Clean Eating Kitchen

Looking for a way to be creative and connect with other people, Carrie Forrest started a blog, Clean Eating Kitchen. “I was at the beginning of my health journey and used the website as my own personal journal,” she says. “I started to grow an audience of readers who were interested in how I was managing my health. But they kept asking me for recipes. So over time, my site became less about my own health journey and more about sharing easy recipes that others can make too.”

A few years later, Carrie was diagnosed with cancer, but she kept working through it, channeling her energy into the site and earning her masters degree in public health.“While I was undergoing my recovery from cancer,” she says, “it was really helpful to connect with other women who had gone through a similar experience and get support from each other. My blog was an amazing way to do that. Health stuff is super scary and it can be incredibly meaningful to connect with a real person who's gone through the same thing as you. So I keep that in mind when I write health articles or develop recipes, leading with empathy from my experience and including accurate information from my research into the scientific literature.”

With her recent success, Carrie is eager to keep building for the future. “You have to be willing to go on the ride, find new opportunities and go after them,” she says. “As bloggers, we create content that can be read by millions of people and change their lives - the way they eat and live. That’s a big responsibility but a huge opportunity to make a positive difference. It’s what keeps me going.”