Healthy Foodies and Instagram Make Beautiful Music Together

I spend a fair amount of time on Instagram these days—if you’re a healthy foodie, it’s definitely the place to be. Instagram has rapidly become one of my favorite sources of well, pretty much everything. Whether you’re into fitness, fashion, beauty, travel, music, raising kids, empty nesting, food — you name it, there’s something for everyone on Insta. That’s especially true for us healthy foodies, because Instagram is a never ending source of amazing recipes and healthy eating ideas.

Building strong networks comprised of incredible people is kinda sorta my thing, so I decided that I’m going to start introducing you on the regular to some of my favorite Instagrammers and their blogs, telling their stories, and introducing you to some amazing companies and products you might not (yet) have heard of.  As a bonus, I’m also going to share some of their awesome healthy foodie recipes, too.

Healthy Foodies on the Insta

This morning as I was scrolling through Instagram before getting out of bed (you know you do it, too), I happened across an amazing looking green smoothie shared by Jennifer, aka @thefitnana. It was actually what got me out of bed—I was hungry!

Jennifer’s story? She’s a Navy wife, mom of two daughters, and grandmother of two darling granddaughters. She’s a runner, CrossFitter, lover of coffee, wine, bourbon, and chocolate. She shares on her blog that her Navy guy thinks her obsession with fitness is a little nuts, but she’s passionate about living a good, healthy life and showing that fitness can be fun at any age. Here’s one of my favorite photos from Jennifer’s Instagram feed —

She’s a total badass, isn’t she? Notice those tattoos. Lee just wrote about women getting tattoos at midlife, Women of a Certain Age and Tattoos — Do You Tattoo?

Here’s that green smoothie that caught my eye:

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? Healthy foodies are all about amazing smoothies that also happen to be good for you and there’s never such a thing as too many great ideas. Here’s Jennifer’s instructions on how to whip this one up: ¾ cup frozen mango chunks, ¾ cup frozen chopped spinach, ½ of a frozen banana, ½ cup frozen riced cauliflower, 1 tsp chia seeds, 1 tsp bee pollen, 1 cup Califia Farms’ unsweetened almond milk.

And here’s another smoothie that’s equally amazing looking, that Jennifer calls “a Frozen Bloob.”

By the way, if you’ve not heard of Califia Farms’ products, (featured in the recipe above) they are artisanally crafted plant milks, made from nuts, seeds, fruits, and roots. Let me just tell you that this member of the healthy foodies tribe focused on plant-based eating is so excited by this discovery. Califia Farms, here I come.

Here’s how you make the Frozen Bloob (and see the recipe shared above for what I mean when I say that for healthy foodies, Instagram is the place to be:

Frozen Bloob Recipe: ½ cup frozen zucchini chunks, handful of frozen chopped kale, ½ frozen riced cauliflower, 1 TBS ground flaxseed meal, bourbon vanilla protein powder @teraswhey @califiafarms unsweetened almond milk. Blend it all up, then top with fresh blackberries, some granola, and a soli

Hopefully if you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of healthy foodies on the Insta, I’ve convinced you that you definitely need to be following Jennifer (and reading her blog if you want to go deeper). Find her blog at FitNana and follow her on Instagram @thefitnana

In addition to finding two great smoothies to make, because of being connected to my healthy foodie Insta pal, I’ve also discovered some other pretty cool companies and their products—and you need to know about them as well. Clearly. I’ve already introduced you to Califia Farms, and here are some other brands/products you might like to get up close and personal with.

Tera’s Whey Specialty Organics

Let’s start with Tera’s Whey, a Wisconsin-based company making an amazing line of specialty organic products. Their story is all about the fact that simple is better, sustainability matters, and you are what you eat. Passionate about pure and the concept that a healthy inside leads to a healthy outside, there’s every reason to love this company and their products. Find them on Instagram @teraswhey.

Purely Elizabeth.

Purely Elizabeth is a natural foods company started by Elizabeth Stein—almost by accident, and beloved by healthy foodies everywhere. Living in NYC and working building a health counseling practice, in August of 2008 Elizabeth happened to show up at a triathlon event in Westchester one morning loaded with hundreds of homemade baked goods in an attempt to score some potential clients from the event. While very few people were interested in her counseling services that day, everyone wanted her baked goods. That was Elizabeth’s ‘aha’ moment, and her line of Purely Elizabeth Muffin Mixes and a Pancake Mix launched the following year at the Westchester Triathlon—and immediately sold out. The rest of her story, as they say, is history. But it’s equally exciting—and more than a little inspirational—and I’m going to send you to her website for the rest of that. You can check it out (and buy her amazing products at PurelyElizabeth. Trust me, you’re gonna want to check her out.

Oh my GOODNESS. Did someone say “Chocolate Sea Salt Probiotic Granola” ….. I can’t even. As if that’s not enough, Elizabeth’s cookbook looks pretty awesome as well, so while you’re checking her out, you might think about buying that.

Crazy Richard’s Peanut Butter

The last company I discovered on my morning scroll through Instagram courtesy of Jennifer and her feed @thefitnana is Crazy Richard’s, an Ohio-based family-owned business, maker of all natural specialty products: Peanut butters and peanut butter powder, almond butter, cashew butter, and more. Love butters? Crazy Richards’ call their peanut butter “Natural Peanut Butter Without the Clutter” and once you spend a little time getting to know the company, you’re definitely going to want to buy from them.

Check Crazy Richard’s out. Try their stuff, see the magic. You can shop their online store or buy from online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Lucky Vitamin, or Vitacost.

There you have it. Healthy foodies and Instagram most definitely make beautiful music together—and beautiful food together, naturally. I hope you’ll go find these people and brands, follow them on Instagram, subscribe to their blogs, buy their cookbooks and buy and try their products, and reap the benefits of the goodness they create. You, my healthy foodies, won’t be sorry. Not one bit.

The other thing that I find so incredibly cool about the Instagram foodie community is that some of these companies are small local companies, and if someone doesn’t point them out to you, you might never know they exist. I think that might be my new mission, finding people and amazing companies like the ones featured here and telling you about it—what do you say? Are you in?

Are you one of the healthy foodies on Instagram? If so, link your profile in the comments or share it with us on Instagram, because we definitely want to know about you—and follow you! Also, if you’ve got a favorite brand or company we need to know about, or if you ARE one of those brands we need to know about, let’s hear from you as well. Oh, and it goes without saying that you need to be following @middle_chicks on the Instgram …. right?

Want more great healthy, easy recipes, including some kid-friendly ideas? Check out our ebook: Real Food for Real Women

Other stuff you might like:

Workout Hacks to Get Your Steps in Even if You Aren’t Counting

Mini Cookie Dough Fudge Pops (holy moly, my kids are swooning!)