Six months of the Office Diet

Half a year has gone by since I wrote the first post on The Office Diet – Welcome to The Office Diet – and good luck! It’s been a great six months, and some of the biggest highlights have been:

• Publishing the Excuse-Busting series and the Healthy Mind series
• Getting some wonderful emails from readers (it means a huge amount to me to know that my posts are helping and encouraging people)
• Making lots of new friends in the “blogosphere” and writing guest posts on some of my favourite blogs, like Cranky Fitness, Pick the Brain, Dumb Little Man and The Discomfort Zone.

Things have been changing rapidly in my personal life, too. When I launched The Office Diet, I didn’t know that it would lead me into freelance writing and web site creation – but I’ve found that I’m hugely enjoying these. I’ve launched a website, Aliventures, for my freelancing work. And I have a piece of big news…

Ali is leaving the office (but not The Office Diet!)

As some of you may have gathered from the rather cynical view of office life here on The Office Diet, I’m not too passionate about the 9-5 life! I handed in my notice at work today, and I’m going to be a full-time freelancer from the end of July onwards.

This does not mean that I’ll be ending The Office Diet; I have plenty of tips from my time in the corporate world that I’ll be continuing to share. Even better, for those of you who occasionally telecommute, work part-time or work on a contract basis, I’ll have lots of extra dieting challenges that I’ll be figuring out myself (I touched on some of these in a recent post on working from home).

However, I will be slightly cutting back the frequency of posts – writing at least three a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and extras when I have guest posts from other writers and dieters. I’ll also make sure I give you links to my own guest posts on other blogs.

June in review

Enough about me, and back to the blog. June’s been a great month for The Office Diet, with readership shooting up!

• I’m really enjoying writing the Dieting Basics series, and you can find all the posts so far on the Dieting Basics contents page. (No more excuses for confusing calories and a kilojoules …)
• Lorna is back with some guest posts, including one about some delicious party nibbles. She was a wonderful host a week ago, and (at my insistence!) made the garlic dip she mentions in that post … I can attest to its yumminess!
• I’ve had a couple of dieting-related guest posts published:
  • Get Back to Healthy Eating: 8 Easy Steps to Post-Vacation Recovery (Dumb Little Man)
  • Four Must-Know Phrases for Dieting in the Office (Zen Please)

What’s coming up next?

• I’ll be carrying on with the Dieting Basics series, and when it’s complete, I plan to publish it as an ebook (along with some extra goodies).
• I’m hoping to be doing some more guest posting, so if you have a blog which you’d like me to write a post for, just drop me an email! Also, if you want to write for The Office Diet, get in touch (ali@theofficediet.com) – I’m always more than happy to take guest posts, ideally ones which relate to office workers.
• And, of course, I’ll be sharing plenty of hints and tips for avoiding dieting meltdown during the summer months.

If there’s anything else you’d like to see, drop me an email or contact me via Twitter or Facebook (see my Contact page for details). I’m always open to new suggestions.

Oh, and if you’re in need of a website for yourself or a small business, or if you’re looking for a writer who can turn her hand to pretty much anything, check out Aliventures.