After having a health scare Dietician Rachel Lewis began working on her website to help people enjoy a healthier diet… 
Website: CALORIE GIRL
URL: www.caloriegirl.co.uk
I am Rachel Lewis, a Dietitian also known as ‘Calorie Girl’.
The aim of Calorie Girl is to provide a fun weight watching brand from the view of a typical girl like me helping convey the knowledge I’ve learnt in a simple format whilst addressing the foodie concerns that females battle with every day! I provide hints, tips and recipes for health conscious girlies addressing areas such as portion size, healthy snacks, low fat meals and survival strategies.
Calorie Girl aims to be a weight management programme which focuses on normal, healthy eating and a leading healthy lifestyle rather than focuses on counting points or denying yourself foods. 
With a love of food and a fear of a growing waistline I started working on my business whilst still in university three years ago and have recently launched it at the start of this year. Battling with my own weight, it was my passion for food and my thirst for knowledge of how to control my weight that led me into a career as a Dietitian. It all sparked from a scare with HPV where I had to have some pre-cancerous cells lasered out. It was from here that I realised how important your health is.
My favourite part of the Dietetic job role was helping people in clinics for weight loss! With the greatest respect to other Dietitian’s I always knew I wasn’t destined to be shut away in a hospital. Bursting with enthusiasm, fun and ideas I was always different to my other classmates in that I always felt I was destined to help fill a niche with my own publicly run company rather than join the NHS. I felt that people needed a realistic, regular girl that could help convey healthy eating messages in any easy to understand, non clinical format helping make everyday meals nutritious and delicious.
I will always remember my lecturer telling me that she thought that I would go on to rule the world of weight loss! She was right, armed with pure determination and the knowledge and concerns that most females struggle with, my degree would now enable me to share my findings. I aim to help with every woman’s war on weight by relating to real-life situations helping them overcome their issues with weight and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Calorie Girl doesn’t use the words ‘diet’ or ‘calorie counting’, I follow healthy eating guidelines and help people to understand that life doesn’t have to be about cutting out the foods you love. You don’t need to declare the fact that your “never going to touch a drop of alcohol again”, “not going to buy those scrumptious chocolates that you love” or sit there munching on a lettuce leaf at your favourite restaurant whilst you glare across the table at your partner wolfing down steak and chips”. You CAN have a glass of wine, ENJOY your favourite chocolates and HAVE your steak and eat it, but it will require planning, thought and commitment. By making small realistic changes that fit into your lifestyle and your love of food, you too can do it!
When did you start your website and what are the aims?
I started my building my own website on wordpress about 2 years ago, it is an easy to use system once you master it but building the site yourself if extremely time consuming! I Youtube and Google how to do everything. I am always working on it and the more I build on the brand the more I will be able to invest in the all singing all dancing parts of the website!
How often you blog/ update your site – is it hard to think of new post or things to write about?
I regularly update the website and try to keep up to date with social media. As I am still building the business I have much more to come!
I never seem to run out of things to post about, I have 4 years worth of knowledge stored in my head from my Dietetics degree and I desperately want to convey this knowledge to my followers in an easy to follow format.
What you blog about?
I have recently set up free Newsletter access for all of my followers. Each week I will address foodie concerns and accept suggestions made by my followers to feature in the newsletters. See website page for further details:
Which have been the best read pages or posts on your site?
Whenever I write about calories I seem to get a huge response. I think a lot of people have become a little obsessed with calorie counting however Calorie girl doesn’t believe in counting calories, she believes in taking in a few less and burning off a few more.
Statistics – how many views do you get?
My viewers are building up day by day, I haven’t been on twitter very long but already have almost 500 followers so I feel with more time and more exposure Calorie Girl will be on the up!
What now? How do you see Calorie Girl developing?
I would like to continue growing the brand to create more awareness of it and form some alliances with food partnerships. I have lots of things in the pipeline for Calorie Girl including CG approved foods, recipe books and cookery shows. I’m loving every minute of it and am looking forward to the future.
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