The Top 10 Most Influential Healthy Lifestyle Blogs in the Universe

Let’s be honest. You didn’t come here to see me. You came here to see the true blogging masters of healthy living. And for good reason – these are the titans of health blogs that can help you gain your health confidence and live a vibrant life!

So, without further do, I invite you to come and meet the most influential health blogs in the universe and (in some cases) the brilliant minds behind them.

Have fun and I’ll catch you on the other side.

01. Zen Habits (Leo Babauta)

Zen Habits is a thoughtful blog about a powerful idea – achieving true happiness through living simply.

Leo Babauta created this little gem, which has become a profound inspiration for mental health and emotional well being.

In his own words…

“Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives. It’s about clearing the clutter so we can focus on what’s important, create something amazing, and find happiness.”

The new Zen Habits tagline says it all – “smile, breathe, and go slowly.”

Leo himself is an avid healthy lifestyle enthusiast – choosing to live as a vegan, becoming a devout runner, and creating such motivational and practical healthy lifestyle guides as The Ultimate Guide How Get Lean and The Anti-Fast Food Diet.

And don’t let Zen Habits fool you. It may look simple at the surface (that’s kinda the point right?!), but Zen Habits as blossomed into one of the top 100 blogs in the world! It has achieved a readership of over 185K (I’d guess it’s closer to 200K by now), and was recently selected for TIME magazine’s 25 Best Blogs of 2009. Congrats Leo!

02. Mark’s Daily Apple (Mark Sisson)

Mark’s Daily Apple (MDA) is one of the blogs that has changed my life this past year. It’s dedicated to “primal living in the modern world.” The Primal Blueprint is Mark’s masterpiece – equal parts belief system and practical guide to overcoming today’s problematic food system and unhealthy living (sub)standards.

I’ve already shared my opinions of the Primal Blueprint at length. The quick version is that I regard primal living as a smart, scientifically accurate, and energizing approach to optimizing your health and happiness.

A return to paleolithic life isn’t just Mark’s idea. There’s an entire movement of “groks” that strongly recommend primal living for achieving health greatness – including Dr. Michael Eades.

Primal living certainly has its skeptics, but I argue that if you don’t at least try it for a bit then you really shouldn’t criticize. And adopting a primal lifestyle is easier than you think – just follow the 1-2-3-4 formula to unleashing your inner grok (Note: this is my guest post on MDA, woo-hoo!).

03. Daily Spark (by Spark People)

Daily Spark is the blog outlet of Spark People, which is America’s #1 weight loss and fitness website. Their uplifting mission is “to help missions of people live healthier lives and reach their goals.”

The Daily Spark blog itself is a source of emotional and magnetic inspiration. Many articles are educational pieces written by registered dietitians and other health professionals. Others are emotional inspirations composed by ordinary SparkPeople sharing their real-life stories.

The Daily Spark / Spark People community seems to slant towards those in the earlier phases of their healthy lifestyle quest. But anyone can reap incredible value from their mission, including me.

04. Experiments in Lifestyle Design (Tim Ferriss)

Let me guess what you’re thinking – “Excuse me? Tim Ferriss? What is he doing in this list? Isn’t he an entrepreneur, writer, and life hacker?”

Yes he is, though Tim’s interests and talents extend beyond these simplistic labels (I think he’d agree).

Tim believes in defining your own reality – and not just of business (for which he may be most “famous”). Instead, Tim seeks to improve (“hack”) all facets of life in unique, deadly efficient, and meaningful ways. Such pursuits tend to lead him into unconventional waters; hence the usual criticisms.

Nevertheless, and for relevance here, optimizing health is squarely within Tim’s cross-hairs.

Tim uses his Experiments in Lifestyle Design blog as a means to communicate his projections and real-world findings. He’s already crossed off learning how to swim effortlessly, relax like a pro, gain 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks, lose 20 pounds of fat in 30 days, and much more.

Suffice it to say, Tim’s a healthy lifestyle enthusiast of the first order. And his new book, The 4-Hour Body, is entirely devoted to this ideal. So, although unconventional, give Tim a read. You’ll be glad you did.

05. LIVE STRONG Blog

Unless you’re from Mars, you don’t need me to introduce you to LIVE STRONG. The yellow LIVE STRONG bracelets have become endemic to our society (yes, I’m wearing one!). And the man at the center of it all – Lance Armstrong – is arguably a living legend.

But what you may NOT know is that LIVE STRONG has a blog, and a darn good one too!

The LIVE STRONG blog is a fantastic collection of educational and inspirational multimedia encompassing a wide variety of healthy lifestyle topics. You can explore health topics and diseases. You can access their interactive symptom checker. You can join their inspirational LIVE STRONG community and partake in their “LIVE STRONG Dares”. And so much more!

Simply put – “dare to change your life.”

06. Alltop Health

You might be thinking – “Alltop? What in the blazes is Alltop?”

“The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, ‘What’s happening?’ in ‘all the topics’ that interest you. You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web.”

What’s cool about Alltop (and very different from a search engine) is that they collect headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic and then aggregate them into individual web pages. Thus, it becomes incredibly easy to follow the latest and greatest from any topic of your interest.

And that’s precisely what Alltop Health is – Alltop’s systematically aggregated webpage of the leading health stories from all over the web!

There are even sub-specific health topics that you can follow – like “food safety”, “diabetes”, “mental health”, “organic”, so on and so forth. There are 72 health sub-topics in all (I counted!).

07. The Diet Blog

The Diet Blog has a singular focus – “Eat Right. Get Healthy.”

In their own words…

“Diet Blog is all about filtering the best of diet news and advice – and combining it with real-world application and opinion. The whole spectrum is covered – everything from body image to fast food.”

I love their premise, and because I couldn’t say it any better I’m going to copy/paste that one too…

“The basis of weight management is good nutrition and exercise. But that is so simplistic that it’s almost patronising. As an “instant-gratification” society it’s no wonder we reach for every quick fix we can find. When the quick-fixes fail – opinions get cynical, self-image can plummet, and many people begin a vicious cycle of loss and re-gain.

Different things work for different people. Nutrition is individualistic. It’s easy to criticize everything except that which worked for me – but that’s not particularly helpful.

Eating healthily, and learning to use the best of the nutritional advice that’s out there is a good thing. Falling into disordered/obsessional eating is not a good thing. The concept of dieting is not a good thing (going on and off diets all the time).”

08. Men’s Health / Women’s Health

Here is another fabulous resource that requires no introduction. The Men’s Health plus Women’ Health publications may in fact be the most prominent in their category today.

But if you can’t or don’t want to pay for the hardcopy magazine subscriptions, their respective blogs should do nicely!

The Men’s Health blog covers a wide variety of men topics that in some form or another contribute to the optimal male life. This includes, at the highest level, fitness, health, nutrition, sex and women, grooming, weight loss, career and money, and tech gadgets.

The Women’s Health blog covers similar topics for the female point-of-view.

Both include a healthy dose of free content in various media formats – regular articles, interactive modules, video clips, etc.

09. Strong Lifts (Mehdi)

Strong Lifts is dedicated to the art of strength training. And it is an art, believe me. It requires acute concentration, ample skill practice, personal creativity and self-expression, mental tenacity, and more.

Don’t get confused – Strong Lifts is no body building website. Quite the opposite. It advocates a return to the functional and practical basics of strength. Mehdi has weaved these principles into his Strong Lifts 5×5 program – a 100% free strength training philosophy and guide to more muscle and less fat.

Also, Strong Lifts isn’t just a program. It contains dozens of no-nonsense guides and specific instructions on how to perform experiences and engineer a strong (thus healthy) life – including suggestions on nutrition.

You know I’m not one to place fitness (or worse, vanity results) ahead of the more important aspects of health (namely your health belief system, goals, wellness, nutrition, and activeness). But if and when you are ready to engage in some safe and effective physical training, I do highly recommend Strong Lifts.

It is, after all, the #1 strength training site in the world.

And if you’re wondering, Strong Lifts is as applicable to women as it is men. Mehdi would tell you the same thing!

10. Health Central

Health Central is part health blog, part medical encyclopedia. It offers intuitive information on copious health conditions, diseases, symptoms, and more.

Their mission is “to empower missions of people to improve and take control of their health and well-being.” They live up to this ideal through their network of “35+ sites that provide clinical resources and real-life support to those with life-changing conditions.”

Their blog is called So Health, which (among other things) is a stellar resource for health care policy news from Washington, DC.

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Your Thoughts

Now that you’ve met the top 10 most influential health blogs in the universe, what did you think?

Which of these resources would you not have added to the list? Which other ones would you have added?

We’re all winners in this debate – so let’s get it going!