Local mom and wellness practitioner Wendy McCallum set to launch second cookbook

Wendy McCallum is known in Halifax for helping busy families improve their nutritional habits. She runs Simple Balance, a natural nutrition, lifestyle, weight loss and wellness business in Halifax, and is launching her newest book, The Real Food Solution, in local and national booksellers this month.

Her first cookbook, Real Food for Real Families, was released in 2013. It focused on recipes for healthier options to the popular processed food many children enjoy. Her latest work has more of an emphasis on the whole family eating well.

“This is more of a program and an approach. There are 70 plus recipes but there’s also six weeks of meal plans, grocery lists and tons of tools and support in the text that gives you all the information and motivation that you need to make these changes,” she says.

McCallum says her passion for family nutrition came through her own experience. She was living in Alberta, working as a lawyer, with two young children and says she was struggling to find a balance in life, particularly with feeding her family healthy, real food.

She decided a change was in order and they moved home to Nova Scotia. She went back to school to become a Registered Holistic Nutrition Consultant and taught herself to cook. This background influenced her cookbooks as the recipes are developed for any level of cooking skill, and use simple, real ingredients that can be found at the grocery store.

In creating her nutritional programs she found that many popular weight loss programs required parents to make special meals for themselves that were different from the rest of the family’s food. She says this approach is impractical and not a long-term weight management solution so she decided to create an alternative option that involved the whole family.

“I wanted to develop programming that allowed me to give moms an approach that they could use with confidence knowing that they are role modeling great behaviour, teaching their kids great things about food, and feeding them awesome food; but also allows moms to meet their own personal goals when it comes to their weight and wellness,” she says.

Laura Driscoll of Halifax is one of those busy working moms who uses McCallum’s current cookbook and is eagerly awaiting the new one. Two years ago she lost over sixty pounds and, for the last year, she’s been focusing on improving the quality of the food she feeds her family.

“I have a lot of cookbooks that collect dust, but this isn’t one of them,” Driscoll says. “I love that it is practical as the recipes are easy to make and incorporate accessible ingredients. I also like the approach she takes to nutrition – planning, eating as few processed foods as possible, moderation, and not trying to push specific products or supplements on her readers.”

McCallum says the program and recipes in her book are a great way for families to get healthy together.

“The majority of the people I work with are just busy individuals trying to find a work-life balance and, in the process of that, trying to keep themselves healthy, and at a healthy weight, but also feed their kids great food,” she says.