We’ve been working day and night finishing our first book, It Starts With Food, so we can (hopefully) stick to our planned release date of June 12th. But that hasn’t precluded us from working hard on another effort – one we realize is long overdue.
The Whole30 Problem
Our Whole30 program has grown by leaps and bounds since its inception in April 2009, and with each new day comes a new group of first-time Whole30′ers. Which means every week, we get a fresh crop of the same questions we’ve been answering for the last three years. (It’s okay – we know you’ve got questions, and we really want to answer them!) While 99% of these questions are addressed in our Whole30 Success Guide (and will be covered in our book, too), we want everyone to be able to rock their Whole30′s – which means we need a venue for common questions and answers. And for those of you participating on our web site and Whole30 Facebook page, you know the venues currently established just aren’t cutting it.
It’s not that our Whole30 Facebook Admins aren’t doing a fabulous job – they are! And it’s not like our Envoys (especially Tom Denham) haven’t been addressing everyone’s questions in detail on the Whole30 post on our site – they have! But those formats are exceptionally hard for new people to search and retrieve information, which means they end up asking (and we end up answering) the same questions over and over again. In addition, we really wanted to provide folks a place to talk about their Whole30 programs – to share ideas, recipes, motivation and tough-love. Which is really hard to do in post comments, and even harder to do on a high-traffic Facebook page where posts are pushed off the page every hour.
But these are (soon to be) problems of the past, thanks to our new, spiffy, gorgeously tailored message board!
The Whole30 Solution
We’ve been working hard to build a Whole30 forum, for use right here on our site. The forum will be well organized and indexed by category (Whole30 food, Whole30 drink, Whole30 supplements), with a separate category for life after your Whole30. We’ll also include a category for recipes, so you can share your best Whole30 approved meals. Topics will be search-able, easy to follow and review and even easier to comment upon with your own experience.
We’ll also have a section devoted just to YOU – your 30 day logs, your success stories, your photo testimonials. This section lets other Whole30 participants learn from your experience and share in your success – and lets you and your results show off a little, because you’ve earned it!
Moderators Wanted
We expect to have the forum up and running in April, but in the meantime, we’ll be looking for moderators to help us review and respond to questions. Moderators should be familiar with the Whole30 program, our philosophy and recommendations – and your names should be familiar to us, too. We’ll be pulling folks from within our own community – people who have been present on the site, on Twitter and our Facebook pages.
If you’re interested in becoming a Whole30 moderator, please your qualifications and a cover letter to melissa@whole9life.com. While forum moderators are typically volunteer positions, we do want to make sure you know your efforts are valued, and we’ll do what we can to say “thank you.”
So look for our new Whole30 forum soon – we’ll keep you posted on our progress. Questions, recommendations or squeals of joy? Drop them in comments.
Yay! I’m so glad you guys are adding this!
This is awesome! I love the FB page but agree that a lot gets lost…I think the Whole 30 Program definitely warrants a dedicated forum!
Woooooohooooooo!!!!
Fantastic! Stoked y’all are doing this – and impressed you’re launching it in the midst of your book. Woo hoo!
Excellent news, looking forward to it!!
Can’t wait!
I am new to Whole 30, but not new to Paleo. I’m doing my first official Whole 30 starting today, in honor of Whole 30 starting in April 3 years ago. I thought it would be fun to go through April as healthfully as possible while reaping all the benefits of treating my body to nothing but the best of everything. Can’t wait for the new forums to be available, and your new book. I have several patients I would like to give a copy to.
Chriss (and all), the new forum will be up next Monday, April 9th. Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Melissa
Yay! Can’t wait!