Meet Bonni Wildesen Hise, Holistic Nutritionist and founder of Living Kleen.

Bonni works with people who have been diagnosed with chronic ailments, autoimmune dysfunction, or have food sensitivities/allergies and are struggling to figure out how to eat well without losing their minds, or being scared of reactions from what they are eating.

She helps her clients go from feeling afraid and guilty about food to seeing it as “fuel that can be delicious” - regardless of their conditions, sensitivities, and/or allergies. She helps them work with their restrictions rather than letting them rule part of their health and life. She provides meal plans that can easily adjust to whatever her clients’ lifestyles dictate.

Bonni’s favourite recipe is her Pumpkin Bacon Risotto made in her favourite appliance - her Instant Pot.

Bonni’s best tips for meal planning

When she has no time to cook, Bonni grabs a black bean burger or two from the freezer and tosses them into a skillet or in the microwave.

Her tip: make them in big batches when you have them for dinner, so it's not overwhelming but is really convenient on days when time is limited.

More of Bonni’s “pro tips” for preparing meals are:

• Be kind yet realistic with yourself.
• When you bring home meats, separate them in baggies or containers and marinate them differently before freezing them. Pull them out and defrost them as you want respective flavours.  
• Cook your meats and casserole-style dishes in advance. You can make the meats in bulk on the grill or in the oven so they'll be ready to go when you’re hungry. This way you can just grab the meat you want for that meal, heat up some veggies, or toss together some raw veggies for a quick salad.
• Typically having the same thing first thing every morning: Lemon Ginger Tea.

Two of Bonni’s epic kitchen fails

Bonni was kind enough to share two of her epic kitchen fails!

One was her great intention for meal prepping for an extremely stressful, busy week. To prepare for it she made a couple of meatloaves using ground turkey, grilled chicken breasts, and roasted a ton of veggies for the week. Sadly, she left them out to cool, forgot about them, and went to bed. When she woke up she realized that everything had been left out all night long. :(

The second epic fail happened when she tried to make a few cups of steamed rice in the microwave using the Pampered Chef Micro-steamer (supposedly not meltable). She accidentally hit 50 minutes rather than 5, and it melted the container down to the point that it was only a small circle of plastic melted onto the bottom of what looked like a rice cake. The microwave sealed the smell inside but smelled like smoke from a fire for months afterwards.  The rice was obviously not edible, but would have made a great hockey puck!

One of Bonni’s epic successes

Here is one of Bonni’s clients, Robin. She has an autoimmune condition and has completely transformed her world with Bonni’s help. She's lost weight (went from 164 lbs to 143 lbs), but above and beyond all else she has energy on a regular basis and the days when she would wake up unable to move are long gone.

Bonni’s meal planning tips for fellow practitioners

Everybody is different, so understanding what will work best for your client is the first step to success in any meal plan, says Bonni. For example, some people thrive using weekly meal plans, others prefer to plan only a few days ahead. Others, like her, prefer to plan extra servings and freeze them for later, so planning only involves a few meals each week.  

Bonni has a list of questions that she asks her clients before creating a meal plan for them. They include:

• What their favourites and least favourites are,
• What their non-negotiables are,
• What their household responsibilities are,
• Who normally eats with them,
• Any additional food concerns that should be addressed, and
• Any family health concerns that could be a future concern?

How Meal Garden Helps Bonni

Before Meal Garden, Bonni’s biggest struggle was teaching her clients how to plan for themselves.

“I wanted to empower them in all facets of their dietary lives. Without the ability to allow them to take charge of part of the process, it was extremely difficult for them to implement into their day-to-day lives.”

Her main goal was finding a program that allowed her to create a partnership with her clients so they could overcome their nutritional challenges. “Meal Garden delivered that for me,” she says. Bonni’s now able to share and collaborate with clients on their meal plans. She’s even had some clients take the first meal plan and recipe collection she shared with them and they started their own. “It has been tremendously helpful!”

What attracted Bonni to Meal Garden was the ability to help her clients further and deeper than she was previously able to. “The fact that there were tons of recipes and plenty of meal plans already available made it that much easier of a decision.” Bonni prefers working collaboratively, rather than being someone who just tells them what to do. Meal Garden filled the final piece of her puzzle so she could empower her clients like she wanted to.

Her favourite Meal Garden feature is the client portal.

“It helps me see what is happening and share information and new recipes with specific clients who would enjoy them the most. The ability to share contributes to the feeling of collaboration, rather than someone telling others what to do.”

“Meal Garden has helped me save a tremendous amount of time each week,” says Bonni. She is less overwhelmed and better able to focus on sharing with her clients rather than preparing for them. She’s noticed that although her client load has increased, the time she spends on clients (appointments, phone calls, social media groups, etc.) has remained the same. “That tells me that I am saving a significant amount of time and am hoping to continue doing so.”

If it wasn’t for Meal Garden, “I would still be looking for a program that helps me collaborate, rather than dictate.”

Bonni’s final thoughts on Meal Garden

“If your business works with clients in a collaborative manner, Meal Garden is the meal planning software to use! It allows your clients to take charge whenever they are ready to do so, which helps you improve your relationship with them. As anyone knows, excellent relationships, truly helping others, and providing quality content equates to future referrals. With the content contributors and the structure of the Meal Garden program, this program is most definitely worth it!”

Sign up for your free 7-day Meal Garden trial.  

Bonni Wildesen

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