season in a good place. In fact…the last day of the challenge is November 19th which I did on purpose! It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving so we are truly heading into the holidays coming fresh off the challenge and ready to face the holidays with a healthy approach. It’s going to be so fun!

The challenge does not have a separate cost, it’s a benefit of being a FoodCoach.Me member. Tell you friends, your support groups, your Facebook groups that if they join before October 23rd they will have the chance to opt in to the challenge!

And now you know everything. Wishing you all the best in health!